Which is Better? Steam’s Free-to-Keep Promotion vs. Epic Games Store’s Weekly Free Games

This article was updated by Andrea Trama on May 4, 2026, with a list of the games you can currently get for free on Steam and Epic Games Store. It was first published on April 22.

The Epic Games Store has been hosting generous promotions for years now, making it an undeniably great resource for PC gamers on a budget. Its leading competitor, Steam, which is generally still considered the best PC launcher and storefront out there, actually has its own free giveaway program called Free-to-Keep: publisher-organized promotions where certain games are given away for free for a limited time.

For example, indie home renovation game House Flipper was given away for free for a period of just a few days in early April 2026. Those who took advantage of this promotion were able to simply claim the game on Steam free of charge, and it would appear in their games library just like any other title. It won’t expire for any reason, and will receive all the same updates as the regular, paid version—in short, it’s a no strings attached deal. Interestingly, the Epic Games Store is one of the few other platforms that does something similar: give away games without requiring a subscription or other indirect fee. But the two services are pointedly different, and which one you should watch depends on at least two major factors.

In Terms of Games Themselves, Epic Games Store Has Steam Wiped

I won’t bury the lede: the Epic Games Store’s giveaways are leaps and bounds better than Steam’s. I practically never use the Epic launcher (more on that later), but even I’ve nabbed AAA must-plays like Fallout: New Vegas, XCOM 2, and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. I’ve also been able to snag a host of fantastic indies for free on the storefront, including Sable, Loop Hero, and Sifu.

I’ve missed many, many more Epic Games Store giveaways than I’ve caught, however. Here are just some of the most significant games offered for free via Epic in the last few years:

• Hogwarts Legacy
• Grand Theft Auto 5
• BioShock
• Death Stranding
• Borderlands 3
• Just Cause 4
• Subnautica
• Batman: Arkham Collection

Not only are these titles more high-profile and critically acclaimed than what Steam’s Free-to-Keep promotions usually offer, they are also surprisingly timely; it’s not uncommon to get a modern, in-demand game through Epic just a few years after launch. For instance, Hogwarts Legacy, the best-selling game of 2023, was given away for free on the platform less than three years after first releasing on current-gen consoles.

Everything is subjective, but you would be hard-pressed to find many people who would argue that, pound-for-pound, Steam’s Free-to-Keep games are as consistently good as their Epic Games Store counterparts. The games that participate in Free-to-Keep are doing so at the behest of their publishers, not Steam itself, which means that most of them are, unfortunately, releases that struggled to get attention one way or the other. Take Sentience: The Android’s Tale, which was made Free-to-Keep on April 20, 2026, and will remain so until April 23, 2026. Despite being released in June 2017, it only has a little over 100 Steam reviews at the time of writing. For what it’s worth, most of them are positive, but this is a very small number for an almost nine-year-old game, which suggests that Sentience didn’t exactly sell like hotcakes at launch.

The Free-to-Keep program has featured a handful of higher-profile games, like Injustice: Gods Among Us and Little Nightmares, but these are few and far between, especially when compared to Epic’s flurry of best-selling or critically acclaimed giveaways. All in all, if you’re looking to fill up your PC library with free titles, then the Epic Games Store is definitely the way to go, but the program has one obvious downside that’s hard to get over.

You Have to Actually Use the Epic Games Store If You Want to Play Epic Games

When I first started PC gaming, I didn’t think that the launcher you used was that big of a deal. And in the grand scheme of things, I suppose they aren’t, but over time, your choice of regular launcher can have a surprisingly major impact on your overall PC experience. Frankly, the Epic Games Store is considerably worse to use than Steam, which is why I said I almost never use it: despite my Epic library being filled to the brim with great games, I simply can’t bring myself to regularly boot the launcher up.

There are a lot of reasons for this, like how the Epic Games Store is slower and buggier than Steam, and how its UI is painfully cluttered and unintuitive, and how it constantly bombards you with Fortnite ads even if you’ve never played Fortnite on the computer in question. The platform also doesn’t enfore AI disclosure, a policy that Epic CEO Tim Sweeney recently said “makes no sense.” If you’re a consumer who wants to avoid games made using AI, then Epic is a much worse choice than Steam, which does have a firm AI disclosure policy. Also, Epic still lacks many titles, including every Call of Duty. If you want to play these, you’ll have to download another launcher regardless.

The Epic Games Store’s free giveaways are better than Steam’s, to the point where you might be able to make the case that the platform offers the best deal in gaming. However, the overall inferiority of the Epic Games Store detracts from this value more than you might expect. Meanwhile, Steam’s Free-to-Keep promotions are like pleasant surprises within the already-thriving empire that is Steam, which doesn’t really need to attract new consumers in the way that Epic does.