How to Use the F2P vs Paid Playtime Ratio Calculator
Even in the same game, free-to-play and paying players experience wildly different pacing. This calculator separates content access (how much content you can even play) from progress speed (how efficiently you clear the content you have) to calculate how much more time a free player actually needs compared to a paying player.
Starting from a paying player's full clear time, it multiplies in the free player's accessible content share and their clearing speed to work out the real time required. Because access and speed are both lower for free players, the gap compounds multiplicatively — often producing a much bigger time difference than most people expect.
Use this result as a reference when deciding whether to keep playing a game and how much to spend, if anything. A high inaccessible content ratio means there's content you simply cannot reach at all no matter how much time you invest, which is a gap that spending time alone can't close.
On the other hand, if a game's gap is mostly about speed rather than locked content, steady playtime can often close the difference without spending a cent. Weighing your available free time against the specific content you're chasing is the most regret-free way to decide whether spending makes sense for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Access is the percentage of content you can even play in the first place, while speed is how efficiently you clear the content you do have access to. They come from different causes, so entering them separately gives a more accurate result.
For a light spender, enter access and speed values somewhere between free-to-play and a heavy spender to see a light-spender result with the same calculator.