Rakket is a browser party game for a room: one shared screen shows the game, everyone plays from their own phone with a four-letter code, and, unlike a Party Pack, the screen is a web page too, so there is nothing to buy on a storefront and nothing to install on the machine driving the television.
Jackbox has been making these games since 2014 and it shows: the writing is sharper than almost anything in the genre, Quiplash and Fibbage are landmarks, and the audience mode lets thousands of people follow along and vote, which is genuinely the right design for a stream, and something Rakket does not attempt. If you already own the packs and your group is four to eight people around one television, you do not need us.
Checked against Jackbox's own How to Play page on the date below. Nothing here quotes a price, because prices move.
| Feature | Rakket | Jackbox Party Pack |
|---|---|---|
| What the host needs | A browser | A purchased Party Pack, installed |
| What players need | A browser | A browser (jackbox.tv) |
| People playing at once | Up to 20, all scored | Typically 4–8 active players |
| Everyone past that | Up to 100 in tournament heats | Audience mode, up to 10,000 |
| How it is sold | Free weekly set, pass or subscription | Buy a pack, keep it |
| Playing with no television | Yes, phones only | Not the design |
Jackbox Party Pack · 2026-09-05
The install. A Party Pack has to be bought and installed on whatever is driving the screen, which is fine at home and awkward everywhere else: a work laptop, a rented function room, a friend's television, a machine you do not have admin rights on. Rakket's display is a URL, so the same party runs on a meeting-room screen, a hotel projector or a tablet on a table.
The other reason is headcount. Jackbox seats a handful of active players and moves the rest into the audience, which is the right call for a broadcast and the wrong one for a room where everybody turned up to play. Rakket seats twenty as full players, and above that deals stable teams and runs simultaneous heats so a hall of a hundred is still one party with one scoreboard.
If your evening is six friends and a sofa, you own the packs already, and what you want is the writing. Stay. Quiplash's prompts are better than ours and buying a pack once is cheaper over five years than any subscription. And if you are streaming to an audience of thousands rather than filling a room, Jackbox is built for that and Rakket is not.
5 of the 14 games are free every week with up to eight players, no card. The whole catalogue and a twenty-player room are a one-off day pass or a subscription.
No app either way, that part is the same. The difference is the host: jackbox.tv is the controller for a game running in installed software, and in Rakket the screen is a web page too.
Yes. Share the display in a video call and everyone joins the same code from their own phone, the same way you would share a Jackbox screen.
14, from three to thirteen minutes each, covering drawing, guessing, questions about each other, voting races, trading and physics.
Open the display, read four letters to the room. The free set needs no card and no install.
Start a party