iRacing

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Not recommended Posted January 7, 2026 on Steam the game itself is great, but the pricing is pyschotic. monthly subscription, pay for cars, pay for tracks, pay for a server. Its a shame, because the driving is actually really fun, but being gouged every opportunity is scammy. Go play Assetto Corsa or Le Mans, iRacing needs to get its priorities sorted.
• Not recommended Posted October 3, 2025 on Steam It's a great simulation. Good physics, good audio, great controls. The multiplayer (the core of the game) is really really good. Most of the time it's fairly clean racing. The MP is truly the reason this game is popular. No other sim has this level of competition and matchmaking. Lot's of racing classes and a license level system to ease you into new racing series. It encourages you to stay in one class for an entire season which is about 12 weeks. The reason I can't recommend this game is the pricing model. It absolutely destroys any chance of making this usable. Paying a (steep) monthly subscription fee, plus $12 per car and $15 per track is insane. Buying all the content for this game would run you north of $2000. Buying just the content you will need to get your A license in the racing type of your choice (road, oval, or dirt) will be hundreds. I am simply not will to pay that kind of money. I have a life. That's not ok.
• Not recommended Posted July 20, 2025 on Steam I created this account to try iRacing one last time, since I had already tried it for 1 month in my main account. This game is straight up not worth it, you're paying a premium for the illusion of feeling like you're part of an elite cult. [h1]The positive[/h1] iRacing sports an incredible amount of variety when it comes to tracks and cars, no game even comes close to it and likely never will. The cars are beautifully modeled, tons of detail on the interior and exterior of the cars. The setup pages also look believably realistic, with each car sporting very different options for each part you can fine tune. Not many other games go this far with detail, especially on the setup menus. There are always people playing this game, I don't think I've ever seen the online player count be below 10k, regardless of the time. Again, no other game in the same genre gets even close, and probably none will ever. However, this doesn't necessarily mean all races are populated. I'll talk about it in the negative part. Sadly, that's about it. There are many other positive points but they get so heavily overshadowed by the negative part that they will need to be addressed in the next part. Also, there is one big problem with this game that essentially renders all these good things pointless anyways. [h1]The negative[/h1] Even though there's a lot of variety, a lot of series will see a very small attendance number. I think part of this is because many events have a lot of waiting time between races, forcing people who want to race more often to the series that do run more often. Most players will be doing sports car racing, oval and formula run rather similar numbers at a glance. The dirt racing stuff is kind of a wasteland, I'm pretty sure you'll be seeing the same names for a long time if you decide to race those series. Some series run tons of events with only 10 players at most, sometimes there may be a spike at a certain hour but that's the one time during the day that series sees multiple splits. Most people will be doing MX5s or GT3s, but GT3s only run every two hours although enough events cross over for constant racing. I don't know about Oval or Formula, but I'm sure it works the same way but with less people. Most tracks are still missing properly modeled rumble strips, they just play sound and have slightly less grip but that's about it. They don't bump the car up and down, it's very easy to just drive over the curbs without the car really protesting. Granted, even on the tracks with proper collisions on the curbs the cars still behave nice, but the difference is noticeable and you have to be more careful to not make a mistake when driving over them. Trackside objects range from okay to 2008. More recent tracks, or tracks that had been revamped recently, look fine, but there are a lot of tracks that look very dated. At least the driving surface is nice and detailed, but they really look a generation old. The car collisions and general netcode doesn't feel great either. Sometimes the smallest contact gives you tons of damage, sometimes a pretty hard hit does nothing. Their lag compensation stuff is pretty inconsistent, but sadly people don't play with that in mind... Most of my races I've just sandbagged quali and just took the scraps during the race. If you're trying to go through the licenses to unlock the races for the content you purchased, be prepared to avoid racing because it's far too dangerous to go close to other cars. Then of course, the