You can now get Google Stadia Premiere Edition for free — here's how

stadia
(Image credit: Google)

When it comes to the prospect of cloud gaming, most people may be interested in what Microsoft and Sony have to offer, with little enthusiasm for Google Stadia. But it doesn’t need to be that way.

While Stadia has its drawbacks, getting into Google's gaming ecosystem is still much cheaper than buying a PS5 or Xbox Series X. More so now that Google is just giving away free Stadia Premiere Edition Kits with subscriptions to YouTube Premium.

The only catch to this offer is that you need an active YouTube Premium account before you try and claim your free Stadia kit. So this isn’t a deal that sends you free stuff for signing up, which also means existing YouTube Premium members aren’t missing out.

The deal is available to active subscribers in the U.S. and U.K. and offers you $100 in free Stadia kit — including the Chromecast Ultra and Stadia Controller. You will need to sign up for at least a month of Stadia Pro first, which is $10 a month, though there is a free month available to anyone that hasn’t used it already. 

Claiming the equipment is as easy as heading over to the offer page. Once claimed you’ll get a “personal redemption link” which takes you to the Google Play store so you can order your free Stadia Premiere Edition.

Naturally if you ever cancel the Stadia subscription, the kit is still yours to keep. And games are always available to buy and play, regardless of whether you have a Stadia Pro subscription or not. That being said, if you do keep it active you’ll be able to share your games with friends and family, which might make you quite popular. Especially if they also get to claim the free equipment.

Of course this does all require spending $12 on YouTube Premium, but compared to spending $100 on the Stadia equipment on its own that’s a bargain. More so when you remember that you’ll get an ad-free YouTube experience with offline playback, exclusive content, and the ability to play music in the background on your phone. 

So if you haven’t been able to get one of the new consoles, you can still enjoy top games like NBA 2K21, Marvel's Avengers and Cyberpunk 2077 for a much lower price than normal. You won’t be seeing any better deals around Black Friday, so take advantage of this while you can.

Tom Pritchard
UK Phones Editor

Tom is the Tom's Guide's UK Phones Editor, tackling the latest smartphone news and vocally expressing his opinions about upcoming features or changes. It's long way from his days as editor of Gizmodo UK, when pretty much everything was on the table. He’s usually found trying to squeeze another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of coffee, or complaining about how terrible his Smart TV is.