Yes, AION 2 is free to play: since 5 October 2026 you can download and play it for free, with no box price and no mandatory subscription. The catch is somewhere else. Alongside the game there is an optional membership for $14.99 per 30 days that unlocks the auction house and the currency exchange, in other words full participation in the player economy.
This breakdown covers AION 2, not the original AION from 2009. The two games have different business models and different histories. And one practical point right at the start: don’t buy any AION 2 key from resellers. You don’t buy the game, you download it for free from Steam or the PURPLE launcher.
The key points in five bullets
- The game itself is free: no access price, no mandatory subscription. The story, the open world, dungeons and PvP are all free.
- The optional Special Quai Membership costs $14.99 for 30 days and unlocks the Market (auction house) and the Kina and Quna currency exchange, plus a handful of convenience perks.
- The Founder’s Pack ($24.99 / $49.99 / $99.99) was a voluntary purchase: five days of early access from 30 September 2026, cosmetics and a 30-day membership. Sales ended on 5 October 2026. All three tiers granted the same head start, and the title, skins, pet and wings are appearance-only with no stats.
- The cash shop sells cosmetics and consumables. NCSOFT states that they don’t affect character power or gear progression.
- At the Korean and Taiwanese launch, the shop briefly sold items with a direct combat bonus. NCSOFT pulled them roughly 15 hours after release and apologized. They are not supposed to make it into the global version.
How much does AION 2 cost? Three different payments that get mixed up
The game itself costs nothing. Most questions about the price of AION 2 come from three completely different things being merged into one number: the game, the Founder’s Pack and the monthly membership. Each has a different purpose, and two of the three are entirely optional.
| What | Price | Required? | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|---|
| The game itself | Free | – | Free for everyone since 5 October 2026, via Steam or the PURPLE launcher |
| Founder’s Pack (no longer sold) | $24.99 / $49.99 / $99.99 | No | Five days of early access (30 September to 5 October 2026), cosmetics and a 30-day membership. All three tiers gave the same head start. Sales ended on 5 October 2026 |
| Membership | $14.99 / 30 days | No | Market (auction house), Kina and Quna exchange, convenience perks |
What you actually pay in your own currency depends on the exchange rate on the day of purchase and on whether you pay on Steam or through PURPLE.
Where did the most common confusion come from? Before launch, Steam showed a price of $24.99 for AION 2, even though the game was listed under “Free To Play”. That was never the price of the game. It was the price of the Founder’s Pack Standard, which was on sale from 22 July to 5 October 2026. For a breakdown of what each pack contained and the rules for upgrades and refunds, see the article on Early Access and Founder’s Packs.
Is AION 2 really free? What exactly you get without paying
Yes. Downloading and playing AION 2 is free, and you don’t need any subscription to access the game. The official Steam page (app ID 3393110) backs this up: it carries the “Free To Play” category with an in-app purchases flag.
For free you get all of the game’s content: the main story, the open world, dungeons, flying and PvP including the Abyss. None of it is locked behind money.
Two more things cost nothing. Both launch Daeva Passes have a free Basic track that pays out rewards for completing missions. And NCSOFT extended the pre-registration and Steam wishlist rewards to everyone: create an account and log in before maintenance begins on 1 December 2026 (Pacific time) and the Launch Rewards arrive by in-game mail. They consist of a pet chest and a chest with potions, scrolls and Resurrection Spiritstones.
What you don’t get without paying:
- The Market, the auction house where players sell to other players. Without a membership you can neither buy nor sell there.
- The Kina and Quna exchange: you can’t “earn” premium currency by selling your in-game currency to other players for it.
- The premium track of the battle pass and cash shop purchases, which is to be expected in a free-to-play game.
In practice this means one specific thing: a player without a membership has to win or craft all of their gear themselves, because they have no access to the player market. This is exactly what drives the loudest community complaint, that AION 2 “isn’t an F2P game”. How expensive that gets depends on how much material gear enchanting eats up, and that is a system where material is usually bought from other players.
