Subscription, expansions, free trial: what you need

You're paying for up to three separate things — the free trial you can skip entirely, a monthly subscription, and the expansions themselves — and they don't work the way a normal game does. The subscription isn't tied to any one expansion, the expansions are one-time purchases that stack, and the free trial goes further than most people expect before either of the other two ever comes up. Square Enix and third-party trackers agree on the shape of all three; the one thing this page won't do is quote you a price, because those change by region and by sale and go stale fast — check the official store for the current numbers.

The free trial: further than it looks, until it isn't

You can create an account and play A Realm Reborn through Shadowbringers, levelling any job up to 80, with no time limit on the trial itself. That's most of the game's story before you're asked to pay anything. What actually pushes people to buy in is a cluster of restrictions that only bite once you're deep into it: trial characters can't touch the market board, can't use shout/yell/tell chat, can't hold retainers, and can't found a Free Company (joining one you're invited to is fine). PvP is off entirely, and Party Finder recruitment doesn't work, though queuing through Duty Finder does. None of that stops you from finishing the included story — it stops you from playing like a subscriber. The full restriction list, and how each one actually plays out, is in do you need a subscription to play Final Fantasy XIV.

The subscription: monthly, and only two tiers apart in one way

Once you're past what the trial allows, you need a recurring monthly subscription, bought through the Mog Station — there's no permanent unlock. Buying any license (base game or a bundle) comes with a free stretch of subscription time to get you started, but after that it's pay-monthly or the account goes inactive.

There are two subscription tiers, Entry and Standard, and the difference that actually matters is how many characters you're allowed to keep: Entry limits you to one character per world and a handful in total, while Standard raises both ceilings by several times over, letting you spread many more characters across many more worlds in the same data center. If you're playing one character on one world — which covers most people — Entry is the tier built for that; Standard exists for people who want alt characters spread around, not for anything the base game gates behind it.

The expansions: bought once, and the newer bundles absorb the older ones

Expansions are a one-time purchase, separate from the subscription, and this is where buying in the wrong order costs money for nothing. Square Enix currently sells Dawntrail — the newest expansion, out since 2024 — three ways: a Standard edition with Dawntrail alone (for accounts that already own everything before it), and a Complete Edition that bundles the base game plus every expansion up to and including Dawntrail — A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker — in one purchase. If you don't already own any of the older expansions, the Complete Edition is the one purchase that gets you current; buying Dawntrail standalone when you don't own Endwalker just gets you a license the game won't let you use yet. A sixth expansion, Evercold, was announced in April 2026 and is due in January 2027 — when it ships, expect the newest Complete Edition to fold it in the same way, and the standalone Dawntrail purchase to become one step further back in the chain.

The order that avoids wasting money

1. Try the free trial first. It costs nothing and covers three expansions' worth of story — decide whether you like the game before buying anything.
2. When you're ready to buy, check what you already own before picking an edition. New accounts want the Complete Edition, not the latest standalone expansion.
3. Subscribe monthly to keep the account active once the free time that came with your purchase runs out — Entry unless you specifically want more characters or worlds.
4. Only buy a standalone expansion later, to catch up on the one that shipped after whatever bundle you originally bought.

Once that's sorted, what to actually do with the account is covered separately in what to do first in Final Fantasy XIV.