Nintendo Switch vs Switch Lite: deciding which one to buy

	Cost	Cost per month	Cost per account per month
One-month individual plan	$ 4	$ 4	$ 4
Three-month individual plan	8 $	$ 2.67	$ 2.67
12 month individual plan	$ 20	$ 1.67	$ 1.67
12 month family plan (up to eight members)	$ 35	$ 2.92	Between $ 1.46 (for two people) and $ 0.37 (for eight people)

Nintendo Switch Online memberships are quite inexpensive and buying an entire year at a time is the best value.

Nintendo charges you to play games online, but the subscription is cheaper than the Sony and Microsoft plans. Nintendo sells one-month, three-month, and 12-month subscriptions, and the price per month drops when you buy multiple months at a time (a 12-month subscription costs less than half of what it costs for buy 12 months individually). Nintendo also offers a family plan, which gives up to eight accounts most of the benefits of an individual Switch Online membership for $ 35 per month. It’s obviously a better deal the more accounts you add to it, but it’s more profitable than an individual subscription even if you only have two people in your family.

You can buy all of these plans directly from Nintendo, but you can also purchase codes for three-month, 12-month, and family plans to give as gifts. Sometimes these codes go on sale, saving you a few extra dollars. If you see a good deal on one and plan to stay a subscriber indefinitely, you can purchase those subscriptions and add them to your existing account, extending the remaining term of your subscription by up to three years. A seven-day free trial is also available.

Keep in mind that these accounts do not cover each individual Switch you own, but individual user accounts. If you have multiple active user accounts on your Switch, each user account needs its own Switch Online subscription to play online and access exclusive Switch Online downloadable content. A family plan is the best way to cover this scenario.

In addition to the online multiplayer mode, which includes everything from the competition Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to send gifts to your friends Animal crossing—Switch Online subscriptions offer a few additional benefits. There are standalone and exclusive games like Tetris 99 or Super Mario Bros. 35, downloadable content for select games, and discounts on Nintendo eShop. You also get collections of NES and SNES apps that include a few dozen games from each of these systems (around 70 for the NES and 35 for the SNES, to date, and depending on the country you live in). These libraries are heavy with proprietary Nintendo games and more obscure titles with not much in between, but all of them. Mario and Zelda the games people want to play the most are well represented. Nintendo adds a few new games to its library every two months or so, although the recent additions have been heavy with curiosity and light on more memorable games.

Members of a family plan generally have access to the same items as individual members, including online play and the same downloadable games and other content. But sometimes you’ll run into exceptions: for example, Nintendo will only sell you four of its replica Super Nintendo controllers as a Switch Online subscription, whether you have an individual or a family subscription. However, there aren’t really any other downsides.