The best games like EVE Online depend on what you love about it: Albion Online for a free full-loot sandbox economy (fantasy, on PC and mobile), Elite Dangerous for flying your own ship in a 1:1 galaxy, Star Citizen for first-person space sim scale, X4: Foundations for a single-player simulated economy, and EVE Frontier from the same studio. Vermillion Online is a free playtest that copies EVE's market, security tiers and full loot but lets you design your ship block by block and fly it by hand.
Nothing is a full replacement for EVE. But plenty of games share pieces of it: a market players run, loot you can lose, space you choose to risk, ships you fly yourself. Here's what to try depending on which part of EVE you love.
Facts as of October 2026EVE Online is a game by Fenris Creations (formerly CCP Games)
Which part of EVE do you want more of?
EVE is several games at once. Some players live for the market. Some for null-sec politics. Some just want the feeling of undocking with something they can lose. The best "game like EVE" depends on which one you are, so each entry below says what it shares with EVE and where it goes its own way.
The list
Vermillion Online
PvP space MMO · free playtest · Mac and Windows
Our game, so take this one with that in mind. Vermillion borrows EVE's skeleton on purpose: a player order book at every station with escrow, a 2% tax and price history; no global inventory, so goods have to be hauled; four security tiers from Secure to Lawless, with police that destroy an attacker 20 seconds after a crime in High security, so suicide ganks exist; and full loot, with half the cargo destroyed and the rest in the wreck.
What's different: you design the ship yourself in 1 m blocks, its engines and guns are physical assemblies you can shoot off, and you fly it by hand with Newtonian thrust. Radar pings are heard by other pilots as a bearing. It's very early: one EU server, one zone of 19 sectors, a handful of pilots per session so far, and progress may be wiped. Full comparison with EVE.
Albion Online
Fantasy sandbox MMO · free to play with optional Premium · PC, Mac, Linux, mobile
The closest thing to EVE that isn't in space. Nearly everything is crafted by players, each city has its own market, and zones run from safe blue to full-loot red and black, where guilds fight over territory. If what you love about EVE is the economy and the risk curve, Albion has both, plus cross-play on your phone. Vermillion vs Albion.
Elite Dangerous
Space flight MMO · buy to play · Windows PC
If you've always wanted EVE's universe with a joystick in your hand, Elite is the big one. A 1:1 Milky Way, superb flight, deep careers, and since 2025, system colonisation where players build stations. It's much less player-driven: markets are NPC-run, PvP is optional through Solo and Private Group modes, and losses come back through rebuy. Vermillion vs Elite.
Star Citizen
Space sim in playable alpha · buy a game package · Windows PC
Huge ambition: seamless planets, first-person play, multi-crew ships and a persistent universe across more than one star system. It shares EVE's dream of a living universe, though today the economy is mostly NPC shops and missions, ships come back through insurance, and it's still an alpha with alpha bugs. Vermillion vs Star Citizen.
X4: Foundations
Single-player space sandbox · Egosoft · Windows and Linux
EVE's industry and logistics, alone. You fly any ship yourself, but you also build stations, run trade fleets and watch a simulated economy where every ware is actually produced and moved. No other players, which is the point for some people. If spreadsheets and supply chains are your favourite part of EVE, try it. Vermillion vs X4.
EVE Frontier
Spin-off from EVE's developer · paid founder access · not launched
A separate game from EVE's developer (CCP Games, renamed Fenris Creations in 2026), set in a harsher frontier and built on a blockchain, built around players constructing the infrastructure of the world. As of this writing it's not fully launched: access has been through founder packs and limited free trial windows, and progress resets between test cycles. Worth watching if you want something EVE-adjacent from the same studio. Vermillion vs EVE Frontier.
At a glance
Games like EVE Online, as of October 2026
Game
Player market
Loss on death
Flight
Ships
Price
Vermillion Online
Yes, per station
Full loot
Flown, Newtonian
Built block by block
Free playtest
EVE Online
Yes, regional
About half drops; hull insurance
Point and click
Fixed hulls, fitted
Free Alpha, Omega sub
Albion Online
Yes, per city
Full loot in red and black zones
Top-down, no ships
None (gear)
Free, optional Premium
Elite Dangerous
NPC markets
Rebuy
Flown, flight assist
Fixed hulls, outfitted
Buy once
Star Citizen
Mostly NPC
Insurance claim
Flown, Newtonian
Fixed hulls, bought or earned
Game package
X4: Foundations
Simulated, single-player
You lose the ship
Flown
Fixed hulls
Buy once
Why we built ours with block-built ships
EVE gets one thing so right that every game here is chasing it: the moment you undock with something you can lose. What we wanted to add was ownership of the ship itself. In Vermillion the ship is a design you made, block by block: 68 armour shapes in five materials plus about 140 parts, engines built from a core, cylinders and coolers, cannons from a firing piece, barrels, clips and autoloaders. When it dies, it breaks apart along the blocks that took the hits.
Battle wear on a block-built fighter. In-engine render.
Everything else is meant to feel familiar to an EVE player. The best ore is where the law ends: Titanite only in Low security, Iridium only in Lawless. A server director spawns ore fields and pirate sites near online players and announces jackpot fields to the whole server. Hauling heavy cargo through a cruise drive with exposed recharge windows is slow and risky. You can pay someone else to do it with a courier contract and collateral.
And honestly: it's small. If you want EVE's scale, alliances and history, nothing replaces EVE. If you want to be one of the first names on a fresh killboard, in a game where you built the ship that got you there, come try the playtest.
Vermillion's playtest is free on Mac and Windows. Undock in a free Rookie Ship, mine your way to a ship of your own, then decide how far from the law you want to fly.
