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How to Get Your Game on Poki (2026) ​

Last updated: July 2026.

To get your game on Poki, you submit it through the Poki for Developers portal, where a human team reviews every game and decides whether it fits the platform. There's no open upload button and no "publish now." You create a developer account, upload an HTML5 build that meets Poki's technical requirements (an initial download under 8 MB, a 16:9 canvas that scales to desktop and mobile, and the Poki SDK wired in correctly), then your game moves through a staged test funnel: a Player Fit Test, a Web Fit Test, and a final review before global release.

Poki is a curated web-game platform, not a storefront, so getting in is closer to pitching a publisher than uploading to itch.io. The upside is that Poki does the distribution for you. It welcomed 625 million players in 2025 and counts over 100 million monthly players, all reached by a 65-person team that has never taken outside investment. You bring a good web game that holds players in the first three minutes, and Poki puts it in front of an audience the size of a console network. This guide walks through how the submission actually works, what the tech bar is, how you get paid, and why games get rejected.

Quick Reference ​

Poki
Submission modelCurated, invite-style. Every game is human-reviewed. No open upload
Cost to submitFree
Revenue modelAd-based revenue share. 100% of revenue on traffic you bring, 50/50 on traffic Poki brings
Payout methodWire transfer or PayPal, in your chosen currency
TechHTML5. Initial download under 8 MB, 16:9 canvas, Poki SDK required
Review funnelPlayer Fit Test, then Web Fit Test (5-7 days), then final review
Time to global releaseRoughly 2-3 weeks of soft release after you pass testing

What Poki is, and why it's worth the effort ​

Poki is the biggest name in web games. It runs entirely in the browser, no download and no app store, and it's built around casual titles people play in short bursts. The scale is the reason to care. Poki announced it hit 625 million players in 2025 and clears over 100 million monthly players, which puts it in the same conversation as PlayStation Network. The games that win there are big: Subway Surfers has passed a billion plays on the platform, and titles like Stickman Hook (over 500 million plays) and Monkey Mart (around 300 million) show what a hit web game looks like, per Game Developer.

The trade-off is control. On itch.io you publish yourself and market yourself. On Poki, the team curates the catalog and handles distribution, so you're trading independence for reach. That model only works if your game clears their bar, which is what the rest of this guide is about.

The submission process, step by step ​

You start at Poki for Developers, the portal where your team info and games live. You create an account and submit your game through the form. Poki describes itself as hand-curated: the team checks every submission and decides whether it's a fit, so a "no" or silence is a normal outcome, not a bug.

If Poki wants to move forward, your game runs through a staged funnel documented on the Poki for Developers site: you add your game, gather early player feedback, then hit the Player Fit Test, the Web Fit Test, and a final Poki review. Each stage exists to answer one question with real players before Poki spends its traffic on you: do people actually keep playing?

The Player Fit Test is the first real gate. One developer who documented his path to publishing describes the bar as 125 of 500 players (25%) playing for at least 3 minutes. If enough players stick, you advance to the Web Fit Test, which runs the game past a larger pool for 5 to 7 days. Clear that and Poki reaches out to take you toward release.

Soft release and going global ​

Passing the fit tests doesn't drop you straight onto the homepage. Poki runs a soft release first. According to the release process docs, soft release typically takes one to two weeks to schedule and then runs for around two to three weeks. During that window your game shows on relevant category pages but not the homepages, and you watch a specific set of numbers in the dashboard: conversion to play, engagement, errors, and monetization, where Poki says to aim for at least one ad per daily active user with a healthy mix of midroll and rewarded video.

Soft release is where you patch. You can push new versions and A/B test while the game is live to a smaller audience, tuning retention and ad pacing before the big push. Once your soft-release metrics are strong, the game goes to global release, and Poki's promotion system features it across localized homepages, category pages, and game pages, with what the docs call a significant push for around two weeks plus a "new" fire icon.

