NYT Games Alternatives: Free Apps for Each Game You Play

There is no single free app that replaces all of NYT Games, so the useful question is which of its games you actually open. For the sudoku, Sudoku Royale is free with no ads and has its own daily puzzle with streaks and an archive, and Brainium Sudoku and Good Sudoku both have daily modes. For number logic in the spirit of Pips, Nonogram.com and Crossmath are free with ads. For Wordle, the cheapest alternative is Wordle itself, which is free to play. The full Crossword is the one game with no like-for-like free swap. NYT Games is free to download, and its listing says subscribers get the archive of past puzzles; the paid items it lists include Games - Monthly $5.99, New York Times Crossword Subscription $6.99, Games - Monthly $4.99. Below is a game-by-game map, then the apps worth installing.

The App Store facts

From each app's US App Store listing, checked October 26, 2026. Prices and paid items change, so check the listing before you buy.

NYT Games has 297,885 US ratings and has been on the App Store since 2009. Nothing below matches it as a bundle. Its strength is eleven well-edited games (by our count of its listing) in one place, a shared daily rhythm and a friends leaderboard across several of them. You give that up when you split your routine across free apps, and you should know that going in.

Game by game: what to play instead

We make Sudoku Royale, a sudoku app, so the sudoku row is where we can say the most. For the word games we name only free options we are sure exist, and we have not ranked them.

A sudoku like NYT's, without the subscription

People who search for "sudoku like NYT" usually mean three things: a fresh puzzle each day, a clean screen, and a sense of finishing something before moving on. The NYT listing describes its sudoku as a new puzzle every day in easy, medium or hard mode. It does not mention a sudoku archive; the archive it lists covers Wordle, Connections, Strands, Spelling Bee, the Crossword and the Mini.

Sudoku Royale is the closest match if you liked the daily ritual and resent paying for it. The Daily Challenge gives everyone the same grid, counts your streak and ranks your time against friends and the world. Missed a day? The archive lets you go back. The daily needs a connection, gives you three lives before a run becomes unranked, and adds 30 seconds per mistake. When it is done, Practice has as many puzzles as you want at six levels, from Easy up to Extreme. Where it differs from NYT: one daily puzzle rather than three, and it is iPhone and iPad only.

Brainium Sudoku is the pick if you want the daily on a free app that also explains its hints. It shows ads unless you buy Remove Ads for $11.99. Good Sudoku suits the NYT solver who wants the week to build, Monday-easy to weekend-hard, as the Crossword does: its three daily modes do exactly that. Its Full Game Unlock costs $4.99. Our best daily sudoku apps page compares more daily modes, and Sudoku Royale vs NYT Sudoku goes head to head.

If you play Pips: number logic apps

Pips is NYT's domino logic game: dominoes placed by reasoning, with three puzzles a day. No app on this page copies it. The nearest free habits are puzzles that are also solved by deduction from numbers.

• Nonogram.com reveals a picture from row and column clues. Its listing has daily challenges with a monthly trophy, seasonal events and tournaments. It shows ads, and Nonogram.com No Ads costs $14.99. See Nonogram.com alternatives for others like it.
• Crossmath is a crossword grid of arithmetic: fill the numbers so each equation works. It has a daily challenge and four levels, shows ads, and sells hints and coins. If arithmetic is not your thing, it will feel like homework; Crossmath alternatives lists gentler options.
• Sudoku is the purest form of the same itch: no maths, only placement logic. If Pips is your favorite NYT game, a sudoku app is a reasonable bet.

Our best logic puzzle apps covers this ground in more depth.

If you play the word games

Here we can only point, not test. Wordle has been free to play on the New York Times website since the paper bought it, so a Wordle-only player has nothing to replace. Quordle, a free web game, has you solve four words at once if one a day is not enough. For crosswords, several newspapers publish free daily puzzles online; The Guardian is one. None of these replaces the editing and the clue style of the NYT Crossword, and Crossword fans are the readers most likely to find the subscription worth keeping.

When the subscription is the better deal

• You play four or more NYT games a day. One app, one login, one set of streaks beats juggling several free ones.
• The Crossword is your main game. There is no free equivalent of it.
• You compare scores with the same friends every day. The NYT leaderboard follows Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee and the Mini; spreading across apps breaks that.
• You play on Android or the web too. Sudoku Royale is iPhone and iPad only.

If, on the other hand, sudoku is most of what you play, paying for the whole bundle is hard to justify. Sudoku Royale is free on the App Store, with no ads and no purchases, and the NYT Sudoku alternatives page lists more sudoku-only options. Every other matchup is on the comparisons page.