What Indian gaming cafés actually charge an hour

The numbers

These are base rates for one hour and one player, before any happy-hour or off-peak price, taken from the price cards cafés have set up on the platform. Only machine types priced by at least three different cafés are shown, because below that a median is just one owner's opinion.

• check_circlePlayStation 5 · ₹120 median, ₹50 to ₹200, across 23 cafés
• check_circleGaming PC · ₹100 median, ₹40 to ₹200, across 13 cafés
• check_circlePlayStation 4 · ₹90 median, ₹35 to ₹150, across 11 cafés
• check_circleRacing simulator · ₹200 median, ₹130 to ₹300, across 11 cafés
• check_circleMeta Quest VR · ₹200 median, ₹150 to ₹340, across 5 cafés
• check_circleRC cars · ₹150 median, ₹80 to ₹150, across 4 cafés
• check_circleArcade machine · ₹100 median, ₹20 to ₹200, across 3 cafés

The spread is the story, not the median

A PS5 hour costs four times as much at the dearest café on this list as at the cheapest. Both are real businesses with real customers. That gap is not one of them being wrong; it is rent, city, and what the room is competing with.

If you are setting a card for the first time, the median is a sanity check and nothing more. The useful question is which end of that range your floor sits at, and the honest answer comes from your own rent and your own footfall rather than from anybody else's price list.

The machines that earn their rate

Racing simulators and VR carry the highest hourly rates on the platform, at a median of ₹200 each, and they also carry the highest setup cost per seat. A racing rig is one seat; six gaming PCs in the same floor area are six.

The flip side is that a sim rig or a VR station is the thing a customer cannot do at home, which is why the cafés running them can hold a rate that a row of PCs cannot. The PC is the volume machine and the specialist seat is the margin machine, and most of the floors here run both.

What this does not tell you

These are list prices, not takings. A café charging ₹200 an hour on an empty floor earns less than one charging ₹80 on a full one, and nothing in this data says which is which.

It is also a sample of the cafés that chose this software, not of every gaming café in India. Thirty-six floors is enough to be useful and nowhere near enough to be the national picture.

Questions people ask

How much should I charge per hour at a gaming café in India?

The median on this platform is ₹120 for a PlayStation 5 and ₹100 for a gaming PC, with real floors charging anywhere from ₹40 to ₹200. Pick your end of that range from your rent and your footfall rather than from the median.

Do gaming cafés charge more for two players on one console?

Most do. The price cards on the platform are set per head count as well as per duration, so a two-player hour on a PS5 is priced separately from a one-player hour rather than simply doubled.

What is the most expensive machine to rent by the hour?

Racing simulators and VR, both at a median of ₹200 an hour, with the dearest VR seat on the platform at ₹340. They also cost the most per seat to install.