Technical requirements you have to hit ​

Poki's requirements page is specific, and missing these is a fast way to get bounced. The headline number is size: target an initial download under 8 MB. Web players won't wait through a heavy load, and this is the single constraint most console or mobile ports fail.

Your game has to fit a 16:9 canvas and scale cleanly across devices. Poki lists the proportional dimensions as 640x360, 836x470, or 1031x580, and your game must cover the full canvas on desktop, mobile, and tablet. On phones it should fill the screen in portrait, landscape, or both. Tablets should get the mobile control scheme, not the desktop one.

You have to integrate the Poki SDK correctly, and the SDK events aren't optional decoration. gameplayStart() fires on the player's first input, never on load, and gameplayStop() fires on any interruption like a pause, a menu, or the end of a level. These events can't fire back to back, and no ad events should fire during a midroll or rewarded video. Poki uses these signals to place ads and to measure the fit tests, so getting them wrong breaks both.

A few more that trip people up. Poki blocks all external requests by default, so you have to bundle everything: no Google Fonts, no asset CDNs, no external code libraries loaded at runtime. Only Poki's own ad system is allowed, so strip any other ad or tracking SDK (external trackers need Poki's approval first). Your game must work in incognito mode, which means wrapping localStorage access in try/catch so a blocked storage call doesn't crash the game. And for global release you need both a static and an animated thumbnail. Before you submit, remove all debug code, dev tools, and test artifacts.

On engines, Poki isn't picky about how you build as long as it exports clean HTML5. The FAQ lists SDK support for HTML5, Defold, Unity, GameMaker, Phaser 3, Godot, Cocos, Construct 3, and GDevelop, and there's a tool to convert old Flash games to HTML5. Unity works but is the hardest fit for the 8 MB budget: you'll need to follow Poki's optimization guidance and export a WASM build to have a chance at the size limit.

If you're building with Cinevva, this part is mostly handled for you. Cinevva exports a self-contained HTML5 build with assets bundled in, which is the shape Poki wants, so the work shifts from wrestling a heavy engine down to size toward wiring the SDK events and tuning retention.

How developers get paid ​

Poki's model is entirely ad-based, which means you never touch payment integration or in-app purchases. You earn a share of ad revenue, and the split depends on where the player came from. If a player reaches your game directly, through a bookmark, a search, social media, or your own community, you keep 100% of that player's revenue. If a player comes to your game through Poki.com or a Poki marketing effort, Poki splits the revenue 50/50 with you. That structure quietly rewards bringing your own audience: traffic you drive is worth twice as much to you as traffic Poki drives.

Poki pays out by wire transfer or PayPal, and you can set your billing details and preferred currency in the developer portal. Beyond straight revenue share, Poki also does licensing deals, paying some developers upfront or on an ongoing basis to keep a game exclusively or primarily on the platform. Those deals aren't publicly standardized and tend to be reserved for games Poki wants to feature heavily.

Set your expectations with real numbers. For a first web game, a realistic range is roughly $500 to $3,000 per month, and earnings depend heavily on genre, how often you update, and how long the game has been live. That's meaningfully less than a Steam hit can make in a burst, but web revenue is steadier and compounds: session time drives ad revenue, so a game with high replay value keeps earning long after launch, and most developers who do well on web do it across several games rather than one.

Poki vs the other web platforms ​

Poki isn't the only place to put a browser game, and the right choice depends on how much you value reach versus control.

PlatformGetting inRevenue modelBest for
PokiCurated, human-reviewed, invite-styleAd share: 100% direct traffic, 50/50 Poki trafficCasual games chasing the biggest web audience
CrazyGamesCurated, reviewed before going liveAd revenue shareCasual and mid-core web games, similar reach to Poki
itch.ioOpen, no gatekeepingYou set the cut (~10% default, pay-what-you-want or fixed)Indie, experimental, and jam games you want to own end to end
NewgroundsOpen community submissionAd revenue sharing plus supporter tipsCommunity-driven and creative shorts with a built-in audience

The clean way to think about it: Poki and CrazyGames are curated, ad-funded, and huge, so you trade independence for distribution. itch.io and Newgrounds are open, so anyone can publish, but you do your own marketing. Many web developers submit to Poki and CrazyGames for reach while keeping an itch.io page they fully control. For the full itch.io playbook, see our itch.io launch guide.

