How to Fish vs Fishing Planet: paid against free-to-play

31 August 2026 · 4 min read

GameMapa editorial · how we check facts
Checked: Claude (AI) — fact-checked against the Ukrainian original; not proofread by a native speaker

Fishing Planet has been free for nine years, ships with Ukrainian, an MMO mode and PvP. How to Fish costs 159 UAH and launched eleven days ago. Here is the comparison, on figures read 31 August 2026.

Free, but with purchases inside

The key thing about Fishing Planet: its Steam feature list explicitly includes In-App Purchases. The game is free at the door and monetises inside. How to Fish has no such entry — it is a one-off 159 UAH purchase.

We did not measure what a full tackle set costs in Fishing Planet, or whether you can play without spending: the store page does not expose that. But formally, free here does not mean free of money.

Rating: an 8-point gap

94.90 % against 86.84 %. Both games carry the same Very Positive label, because the next tier sits higher — but inside that label the gap is wide.

Converted to negative share: Fishing Planet has 10,159 negative reviews out of 77,174, or 13.2 %. How to Fish has 2,255 out of 44,256, or 5.1 %. Proportionally that is nearly 2.6x more negativity.

An important caveat: nine years is plenty of time to accumulate unhappy players. All-time rating and last-month rating are different things, and we are comparing the former.

Players: 83,028 against 4,654

Both numbers come from the same Steam Web API endpoint, read within one minute. How to Fish is currently 17.8x larger.

But that is a snapshot of week two after launch — the loudest period in any game’s life. Fishing Planet has held its 4,000-5,000 for a ninth consecutive year, and that is a measure of endurance rather than hype.

Review velocity makes the point sharper: Fishing Planet averages about 23.5 reviews per day over its lifetime, How to Fish about 4,023. The second number will fall. The first probably will not.

Platforms and genre

Fishing Planet runs on Windows, macOS and Linux; How to Fish on Windows only. Fishing Planet lists the genres Massively Multiplayer, Simulation, Sports, Free To Play; How to Fish lists Action, Casual, Indie, Simulation.

These are different games by design. Fishing Planet is a fishing simulator with PvP and Online PvP modes. How to Fish carries user tags Shooter with 206 votes and First-Person with 191 — the community clearly sees something other than a simulator.

Both support Ukrainian

Fishing Planet lists 13 languages, Ukrainian among them. How to Fish lists 16, all with full audio, Ukrainian included. That is a rare comparison where both sides support the language.

What we are not claiming

We did not calculate how much you must spend in Fishing Planet to stop feeling limited — the store page carries no such data. We did not compare the fishing mechanics themselves: that is taste, not measurement. And we do not know what How to Fish will score in nine years — today’s 94.90 % describes eleven days, not a decade.