The $14.99 membership: what you’re really paying for
The membership doesn’t unlock the game, it unlocks the economy. NCSOFT first described it in the official announcement “Team Update: Business Model / Our Approach” from 8 July 2026, and the final price and contents are in the product notice on the aion2.plaync.com board. It is called the Special Quai Membership, costs $14.99 for 30 days (originally announced at $15) and is bought in the game under Subscribe. Specifically, it gives you:
- The Market, an auction house where players set their own prices and pay in in-game currency. Without a membership you can neither list items nor buy them.
- The Kina and Quna exchange: one player offers in-game currency, another buys it with premium currency.
- Remote Storage, available at any time from the bottom of your Cube instead of only at Storage NPCs.
- The Wind Breeze Merchants shop straight from the menu. Without a membership you have to visit the merchant NPC.
- A higher maximum Odyle Energy capacity, and a second Odyle Energy injection when you open reward Cubes from Expedition, Transcendence and Sanctuary.
- A higher cap on Shugo Festa Keys: 21 instead of 12.
The membership applies to all characters on the server where you bought it, not to characters on other servers. Each purchase adds 30 days, and you can buy it at most three times per server per month.
The in-game text confirms that this is hard gating: all marketplaces are available only to users with a membership. So it isn’t a bonus on top, it’s a condition of access.
Because the two currencies have similar names and even experienced players mix them up, it’s worth telling them apart right away:
| Currency | What it is |
|---|---|
| Kina | In-game currency. You earn it by playing. Some players and websites call it “Kinah” after the original AION. |
| Quna | Premium currency. You buy it with real money and spend it in the cash shop. |
How to earn Kina, how much you can realistically collect per day and what you can get with it without paying is covered separately in the article on the AION 2 currency and economy.
To put it fairly: $14.99 a month is in the range of the usual subscriptions for big MMORPGs, so on its own it’s nothing unusual. The difference is what you pay for. Elsewhere a subscription is your ticket into the game; in AION 2 it’s your ticket into the economy. So the cap isn’t on character level: the maximum level is the same for subscribers and free players. In the global version it is 45.
What the cash shop sells
The AION 2 cash shop is built on cosmetics and consumables. According to the 8 July 2026 announcement, it sells outfits, wings, mounts, pets, weapon skins and accessories without stats, plus potions and resurrection stones. For consumables, NCSOFT explicitly writes that they don’t affect gear progression or long-term character power and that you can also get them through normal play.
The Daeva Pass, the battle pass, is a separate thing: a seasonal reward track. It always applies to a single character, has a free and a premium track, and the premium one is bought with Quna.
| What’s sold | Paid with | Affects character power? |
|---|---|---|
| Cosmetics: outfits, wings, pets, skins | Dollars or Quna, depending on the item | No |
| Consumables: potions, resurrection stones | Quna | Not according to NCSOFT |
| Daeva Pass premium track | Quna (1,000 or 1,500) | Gives more enhancement materials than the free track |
| Membership: access to the Market and the exchange | $14.99 / 30 days | Indirectly, through market access |
That third row is worth describing precisely. For the cash shop, NCSOFT explicitly wrote that its items don’t interfere with progression. For the battle pass it never repeated that sentence, and the launch product notice shows what the tracks contain: both hand out Enhance Stones, Manastones, Soulstones, Amplify Stone Fragments and bound Kina, and the Premium column lists larger amounts. At pass level 1 of the Dawn Legion / Ishalgen Mercenary pass, Basic lists 2,000 Enhance Stones and Premium 5,000; at level 4 it is 10,000 bound Kina against 100,000. Pass levels can also be bought for 50 Quna each.
