question

1. No, the Essentials tier is free - period. You can ship a game using the Essentials tier to every storefront without any charges for the core services. If you choose to use any additional paid features, like limit upgrades, CDN, or custom game server hosting, those would be charged at the listed rates.

Please note that the reason we encourage folks to move to the paid tiers is twofold:

First, all the higher tiers of service have higher limits. Most notably, they have high enough limits in the PlayStream features to allow you to build a full LiveOps campaign. The Essentials tier really only gives you enough to try out those features.

Second, at the Professional and Enterprise levels, you have private support

2. In the Pricing FAQ, we also have this:

"The core PlayFab service is completely free in the Essentials tier. If you want to move up to the Indie tier, for higher limits, or the Professional tier, for private support and a Service Level Agreement (SLA), PlayFab is free until you get to 1,000 Monthly Active Users (MAU)."

In other words, if you sign up for the Indie tier, your monthly fee only after you reach 1,000 MAU is $99 a month (flat rate) for the core service. Indie tier accounts automatically convert to Pro tier once your title hits 100,000 MAU (which is where that number comes in).

In the Pro tier, the fee - again, only after you reach 1,000 MAU - is $0.008 per MAU, with a monthly minimum of $299. So no, it's not in addition - it's one or the other in the Pro tier.