What actually performs on Poki ​

Poki is casual-first. The games that scale are quick to understand, playable in short sessions, mobile-friendly, and high on replay value. That last point matters more than it sounds: because you earn on ad impressions over session time, a game people come back to earns far more than a one-and-done experience with the same peak audience. Simple arcade loops, .io-style multiplayer, dress-up and customization games, and short-run action titles all fit the mold. The audience also skews younger and more mobile than a typical Steam crowd, so one-thumb controls and instant restart beat deep, commitment-heavy design.

Common rejection reasons ​

Most rejections come down to retention and polish, not taste. The biggest one is weak player retention in the first three minutes, which is exactly what the Player Fit Test measures, so if your opening is slow or confusing you'll fail the gate before a human even weighs in. After that: builds that blow past the 8 MB initial download, poor mobile compatibility, games that need complex controls or a long time commitment, and anything that feels unfinished or unpolished. IP problems get you rejected too, since Poki reviews games for both technical fit and rights. Fix retention and size first, because those are the two that kill submissions before anything else.

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Common Questions ​

How do I submit my game to Poki? ​

You submit through the Poki for Developers portal by creating a developer account and sending your game through the submission form. Poki is hand-curated, so a real team reviews every submission and decides whether it fits before anything goes live. If they're interested, your game runs through a test funnel (Player Fit Test, then Web Fit Test, then a final review) so real players can prove it holds attention before Poki commits its traffic. There's no open upload, so treat it more like pitching a publisher than posting to a storefront.

Is Poki free to publish on, and how selective is it? ​

Submitting is free, but Poki is selective. The team reviews every game and runs it past real players in staged tests, so it's not an open marketplace where anything gets published. The main gate is retention: a widely cited developer account puts the Player Fit Test bar at 25% of testers playing at least three minutes. Games that are unpolished, too heavy, hard to control, or weak on mobile tend not to make it through, so polish and a strong opening minute matter more than a novel idea.

How much money can you make on Poki? ​

Poki pays an ad-revenue share, and a realistic range for a first web game is about $500 to $3,000 per month, depending on genre, update cadence, and how long the game has been live. The split favors developers who bring their own audience: you keep 100% of the revenue from traffic you drive and 50% from traffic Poki drives. It's less than a breakout Steam launch, but it's steadier, and because earnings track session time, a high-replay game keeps paying long after release.

What are Poki's technical requirements? ​

Your game has to be HTML5 with an initial download under 8 MB, fit a 16:9 canvas that scales across desktop, mobile, and tablet, and integrate the Poki SDK with gameplayStart() and gameplayStop() events fired correctly. Poki blocks external requests by default, so bundle all your fonts, assets, and libraries rather than loading them at runtime, and use only Poki's ad system. The game must also work in incognito mode (wrap localStorage in try/catch) and ship with both static and animated thumbnails for global release.

How long does it take to get a game live on Poki? ​

Plan for weeks, not days. After you pass the Player Fit and Web Fit tests (the Web Fit Test alone runs 5-7 days), your game enters a soft release that typically takes one to two weeks to schedule and runs two to three weeks. Only after your soft-release metrics look strong does the game go to global release with a promotional push. The whole path from submission to a featured global launch is usually a month or more.

What kinds of games do best on Poki? ​

Casual games with high replay value. Poki's audience plays in short bursts and skews mobile, so quick-to-grasp arcade loops, .io-style games, dress-up and customization titles, and short-run action games fit best. Because you earn on ad impressions over session time, a game people return to daily out-earns a one-time experience with the same audience. Complex controls, long time commitments, and heavy builds work against you.