The best drift games on PC

Four kinds of drift game

• Sim drifting: realistic physics, setup sheets, ideally a wheel. Assetto Corsa, and the sim end of CarX and Torque Drift 2.
• Drift culture games: licensed cars, tuning, liveries, online lobbies and tandem battles. CarX Drift Racing Online, Torque Drift 2, JDM: Japanese Drift Master.
• Arcade drifting: handling built to feel good rather than to be accurate. Inertial Drift.
• Top-down drifting: a high camera that shows the whole corner. Absolute Drift, DRIFTIT.

None of these is better than the others. They train the same skill (get the rear out, catch it, hold it with the throttle) at very different levels of commitment.

1. CarX Drift Racing Online (Steam · paid)

Best for: the full hobby on a normal PC. CarX Technologies' drift game came to Steam in November 2017 and is still the default answer for "drift game on Steam". Its store page lists over 120 cars, five types of modifications and more than 50 settings per car, 19 tracks plus hundreds of community-made Workshop maps, and online rooms of up to 16 players across platforms, including a TOP-32 competition mode. The physics were made with the CarX Motorsport team, and there are driving assists for controllers and keyboards, so you do not need a wheel to start.

A sequel, CarX Drift Racing Online 2, entered Early Access on Steam in May 2026 with a competition format and a judging system modelled on modern drift championships. If you are new, the first game is the complete one today. (All of this year's releases are in new drift games in 2026.)

Skip it if: you want a story or a single-player career; it is built around lobbies and tuning.

2. Assetto Corsa (Steam · paid)

Best for: realism, with a wheel. Kunos Simulazioni's racing simulator (full release December 2014) is not a drift game as such, but drift is one of its built-in session modes, and the game was designed from the start for players to add their own cars and tracks. That combination is why drift-focused sim racing guides keep recommending it. It is also on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Kunos released Assetto Corsa EVO in Early Access in January 2025, and a separate rally sim, Assetto Corsa Rally, followed in November 2025.

Skip it if: you play on a keyboard. Steam lists only partial controller support for the original, and the learning curve is real.

3. JDM: Japanese Drift Master (Steam · paid)

Best for: an open world and a story. Released by Gaming Factory in May 2025, JDM is set in a fictional Japanese prefecture with over 250 km of roads: mountain passes, rural roads, highways and a city, with traffic, weather and a day-night cycle. You drive licensed Nissan, Honda, Subaru and Mazda cars, tune and paint them, and work through 40+ story events told as hand-drawn manga pages. It was designed primarily for gamepads and has two driving models you can switch between at any time: Arcade, and Simcade with all assists off.

Skip it if: you mainly want to drift against other people online; it is a single-player game first.

4. Torque Drift 2 (Steam Early Access · paid)

Best for: competitive tandem and modding. Grease Monkey Games' sequel, in Early Access since November 2024, is set in a fictional modern Japanese city and leans on licensed cars and parts, sim rig support, community mods, custom liveries and tracks, and online events from Motorkhana to head-to-head drift battles. The developers say they drift real cars themselves. Note that the store page lists in-app purchases on top of the price.

The first Torque Drift is free to play on Steam (with in-app purchases): online tandem battles, tournaments of up to 32 players and tuning down to camber and toe. It is the cheapest way to try this kind of game; see our list of free drift games for more.

Skip it if: you dislike Early Access or in-game stores.

5. Absolute Drift (Steam · paid)

Best for: pure, minimalist sliding from above. Funselektor's 2015 drift game strips everything back: clean, almost empty worlds, up to six cars, 34 levels across three modes (Driftkhana, Drifting and Mountain Drifting), five free-roam areas, online leaderboards, ghosts and replays. It has full controller support and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and it is also on consoles and phones. It is the game that made top-down drifting a genre, and our own game exists because of it. We wrote a separate list of games like Absolute Drift. On a Mac? Most big drift games are Windows only; drift games on Mac lists the ones that run there. On a Steam Deck, drift games on Steam Deck gives Valve's rating for each one.

Skip it if: you want licensed cars, tuning sheets or online lobbies.

6. Inertial Drift (Steam · paid)

Best for: an arcade racer that is all about drifting. Level 91 Entertainment's 2020 racer has a twin-stick control scheme: the left stick steers, and the right stick controls the drift on its own. It has 16 cars that each handle differently, seven event types (races, head-to-heads, time trials, style showdowns) and local and online multiplayer, set in a retro-futuristic '90s look. There is a free taster on Steam, Inertial Drift: Sunset Prologue, with two tracks and two cars.

Skip it if: you play on a keyboard. The whole idea is built around two analog sticks.

7. DRIFTIT (browser free · Steam $4.99)

Best for: a free top-down drift game with nothing to install. This one is ours, and it runs in any desktop browser. You get one car, 20 hand-built tracks across 5 low-poly worlds, and a free-roam Playground with cones. Every track is open from the start and is a three-lap time attack against a target time set by a bot driving the same physics. Touch a wall and the run restarts, so clean driving matters as much as angle. A drift score with a multiplier up to ×10 rewards staying sideways, your best run rides along as a ghost, and each track has an online leaderboard where the server re-simulates every run from its recorded inputs before it counts.

It plays on a keyboard (with a counter-steer assist that makes the slide catchable on digital keys) or on a gamepad with analog steering, throttle and brake.

Skip it if: you want a garage. There is one car, no tuning, no upgrades and no multiplayer lobbies. It is also desktop only; phones get a "desktop only" screen.

On Steam since 24 October 2026 for Windows, Mac and Linux at $4.99: the same tracks and physics, plus Steam leaderboards with a Friends view, Steam Cloud saves, gamepad settings and five languages. What the Steam version adds.

Play DRIFTIT free Buy on Steam

At a glance

What about FR Legends?

FR Legends comes up in every drift-game conversation, but it is a phone game (iOS and Android, free with in-app purchases), not a PC one. If you liked its tandem battles and car building, CarX Drift Racing Online or Torque Drift 2 is the PC equivalent. Our games like Drift Hunters list covers it, along with the browser drift games.

Keyboard, pad or wheel?

Drifting is a game of small, continuous corrections, so the input changes more than people expect. A wheel is ideal for sims like Assetto Corsa. A gamepad's analog stick and triggers are the sweet spot for JDM, Inertial Drift and Absolute Drift. A keyboard is on/off, so it only works well when the game smooths it for you: CarX has assists for it, and DRIFTIT ramps the steering in and out and turns the front wheels toward the slide on its own. If you are moving to a pad, our guide to drifting with a controller covers what changes.

Learning to drift, whatever you pick

Every game here uses the same three steps: break the rear loose (handbrake, a lift, or a flick), counter-steer to catch it, and balance the angle with the throttle. Our drifting explainer covers why the car behaves the way it does, and how to drift walks through it on a keyboard. If you want a short, wide place to practise, the Oval in DRIFTIT is a good first stop, and Switchback is where hairpins start to bite.

Quick answers

Best drift game on Steam for a beginner? CarX Drift Racing Online if you want the car scene, JDM: Japanese Drift Master if you want a single-player game with an Arcade mode.

Most realistic? Assetto Corsa with a wheel.

Best free one? On Steam, Torque Drift (free to play with in-app purchases). In a browser, DRIFTIT.