To play online with other people on a PlayStation, yes — you need a PlayStation Plus membership. To play the games themselves, no. Sony lists “Online multiplayer” as a benefit of all three PS Plus tiers, including the cheapest, which is the plainest way of saying that multiplayer sits behind the paywall. If you only need one line of this page, that is it.
Sony confirmed the same thing from the other direction in July 2026, when it advertised a “free online multiplayer weekend” running July 3–5 that could be enjoyed “at no extra cost and with no PlayStation Plus required”. A company does not advertise a weekend without a membership requirement unless there is normally a membership requirement.
For a gift buyer this splits the decision in two. If the person you are buying for plays big single-player games — the ones on the posters — buy the game and ignore the subscription entirely. If what they keep complaining about is not being able to play with their friends, the subscription is the present, and the game can wait.
What each tier includes, in Sony’s own words
Sony offers “a choice of three membership options”. The important thing in the table below is how much of it is identical: everything that makes the console social is in the cheapest tier, and the money above it buys libraries of games.
| | Essential | Extra | Premium |
|---|
| Online multiplayer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
|---|
| Monthly games | Yes | Yes | Yes |
|---|
| Cloud storage for saves | Yes | Yes | Yes |
|---|
| Share Play | Yes | Yes | Yes |
|---|
| Exclusive discounts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
|---|
| Game Catalog | No | Yes | Yes |
|---|
| Ubisoft+ Classics | No | Yes (Sony: “Worth $7.99 per month”) | Yes |
|---|
| Classics Catalog | No | No | Yes |
|---|
| Game trials | No | No | Yes |
|---|
| PS5 cloud streaming | No | No | Yes (“Excludes overseas territories”) |
|---|
| Sony Pictures Catalog | No | No | Yes |
|---|
Sony does not publish a membership price on that page, so we are not going to put one here. What we can tell you is where to find it — the plan prices appear on the console’s own store and at the point of purchase — and that the number Sony does publish is the value it puts on Ubisoft+ Classics inside the Extra tier: “Worth $7.99 per month”.
When you genuinely do not need it
- They play alone. Astro Bot, God of War Ragnarok, Spider-Man, Horizon — none of these needs a membership. These are the games the PS5 is actually famous for.
- They play with somebody on the same sofa. Two controllers, one console, one screen. No internet involved, so no membership involved either.
- The console is for a young child. Online multiplayer means playing with people you have not met. For a child under about ten, the absence of a membership is arguably a feature rather than a gap — our best PS5 games for kids list is built mostly from games that need nothing extra.
How to actually give it
There is no gift button for a PlayStation subscription. Sony’s own gift-card page states that PlayStation Store gift cards add wallet funds a recipient can spend on “games, add-ons and PlayStation Plus” — so the card is the route, and the recipient chooses the tier and the term.
That is slightly less satisfying than handing over a specific membership, and it is also the reason it works: you cannot accidentally buy the wrong tier, you cannot duplicate a membership they already have, and the money does not expire into a subscription they did not want. If they already subscribe, the credit rolls into the renewal. Our how to gift PlayStation games guide covers the full store-card route step by step, including the region rule, and the gaming gift cards guide compares it against the Xbox, Nintendo and Steam equivalents.
One last thing worth knowing before you spend, because it affects a present that goes wrong: Sony’s own cancellation policy says a game or add-on can be cancelled for a refund within 14 days of purchase provided the download or stream has not been started. Content that has started downloading is not refundable unless it is faulty. Which, for a digital gift, means the window closes the moment they open it.