We priced every GTA per hour, and GTA 6 is the cheapest
Take-Two's boss calls GTA 6 a bargain at $80, so we priced every GTA per hour of story in today's money. GTA 6 works out at about $1 an hour.
11th Nov 2026 20:33
Image via Rockstar Games
We priced every GTA per hour, and GTA 6 is the cheapest
Take-Two's boss calls GTA 6 a bargain at $80, so we priced every GTA per hour of story in today's money. GTA 6 works out at about $1 an hour.
11th Nov 2026 20:33
Image via Rockstar Games
Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick told CNBC this week that GTA 6 is a bargain at $79.99 once you think about how long you'll actually spend with it, so we decided to check his sums using every mainline GTA since 2001, a bit of inflation maths and a stopwatch's worth of player data.
The short version is that, if Rockstar's own estimate of around 80 hours holds up, GTA 6 works out at roughly $1 for every hour of story, which is about a sixth of what GTA 3 cost per hour once you put its $49.99 price tag into today's money.
How we did the sums
We took each game's widely reported US launch price for the standard edition and adjusted it to today's money using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index (CPI-U), comparing each launch month with September 2026, the latest figure the BLS has published. For length, we used HowLongToBeat's player-reported averages for the main story (as rounded up by GTA Boom), and for GTA 6 we used the roughly 80 hours that Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson told The New York Times his own playthrough took.
| Game | US launch | Launch price | In today's money | Main story | Cost per hour (today's money) |
| GTA 3 | October 2001 | $49.99 | $93 | 15.5 hours | $6.00 |
| GTA: Vice City | October 2002 | $49.99 | $91 | 18 hours | $5.07 |
| GTA: San Andreas | October 2004 | $49.99 | $87 | 30.5 hours | $2.84 |
| GTA 4 | April 2008 | $59.99 | $92 | 27.5 hours | $3.36 |
| GTA 5 | September 2013 | $59.99 | $85 | 31.5 hours | $2.69 |
| GTA 6 | November 2026 | $79.99 | $80 | About 80 hours* | $1.00 |
*Nelson's figure covers the full campaign plus what he called some optional goals with narrative ramifications, so it isn't a pure main-story time like the others, and it came from a pre-release build back in February, so your mileage may genuinely vary.
A price tag that's quietly shrinking
The first thing that jumps out is that GTA 6 isn't the dearest GTA in real terms at all, as every PS2-era game and GTA 4 would cost north of $85 at today's prices, while GTA 5's $59.99 in 2013 comes out at about $85, roughly $5 more than Rockstar is asking for GTA 6. That's the bit plenty of people have already spotted (TheGamer and Game Rant were among those to run the inflation numbers), but it's only half the story, because the games have got an awful lot longer too.
Clocking up the hours in Vice City
GTA 3 gave you around 15 hours in Liberty City for what's now about $93, which works out at $6 an hour, and Vice City wasn't much better at around $5. San Andreas was the series' big leap, nearly doubling Vice City's story for the same $49.99, and GTA 5 then nudged the cost down to about $2.69 an hour, which stood as the series' best value for the past 13 years.
GTA 6 more than halves that again, and even if you're a fair bit quicker than Nelson and wrap things up in 50 hours, you'd still be paying about $1.60 an hour. In fact, you'd have to rattle through the whole thing in under 30 hours before it cost you more per hour than GTA 5 did (which, given the size of Leonida, would be quite the achievement).
The bits the sums leave out
Of course, cost per hour is a slightly odd way to judge a game, as it flatters long ones whether or not those hours are any good, and it ignores the console you need to play it on, which has got more expensive this generation rather than cheaper. Inflation tables also don't help much if your pay packet hasn't kept up, and the BLS says US prices rose 3.7% in the year to September, with gasoline doing a lot of the heavy lifting, which is something Zelnick himself acknowledged when he said consumers are under pressure.
GTA Online isn't in any of these numbers either, even though it kept plenty of GTA 5 players busy for years (Zelnick pointed out you can play GTA 5 for hundreds of hours), and if you've gone for the $99.99 Ultimate Edition, your hourly rate on that 80-hour estimate creeps up to about $1.25.
So, is Zelnick right?
On these numbers, his argument holds up better than you might expect, as GTA 6 is both cheaper in real terms than every mainline GTA since 2001 and, if that 80-hour estimate is anywhere near right, by far the cheapest per hour. Whether $79.99 actually feels like a bargain is a different question, and one that depends far more on your bank balance than on a CPI table, so we'll leave that one with you.
If you've already pre-ordered, our guide to GTA 6 pre-load times has you covered ahead of the November 19 launch, and you can read more about Zelnick's bargain comments and the game's record-breaking pre-orders.
Well, at roughly a dollar an hour, it's certainly cheaper than any taxi ride across Vice City.
About The Author
Jake Bannister
Jake is GGRecon's Co-Founder and Operations Director. You'll find him covering our word game brain teasers, as well as sports games such as Football Manager and EA FC. He's also that teammate on your Rocket League team spamming "Wow!".
