Gameye vs. Hathora

Games-First Platform vs. AI Pivot Startup






What Is Gameye?

Gameye is a managed orchestration platform built exclusively for multiplayer games. Started hosting games in 2019.

It provides:

What Is Hathora?

Hathora started as a YC-backed game server hosting platform in 2023.

It provides:

But recent developments raise questions:

Key Differences

Here’s a breakdown of the key differences between Gameye and Hathora:

 

Feature Gameye Hathora
Company Focus 100% games Games + AI inference
Track Record 7 years, 120M+ sessions ~3 years, limited public data
Container Start Time 0.5 seconds “Seconds” (nodes: under 2 min)
Egress Fees None (included) Yes (per GB)
Pricing Transparency Capacity-based, clear “Schedule a call”
Infrastructure Multi-provider (bare metal + cloud) Cloud + bare metal option
Anti-DDoS Included (Gcore, OVHCloud) Included
Failover Automatic cross-provider Single provider per region

The Pivot Problem

In November 2025, Hathora launched models.hathora.dev—an AI inference platform for voice agents, ASR, TTS, and LLMs. Their blog now features posts like “A Deep Dive into LLM Inference Latencies.”

This isn’t necessarily bad—but it raises questions for game studios:

Gameye has one business: multiplayer game infrastructure. Our roadmap, our engineering, and our support are 100% focused on helping studios ship games. No side projects. No distractions.

Customer Results

Doborog Games reduced server costs by over 60% after switching to Gameye.

“It’s reassuring to know that we could scale up indefinitely as we prepare for platform events and sales.”
— Brian Jordan, Co-founder & CTO, Doborog Games

Chivalry 2 launched with 250,000 players in the first 30 minutes—zero infrastructure downtime.

“We felt there was a personal relationship, and if there was a problem, we knew Gameye would be there.”
— Rasmus Löfström, Game Director, Torn Banner Studios

Verdict: Who should use Gameye vs. Hathora?

Use Gameye if:

Use Hathora if:

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hathora still focused on games?

Hathora still offers game server hosting, but their strategic direction has shifted. Their homepage now emphasizes “compute orchestration across GPUs and CPUs,” and they’ve launched an AI inference platform. Gaming is now one of multiple use cases rather than their sole focus.

Does Hathora charge egress fees?

Yes. Hathora charges for egress bandwidth in addition to vCPU usage. Their documentation mentions “Egress (GB) per player” as a billing factor. Gameye includes all data transfer in its capacity-based pricing.

How does scaling speed compare?

Gameye starts new containers in 0.5 seconds on average. Hathora’s documentation states their autoscaler “spins up nodes in under 2 minutes.” For sudden player spikes, this difference can impact player experience.

Is Hathora a risky choice because it’s a startup?

All startups carry some risk. Hathora is VC-backed (YC, $7.6M raised), which means they need to grow—and pivots happen when growth stalls. Their AI pivot may signal where they see their future. Gameye has been operating profitably for 7 years with 120M+ sessions, focused solely on games.

Can I migrate from Hathora to Gameye?

Yes. Both platforms are container-based, so migration is straightforward. Your Docker images work on Gameye with minimal changes. Our team can help you run both platforms in parallel during transition.

Spot something inaccurate? Let us know.

We strive to maintain technical, fair, and current comparisons. If you spot any inaccuracies or have suggestions, please contact us. We value your perspective and insights to improve our content.

Last updated: January 26, 2026