The prices are public. Quna on PURPLE costs $5.99 for 400, $14.99 for 1,000, $29.99 for 2,000 and $59.99 for 4,000; NCSOFT notes that prices in other stores may differ. Two Daeva Passes run at launch:
| Daeva Pass | Premium track | Max pass level | Runs until |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dawn Legion (Elyos) / Ishalgen Mercenary (Asmodian) | 1,500 Quna | 100 | maintenance on 15 December 2026 |
| Planet’s Call | 1,000 Quna | 50 | maintenance on 28 October 2026 |
Both have a free Basic track, and Premium is bought once per character. Cosmetics are priced partly in dollars and partly in Quna: a weapon skin is $11.99 and tied to one class, three of the launch outfit sets cost $29.99, two armor skin sets 2,200 Quna, and the launch pets and wings $19.99 each.
The Season 1 Starter bundle costs $19.99 once per character. It contains a facewear skin, four Cube Expansion Vouchers, 10 Hidden Cube keys, 50 Resurrection Spiritstones, 100 Life Brews, 100 Life Crystals, 100 Battle Enhance Scrolls and 5,000 Superior Power Shards. At the Tsenka Merchants, a Resurrection Spiritstone costs 100 Quna, a Hidden Cube key 50, the Cube and storage expansion vouchers 200 each and a name change 500.
The Korean controversy: what happened at the launch in Korea and Taiwan
You can’t read the Western model without this context, because it’s behind the distrust most players bring to the topic. What matters is that monetization is decided by the project’s Korean leadership, not the European branch; the article on who is behind AION 2 explains who exactly that is. The timeline according to news coverage at the time:
- November 2025, before release. At its earnings call, NCSOFT announces that AION 2’s monetization will be lighter and more user-friendly in order to grow the player base.
- 19 November 2025: launch in Korea and Taiwan. Alongside overloaded servers, the shop starts selling bundles with items such as Combat Enhancement Scrolls and Soul Book, meaning items with a direct bonus to combat stats, sold for Quna.
- Market reaction. NCSOFT’s stock lost over 15 percent within two days. In fairness, the source itself adds some context: tech stocks were falling across the board in the same period, and NCSOFT’s stock was still up for the year. So the drop can’t be blamed entirely on AION 2.
- Roughly 15 hours after release. An emergency livestream. The controversial items are permanently removed from sale, enhancement items are given to all players for free, skill reset fees are scrapped, consumable prices are cut in half and compensation is sent out by email.
- The apology. “I have no excuse for you, but I am truly sorry,” NCSOFT’s leadership said during the broadcast (as quoted by Massively OP).
- 25 June 2026: developer video on the Western model. This is also where the promise to move away from random mechanics comes from; the July announcement doesn’t mention them at all.
- 8 July 2026: official announcement of the business model for the global version. The final prices followed in the product notices from August and September 2026.
What does this mean for the West? According to the announcement, a cash shop with combat items won’t make it into the global version, and that is a verifiable improvement. At the same time, the thing Korean players disliked most, paid access to the auction house, is carried over to the West, just in a milder form: one optional $14.99 membership instead of the two Korean tiers, which together came to an estimated $40 to $50 a month.
If you want to compare with the Asian version: the game has been running on the Taiwanese server since November 2025. Our impressions from playing on the Taiwan server and the guide on how to get there are in separate articles. Veterans comparing it with the original game’s model will get more out of the AION Classic vs AION 2 comparison.
So is AION 2 pay-to-win?
There’s no yes-or-no answer to this question, but it can be split into three clear parts. Pay-to-win means a model in which you buy a combat advantage with money. Besides the in-game cash shop, the GamersTogether shop has limited AION 2 merch – t-shirts, hoodies and accessories.
- You can’t buy power. According to the announcement, the cash shop sells cosmetics and consumables that don’t affect progression. Compared with the Korean launch, that’s a verifiable change.
- You can buy time and convenience. Through the Market and the exchange. Paying players can get in-game currency from other players for real money and use it to buy gear they would otherwise have to farm.
- You can buy looks, and that doesn’t hurt anyone.
- Gray area: the Daeva Pass Premium track, which gives more enhancement materials than the free one, and the membership perks around Odyle Energy, which give subscribers a higher capacity and a second injection into reward Cubes.
