American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 are made by the same studio, sold for the same money, and run on the same minimum specification — which is exactly why “ATS or ETS2” keeps being asked. The entry ticket is identical, so the difference only appears in what you buy after it, and in what SCS Software has been shipping to each game lately.
This site already covers what ETS2’s content patches add, in the 1.61 Volvo 100 Year Edition guide, and how its in-game job income works, in the profit-per-kilometre economy breakdown. Neither answers the purchase fork, and American Truck Simulator has no coverage on this site at all. What follows is the fork: what each base game contains, the real cost of finishing each map, what the edition bundles leave out, and the pacing split that opened up in the last two months — because SCS has quietly turned ATS into a car game and ETS2 into a passenger game.
What this covers: the two SCS truck sims compared on base content, map-DLC cost to completion, edition bundles, current patch state and shared multiplayer. Why it matters: both base games are $19.99, so the money question is not which to start with but which one’s map you can afford to keep buying — the two total bills differ by roughly a third. Who should care: anyone buying their first truck sim in the November sales, and anyone with one of the two already installed wondering whether the second is worth the duplicate spend.
The build and the price list this assumes
Euro Truck Simulator 2’s live build is 1.61, released on 17 September 2026; a 1.62 open beta has been running since 22 October 2026. American Truck Simulator’s 1.62 open beta opened on 20 October 2026. SCS’s own beta posts call these builds “only an open beta, not a stable public version” and warn of bugs, instability or crashes, so nothing below depends on beta-only behaviour.
Every price in this piece was read off the two Steam store pages on 2 November 2026, and both pages were showing a live sale at the time: edition bundles were discounted between 40% and 50%, while the two base games were at their normal $19.99. I give the struck-through list price alongside the sale price wherever a bundle is involved, because a sale price is a reason to buy today, not a reason to plan around tomorrow.
What $19.99 actually buys
| American Truck Simulator | Euro Truck Simulator 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2 February 2016 | 18 October 2012 |
| Base price, 2 Nov 2026 | $19.99 | $19.99 |
| Base map | California, Nevada, Arizona | “more than 60 European cities” |
| Items listed under the game on Steam | 61 | 108 |
| Free demo | Yes | Yes |
| Store feature tags | Single-player, Online Co-op | Single-player, Online Co-op |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Minimum spec (identical) | i5-6400 or Ryzen 3 1200, 8 GB RAM, GTX 660-class 2 GB, 25 GB | same |
The minimum-specification row is not a rounding error: both pages list the same minimum and the same recommended hardware — i5-9600 or Ryzen 5 3600, 12 GB RAM, GTX 1660 or RX 590 at 2 GB, 25 GB of storage. There is no performance argument between these two games. Whatever machine runs one runs the other.
Where they differ in the base box is scale and density. ETS2’s base game promises cargo across “more than 60 European cities” plus “thousands of miles of real road networks with hundreds of famous landmarks”, and it names the UK, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland in its own description. ATS’s base game is three states — California, Nevada and Arizona — and the page is explicit that its “game mechanics are based on the highly successful model from Euro Truck Simulator 2 and have been expanded with new features”. ATS is the derivative product; ETS2 is the template, three and a half years older and materially larger out of the box.
Map scale decides the long game
Both games sell map expansions as separate DLC, and this is where the two bills separate. Counting only the packs that carried a price on 2 November 2026:
| American Truck Simulator | Euro Truck Simulator 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Priced map packs on the store page | 18 | 10 |
| Typical pack price | $11.99 (Texas is $17.99) | $17.99 (Greece $11.99, Going East! $9.99) |
| Cost of every priced map pack | $221.82 | $165.90 |
| Newest released map content | South Dakota, Illinois, Louisiana | Nordic Horizons |
| Announced, not yet available | British Columbia, North Dakota, Indiana | Iceland, Isle of Ireland, Soul of Anatolia, Heart of Russia |
Those two totals are arithmetic on the individual pack prices on the store pages, not a claim about a bundle. The shape of the result is the useful part: ETS2 has nearly twice as many store items (108 against 61) but costs about a quarter less to complete its map, because SCS prices an ATS state at $11.99 and a European expansion at $17.99. ETS2 asks more per purchase and fewer times; ATS asks less per purchase and does it eighteen times.
That matters for how you buy. An ATS buyer can add one state for the price of a takeaway and get a contiguous extension of the map they already drive. An ETS2 buyer spends $17.99 at a time and gets a country-sized block. Neither model is better, but they suit different budgets: $60 of ATS DLC buys five states, $60 of ETS2 DLC buys three expansions and change.
Iceland is the one to watch on the ETS2 side: SCS dates it 10 November 2026, with 14 cities and settlements including Reykjavík and Akureyri, the Ring Road, and single-lane bridges where “drivers must give way to oncoming vehicles”. No price for it appeared on the store page at the time of writing, so it is not counted in the $165.90.
