Published 12 November 2026 · By the SiegeRadar team

Is Rainbow Six Siege Free? What Free Access Includes

Is Rainbow Six Siege free? Yes, partly. Since Siege X launched on 10 June 2025, anyone can download Rainbow Six Siege and play Quick Match, Unranked and Dual Front for free with a selection of Operators. Ranked, Siege Cup, the rest of the Operators and most cosmetics still need a paid edition. Ubisoft calls the free version Free Access, not "free to play", and the difference matters if you want to play ranked.

This page sets out what Ubisoft says you get for free, what the paid editions add, how it works on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, and what it means for your stats. Everything about editions comes from Ubisoft's own pages and the official console store listings, checked on 12 November 2026.

Where this information comes from

We only use official sources for this guide:

• Ubisoft's news post Rainbow Six Siege X launches today, Free Access now available (10 June 2025).
• The Free Access page on ubisoft.com (checked 12 November 2026).
• The Rainbow Six Siege game info page on ubisoft.com (checked 12 November 2026).
• The Microsoft Store listings for the Elite Edition and the Ultimate Edition (checked 12 November 2026).

Edition names and contents can change between seasons. If something below does not match what your store shows, trust the store.

What Free Access includes

Ubisoft's Free Access page puts it in one line: you get free access to Quick Match, Unranked and Dual Front game modes with a selection of Operators. In practice that means:

• Quick Match. The casual playlist with no rank on the line.
• Unranked. Ranked-style matches, but no rank points are won or lost.
• Dual Front. The mode added with Siege X. Ubisoft's launch post says Dual Front is available on current-gen consoles and PC only, so it is not part of the game on PS4 or Xbox One.
• A selection of Operators. Ubisoft does not list how many or which ones on its Free Access page, so we do not give a number here. You can unlock more by upgrading, as covered below.

There is no time limit. The game info page advertises "permanent free access to Siege". Free Access is not a trial or a free weekend.

What you have to pay for

Ubisoft's launch post says: "Other features, including Ranked, Siege Cup, and additional Operators and cosmetics, require payment to unlock." So a Free Access account cannot:

• play Ranked or earn a rank,
• play Siege Cup,
• unlock the Operators outside the free selection without upgrading,
• get the cosmetics that are sold or bundled separately.

Paying is not the only step for Ranked. The Free Access page says upgrading to a premium offer "unlocks Ranked and Siege Cup modes as players progress to level 50". You need both the upgrade and level 50. For how ranked itself works once you get there, see our guide to how R6 ranked works and the full list of R6 ranks.

Free Access vs Elite vs Ultimate

On the Microsoft Store, Siege X has two paid editions next to Free Access. Here is what each listing says it includes.

The "level 50 needed" note comes from Ubisoft's Free Access page, not from the store listings. The Ultimate Edition listing also shows one Operator add-on for each year from Year 1 to Year 9, which is where its 52 Operators come from.

For scale: our game data lists 79 Operators in total as of 12 November 2026. You can browse all of them, with their side, role and loadout, on the Operators page.

How much is Rainbow Six Siege on PC and console?

The free part costs nothing on any platform. For the paid editions we do not print prices, for two reasons:

1. Prices differ by region, currency and store. The Ubisoft Store, Steam, the PlayStation Store and the Microsoft Store each set their own price, and sales change them often.
2. We could not confirm a current price on an official page. On the day we checked, the Ubisoft Store page we used did not show a clear price for each paid edition.

To see the real price for you, open the store you play on and look at the Siege X editions there. Ubisoft also offers Siege through its Ubisoft+ subscription, which its launch post lists next to Ubisoft Connect, Steam and Epic Games on PC. Check the subscription's own page for what it includes in your region.

Is Rainbow Six Siege free on PS4, PS5 and Xbox?

Yes. Ubisoft's launch post lists PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC (Ubisoft Connect, Steam and Epic Games), and there is a Free Access listing on both the PlayStation Store and the Microsoft Store. A few differences by platform:

• PS4 and Xbox One get Quick Match and Unranked for free, but not Dual Front, which Ubisoft says is on current-gen consoles and PC only.
• On console, online play can also depend on the console maker's rules. The PlayStation and Xbox store pages for Free Access state what is needed to play online. Read them before you download.
• On PC you need a Ubisoft account and Ubisoft Connect, even if you get the game through Steam or Epic.

If you already owned Siege before Siege X

Siege X was an update to the existing game, not a new purchase. Ubisoft's launch post says Siege X is free for players who already own Siege and that they "will keep their content and progression". If you bought the game before June 2025, your Operators, cosmetics and stats stayed on your account.

That is also why stats carry over. On SiegeRadar, the all-time numbers on a profile go back to the start of that account, long before Siege X. Our guide to season vs lifetime R6 stats explains which numbers cover what.

Can you look up a free account's stats?

Yes. SiegeRadar looks up players by name and platform, and that works the same for a Free Access account as for any other. There is no edition check: we never see which edition an account owns, and it makes no difference to the search.

What you will see depends on what the account has played:

• Overview and all-time stats (matches, K/D, win rate, time played) show up once the account has played matches.
• Rank. A Free Access account cannot play Ranked, so its profile will say "No ranked games this season" until it upgrades and reaches level 50.
• Ranked season history stays empty for the same reason.

Search any name from the home page, or use the PC, Xbox or PS5 tracker pages. If a name will not show up, our guide to player not found errors lists the usual causes.

How many people play Siege now that it has a free version?

We cannot tell you how many players are on Free Access. Nobody outside Ubisoft has that split. What we can show is how many people play Siege overall. SiegeRadar records the PC player count about once an hour on the R6 player count page.

The online figures are PC only, because PlayStation and Xbox do not publish live counts. The Ubisoft Connect and monthly numbers are estimates from the same data source we use for player stats. For today's numbers, open the live player count instead of relying on this snapshot.

Should you start free or buy an edition?

This part is our opinion. If you are new, Free Access is a sensible way to start. You need level 50 before Ranked opens anyway, so you lose nothing by learning maps and Operators in Quick Match and Unranked first. Upgrade when you know you want to play Ranked or want a specific Operator that is not in the free selection.

If you only want the 16 extra Operators and Ranked, the Elite Edition covers that. The Ultimate Edition makes more sense if you want most of the roster at once.