It matters most in PvP. If gear progression runs heavily through the player market, a player without a membership gradually falls behind exactly where the difference shows the most: in the Abyss and open-world PvP. NCSOFT hasn’t yet disclosed how large a share of progression actually runs through the market.
The honest conclusion: AION 2 isn’t pay-to-win in the sense that you can buy power in the shop. It’s a game where you pay $14.99 a month for full participation in the economy.
When it went live and what can still change
There were two dates. Early access for Founder’s Pack owners began on 30 September 2026, and since 5 October 2026 the game has been free for everyone. Both apply only to PC: the global version is available exclusively on Steam and in the PURPLE launcher, so all payments go through those too. We cover both dates in detail in the article on the AION 2 release date, and an overview of devices is in the piece on platforms.
Founder’s Packs can no longer be bought: sales ended on 5 October 2026 at 8:00 AM PDT (17:00 CEST). For owners, one thing changed after launch. Since the update of 7 October 2026, the cosmetics from the pack (the Vanguard of Atreia title and, depending on the tier, the armor and weapon skins, the Black Dragon pet and the Blazing Sun wings) can be used on every character on every server through a free dedicated shop. The 30-day membership and both chests remain one-time rewards. More in the Founder’s Pack breakdown.
And finally, a caveat from NCSOFT itself: the product notices state that the lineup at the Wind Breeze Merchants and Tsenka Merchants may change. The membership price has already moved once, from the announced $15 to $14.99.
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Playing AION 2 on the global servers? Questions, legion recruitment and event timers run on the GamersTogether community Discord, a Czech and Slovak community with its own AION 2 channel.
FAQ
Yes. Downloading and playing is free and includes all content: the story, the open world, dungeons, flying and PvP. The game’s official Steam page (app ID 3393110) is listed under “Free To Play”. You only pay for what’s optional: the membership, the cash shop and the Daeva Pass Premium track.
The game itself costs nothing. Optional extras are the membership at $14.99 for 30 days, the Daeva Pass Premium track at 1,000 or 1,500 Quna, and Quna itself, which starts at $5.99 for 400 on PURPLE. The $24.99 price that Steam showed before launch was the Founder’s Pack Standard, not the game; the packs were sold until 5 October 2026.
For 30 days, the Special Quai Membership unlocks the Market (listing and buying), the Kina and Quna currency exchange, Remote Storage, the Wind Breeze Merchants from the menu, a higher Odyle Energy capacity, a second Odyle Energy injection into reward Cubes and a higher Shugo Festa Key cap. It doesn’t unlock the game, which is free. Without a membership you can’t access the player market, so you have to win or craft your gear yourself.
You can’t buy combat power in the shop: according to the 8 July 2026 announcement, the cash shop sells cosmetics and consumables with no effect on progression. You can, however, buy full participation in the economy for $14.99 a month. And the Daeva Pass Premium track hands out larger amounts of enhancement materials than the free track.
No, and you no longer can: sales ended on 5 October 2026. The Founder’s Pack was never a ticket into the game but a paid five-day head start from 30 September 2026 plus cosmetics and a 30-day membership. All three tiers gave the same head start. We have an item-by-item breakdown in the article on Founder’s Packs.
At launch on 19 November 2025, the shop offered bundles with items that gave a direct bonus to combat stats. NCSOFT’s stock lost over 15 percent, although tech stocks were falling across the board in the same period. Roughly 15 hours after release, the company permanently pulled the items, apologized and sent out compensation.
Yes, all content is accessible without paying, and the maximum level, 45 in the global version, is the same for everyone. A player without a membership, however, has to win or craft all of their gear, because they have no access to the player market. Progress is slower, and it depends more on how much time you put into the game.
Don’t mix up the two games. The original AION from 2009 switched to a free-to-play model in 2012, when Gameforge took over its European publishing from Codemasters. That has nothing to do with the AION 2 business model. We cover how the two games differ in a separate comparison.
Prices and product lineups in AION 2 can change, so we keep this page updated. You’ll find more articles on the topic in the AION 2 guides section. Information verified as of 7 October 2026.