big iRacing tyre debacle. It is as you've heard, these tyres cannot go over the limit without throwing a fit. You have to under drive the car to be on the limit, the tyres will be screeching and screaming but your inputs are like if you're driving grandma to church. It's very counterintuitive, but honestly, once you get the hang of it it's pretty nice. The low speed grip is nice and the cars do feel very darty and planted, a big contrast when compared to many newer sims that have a very sloppy and delayed initial bite to the tyre. But this comes at the cost of the tyres just turning off the moment you press the throttle a bit too hard, or trailbraked a bit too well. It's very easy to tell when you go over the limit, but once you notice that it's almost always too late. To be fair, it's easy enough to stay under the limit, but of course you have to push the limits of the tyres to go fast and the game punishes you very harshly when you go over. Even the updated GT3 tyres have this issue, and this was the main reason I wanted to try iRacing. If this is worlds better than what they had before, I honestly feel bad for whoever was driving GT3s before. The car will just wipe out on you when the tyres are on the colder side and even when up to temp it's very easy to just have the car die on you. The MX5s are absolute hell to drive, these cars are thrashed around the track in real life, but in iRacing you need to drive them with clinical precision. You're still doing 4 wheel slides through the turns, but your inputs really don't match what the car is doing. It's very, very awkward. [h1]The worst part[/h1] This would all be acceptable if it wasn't for the insane premium you have to pay. Steam is the cheapest way to get into this game, I bought 1 year of iRacing for ~20 euro (yes, after tax). I also bought two GT3s because I wanted to have those so I could compare the driving with other games. However, once this subscription is over I'll have to pay ~80 euros to renew it, and that is on Black Friday which is the cheapest discount they offer for renewals. But the subscription is just the beginning, then there's a fee of ~14 euros per car and ~17 per track. The final price will depend on your country or state's VAT, but it won't be too far from that. If you decide to get into a series that doesn't run a lot of free content, you'll be paying around 150 euros to be able to race it. And that will only work for that season which changes every quarter. They'll keep making you buy new tracks if you want to do all the races in your series of choice. There's a discount if you buy stuff on bulk, but it's such a small amount that won't really make a dent unless you're spending thousands on getting all the content in the game. THOUSANDS to have everything in this game, not hundreds. This is how they lock you into their game. You spend thousands on the content, so what's another $200 every 2 years to keep using it. Maybe it's my luck, but this doesn't help with the quality of the racing anyways. You'd think that people who get into this game and pay hundreds every year for the content and the game would take it more seriously and avoid dumb moves, especially with how this game's netcode can be pretty bad. Top split, bottom split, doesn't matter, a lot of people just don't know how to drive and they just ruin everything. Again, this would be fine if it wasn't for the cost. On the topic of the netcode, a lot of people say the price of the subscription is justified since they need to keep the service running, but other games are doing a better job while being a fraction of the price. [b]The only thing iRacing simulates properly is the money pit that independently run motorsport is.[/b]
• Recommended Posted January 17, 2026 on Steam Sold my wife's wedding ring to buy new cars and tracks. 10/10 can recommend. Now im divorced and have even more time to play the game.
• Not recommended Posted June 1, 2026 on Steam A game that you pay a monthly sub to then have to buy each track and car you need for each season so you can compete in the class you have earned is a joke. You then get crashed into almost every race by kamikaze drivers and you get punished for it by taking points of your safety rating. think I will stick to the cheaper better run options thanks.
• Not recommended Posted November 4, 2025 on Steam iRacing is not a game you should pick up based on reviews. It is a $110/year subscription on top of track and car purchases, hard to justify when games like AMS2, Assetto Corsa, and (to a lesser extent) LMU exist. On the other hand, the online racing, wet weather driving, AI, and arguably realism are all class leading in the sim racing space. If you've got a good handle on the other simulators and are ready to race to someone else's schedule, this sim is very difficult to beat. However, if you're a normal person reading reviews for a reason to subscribe, you're not the target audience yet