It's just you. That's the risk.
Nobody is going to overwrite your work. Something else will: a bad save, a corrupted asset, a crash mid-cook, a drive that stops spinning on the worst possible morning. Every version of every file, kept and restorable in one click. Free forever for solo devs, with unlimited storage and bandwidth, and no card to enter.
What free actually includes
Every version, forever
Roll back any file to any previous state in one click. Nothing is overwritten or deleted, so an experiment that went wrong is never a week gone.
Unlimited storage and bandwidth
On the free plan. Nanite meshes, 8K textures, packaged builds. There's no quota to watch and no point where you're asked to upgrade because your project got big.
Off your machine
The whole point. Your project lives somewhere that isn't the drive under your desk, so hardware failure stops being an existential event.
Private, never indexed
Your unannounced game is never public, never indexed, never sold, and never used to train a model. Free projects get the same privacy as paid ones.
Five minutes to set up
Point the desktop app at your .uproject folder and commit. Unreal's generated folders are excluded automatically. No server, no Git, no LFS configuration.
Ship it without a build team
Package your game with your own Unreal install and upload it to Steam, the Epic Games Store, or itch.io from the same window. No build script, no CI service, no second machine. On the free plan too.
Room to become a team
The day you bring on a collaborator, add a seat. Your history, files, and workflow carry over. Nothing to migrate and nothing to redo.
Why solo devs skip source control, and what it costs
The reasoning is always sensible in the moment. Version control is a team tool, and you are not a team. Setting up Perforce means running a server for one person. Git chokes on your Content folder. So you make a zip of the project folder every so often, name it with the date, and get back to work. That holds until it does not. The failure is rarely dramatic. It is usually a save that corrupted a Blueprint you had been refining all week, discovered three days later, with your most recent zip predating the good version. Or a material change that broke something subtle across twenty assets, and no way back to before. Or the drive. What you actually need is not the collaboration half of source control. It is the time machine half: every version of every file kept automatically, restorable without ceremony. The team features are there when you need them, and cost you nothing while you do not.
Why free is genuinely free
It's worth being direct about the business model, because free tiers usually have a catch and it's fair to ask where ours is. The Free plan gives you one project, writable, with unlimited storage and bandwidth and no card required. It is not a trial that expires, and it is not a demo that stops working when your project grows. Solo developers are the least expensive users we have and the most likely to bring a team with them later, which is a good enough reason to make the free tier actually usable rather than deliberately painful. What it does not include: multiple projects, and the plugin sharing and audit logging that only matter with other people involved. Everything about keeping your work safe is in the free tier, because a version control system that loses your files on the cheap plan is not a version control system.
Working on Unreal Engine 5 alone
A few things worth knowing if you're on UE5 specifically. World Partition and One File Per Actor were built for teams, but they change your project's shape whether or not you have one. A populated open world produces thousands of small actor files under __ExternalActors__, which is where Git LFS starts to struggle. We treat that as the normal case, so it is not something you need to think about. Nanite assets are large by design, carrying full-detail source geometry rather than authored LODs. Unlimited storage means you never have to decide whether an asset is worth versioning. And the exclusions that matter (Saved/, Intermediate/, DerivedDataCache/, Binaries/) are configured by default, so your first commit contains your project rather than your build artifacts.
Common questions
Is the free plan really free forever?
Yes. One project, writable, with unlimited storage and bandwidth, no card required, and no expiry. It isn't a trial. If your project grows to hundreds of gigabytes, that's still covered.
What's the catch with unlimited storage on a free plan?
There's no metering and no quota. The Free plan is limited to one project, and it doesn't include the team-oriented features (plugin sharing, audit logs) that only matter once other people are involved. Everything about keeping your work safe is included, because a plan that loses your files isn't worth offering.
Do I need source control if I work alone?
The collaboration half, no. The time-machine half, very much yes, and it's the half that actually saves projects. Solo losses come from corrupted saves, experiments that went wrong, and dead drives, none of which care how many people are on the team. Dated zip folders are the usual substitute and they fail exactly when you need them.
Is my unannounced game private on the free plan?
Yes, identically to paid plans. Files are never public, never indexed, never sold, and never used to train any model. Access is through short-lived, project-scoped signed links over TLS, and every version is integrity-verified with SHA-256.
What happens when I bring on a collaborator?
Add a seat and invite them. Your existing history, files, locks, and settings carry over untouched. There's no migration, no re-upload, and no different product to move to.
Can I publish to Steam or itch.io on the free plan?
Yes. Packaging and store publishing are on every plan, Free included, because the build runs on your machine with your own engine and your own store accounts. Point the app at your project, package it, and push it to itch.io via Butler or Steam via SteamPipe. Credentials are encrypted locally and never reach us. Steam and Epic still keep the final promotion to players in their own portals, so a build is reported as uploaded, never as live.
Does it work with Unreal Engine 5 World Partition projects?
Yes. World Partition and One File Per Actor produce thousands of small binary actor files even on a solo project, which is a pattern Git LFS handles poorly and we handle as the normal case. Sync moves only what changed, and a single commit can carry up to 25,000 files.
Put your game somewhere safe tonight
Free forever for solo devs. Unlimited storage and bandwidth, no card, first commit in five minutes.
Create your first project