Xbox Game Pass is arguably the best game deal right now, and I managed to snag three at a massive discount.
While paying $14.99 / £10.99 / AU$15.95 a month for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate might seem like a bargain, I have a tip that will really please your budget. After recently buying an Xbox Series S for an absolute bargain on Facebook Marketplace, I was eager to continue my frugal streak and buy Xbox Game Pass for as little money as possible. Proud, noble, dignified – all accurate descriptions of my endless thirst for business savings.
I discovered a hack that has been floating around Reddit ever since Game Pass first appeared, but thankfully it still works. In fact, we covered it in May and it still works. By stacking multiple Xbox Live Gold subscriptions and converting them to Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions using the official Microsoft portal, I was able to get three years of access to the platform, all for a whopping €65. That is how.
How to get cheap Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
I'll start as all good self-help guides do: with a warning. This trick will only work if you don't currently have an Xbox Game Pass subscription. If you're a current member, make sure your subscription isn't set to auto-renew and wait for it to run its course. When you're done, come back and read on.
Basically the trick is to buy a ton of Gold memberships, redeem them online, and then convert them all to Game Pass Ultimate memberships at a 1:1 monthly ratio. Gold memberships are usually much cheaper than Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate, which allowing you to save a good amount of money down the road.
You have a few options on exactly how to do this. First, you need to find the cheapest way to buy Gold memberships. Second, you need to decide how long you want to subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate, and therefore how many Gold subscriptions to buy.
Microsoft is making things a little easier here. You can convert a maximum of 36 months of gold into Game Pass Ultimate. Anything beyond that will be lost during the conversion.
As for how you can buy super cheap gold, CDKeys has a particularly notable offer. The key sale website is currently offering (opens in a new tab) three-month installments of Xbox Live Gold for €7.39 / £5.99 / AU$11.69, a hefty 70% off its regular retail price. If you want the full 36 months of Game Pass Ultimate, buy nine of these three-month codes (arithmetic will know that nine multiplied by three does not equal 36, bear with me).
Once you've collected them, you'll need to redeem them on the Microsoft site. Sign in to your account, go to the redemption page (opens in a new tab), and enter your codes. But don't swap them all at once. Every time you redeem a code, you will have the option to enable automatic billing for an additional month of gold. Go ahead and get four months for the price of three. Once done, go to the Xbox Live Gold section (Opens in a new tab) of your Microsoft account and turn off automatic billing.
You can probably guess where this takes you: follow the same steps for every gold code you have. It can be a bit tedious — redeem a code, turn auto-renew on, turn off auto-renew, and start over — but if you do it with all nine codes, you'll end up with 36 months of Xbox Live Gold tied up. on your bill.
Now comes the easy part. Head over to the Xbox Live Gold upgrade page (opens in a new tab) and hit that big green upgrade button. If you're completely new to the service, you'll be charged a $1 / $1 / AU$1 upgrade fee to convert your entire Gold subscription to Game Pass Ultimate. However, if you subscribed at any time before, you will be charged a $14.99 / £10.99 / AU$15.95 fee (the price of one month's Xbox Game Pass Ultimate).
salvage value
Following the steps above, I purchased nine installments of three-month Xbox Live Gold subscriptions for €53,91 and paid €10,99 to convert them to Game Pass Ultimate, ending up with a three-year subscription for a total of €65. That's 85% off the $395 you'd normally pay for a three-year, full-price subscription. Not bad. If you're in the US and follow the same steps, you'll end up paying €81.50 for an equally ridiculous discount. Australian readers will save the same by paying AU€121.
Three years may seem excessive, but when it's only costing you $27 / £20 / AU$40 a year, it makes sense. We don't know how much longer Microsoft will continue to convert Gold subscriptions to Game Pass at a 1:1 ratio, so it's worth getting started as soon as you can. Also, Xbox Live Gold can't always be had at such a low price, so now is a great time to rack up subscriptions.
strange websites
Finally, a word of comfort. CDKeys is not the most recognizable website and you may be hesitant to pass on your payment information to it. Good on you for being so security conscious.
I have had no problems using Paypal, and there is a main reason why consumers trust it more than other key sales platforms. When you make a purchase on CDKeys, you are buying directly from the store. It is not an online marketplace that allows users to sell (and sometimes mis-sell) products to each other, as unscrupulous platforms like G2A are.
As for how CDKeys can offer Xbox Live codes so cheap, it claims to find them all over the world, effectively taking advantage of regional price differences and sales to sell at a discount. You can weigh the moral legality of this business agreement for yourself.