The edition ladder, and what it leaves out
Both games sell three bundles above the base game. The item counts are printed on the pages; the prices are the sale and list prices on 2 November 2026.
| Bundle | ATS items | ATS price | ETS2 items | ETS2 price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premium | 12 | $48.48 (list $80.88) | 12 | $50.28 (list $83.88) |
| Deluxe | 18 | $79.57 (list $144.82) | 18 | $91.12 (list $165.82) |
| Ultimate | 28 | $102.22 (list $204.72) | 35 | $115.65 (list $231.65) |
Here is the trap, and it is the same trap in both games: “Ultimate” does not mean complete. The ATS Ultimate bundle lists 11 of the 18 priced state packs — New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas — and none of Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Louisiana, Illinois or South Dakota, all of which are released and priced separately. The ETS2 Ultimate bundle lists nine map expansions and misses Nordic Horizons, the newest one at $17.99.
So the bundle answers “which of these is cheapest per item”, not “will I own the map”. If the map is the point, buy the base game and the specific packs you want; if you want a large pile of trucks, cargo types, trailers and paint jobs at a discount, the bundles are genuinely cheaper than the parts. ATS Deluxe at $79.57 against a $144.82 list is 45% off a lot of cosmetic and cargo content — worth it only if you want that content, which the item lists let you check before buying.
Pacing: two games, two second modes
The strongest argument for one over the other as of this month is not the trucks. It is what SCS has bolted on beside them.
ATS got cars. The Road Trip: Ford DLC released on 29 September 2026 and unlocks Car Mode with four licensed vehicles — a 1967 Mustang Fastback, a 2023 F-150, a 2023 Bronco and a 1998–2012 Crown Victoria. It also brings the Atlas exploration feature and its Tourist Boards, which at release cover California plus the Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota DLCs, with the rest of the states promised for future updates. A second pack, Road Trip: RAM & Dodge, is announced but undated; SCS’s 30 October post describes the 1970 Dodge Charger 500 as one of “several iconic vehicles” in it. ATS 1.62 extends Tourist Boards to ten more states and adds a Route 66 Cross-Border board spanning eight states for the highway’s 100th anniversary.
ETS2 is getting passengers. The Coaches DLC releases on 12 November 2026 with three licensed coaches — Scania Touring, Volvo 9700 DD and MAN Lion’s Coach — and a different job structure: Quick Jobs before you own a coach, Contract Jobs with timetables and multiple stops, and Tourist Jobs to landmarks. SCS describes the driving loop as passenger comfort first: “Take corners carefully, avoid harsh braking, and keep an eye on the G-force indicator.” The 1.61 patch had already rebuilt the ground for it, including a new bus station in Nuremberg.
The practical read is that the two games are diverging rather than converging. ATS is becoming a sightseeing game with a trucking economy attached; ETS2 is becoming a service-driving game with a trucking economy attached. If what you want out of a truck sim is long-haul freight and nothing else, the divergence is noise and the map maths above should decide it. If you want a reason to keep driving after the novelty of a big rig wears off, ATS’s car mode is already live and ETS2’s coach mode is ten days away.
Convoy is the same feature on both — the ceiling is ownership
The multiplayer question is easier than it looks, because there is only one answer. Convoy arrived in the 1.41 update for both games in 2021, and both store pages still carry the Online Co-op tag. SCS’s Convoy FAQ describes it as player-hosted private sessions with password protection, synchronised AI traffic, time and weather, the ability to take the same job as other players, and up to 8 players. It lists no dedicated-server option, and the session ends when the host leaves: “as soon as the host of the session leaves, the server will be closed and this will disconnect all players from the server.”
Two details from that FAQ decide which game is better for a group:
- DLC is not required to join. “Players do not need to own any DLC in order to join the Convoy multiplayer mode.” But: “you will not be able to see or drive in DLC map areas if you do not own them yourself.”
- The map you can share is the map you all own. A convoy’s usable area is the intersection of everyone’s DLC, which in practice means the base map plus whatever packs the whole group has bought.
That turns the multiplayer decision back into the map decision. A group of friends who own nothing but the base games gets three US states in ATS and the base European map in ETS2 — and the ETS2 base map is the larger of the two by SCS’s own count of more than 60 cities. A group that wants to drive together on the newest content has to coordinate purchases either way, and ETS2’s $17.99 packs make that coordination more expensive per region.
The one genuine ATS advantage is dated: since Road Trip: Ford, ATS Convoy lets “trucks and cars sharing the highways”, so a mixed group can drive different vehicle classes in one session. ETS2 has no released equivalent, and I found nothing on the Coaches release post stating whether coaches will be usable in Convoy when that DLC lands on 12 November.
The decision, in order
- If you are buying one game and stopping there, buy ETS2. It is the larger base map, its complete map costs about $56 less, and the Coaches DLC arrives on 12 November for $19.99 owners.
- If you intend to keep spending on maps, weigh the pace you can afford. ATS lets you buy a state for $11.99; ETS2 asks for $17.99. Cheap-and-often suits ATS, occasional-and-large suits ETS2.
- Take ATS if you want the car mode now. Road Trip: Ford is released and live; ETS2’s passenger mode is not out yet at time of writing.
- Skip the Ultimate bundles unless you have read the item list. Neither includes every released map pack, and the missing ones are the newest.
- Decide Convoys by group ownership, not by game. Convoy behaves identically on both, and the joinable map is whatever everyone owns.
What is still unconfirmed
No price for the Iceland DLC (10 November) or the Coaches DLC (12 November) appeared on the ETS2 store page on 2 November, so neither is in the totals above. Neither game’s 1.62 update had left open beta, so any performance or stability claim about the live build is a claim about 1.61 on the ETS2 side and an earlier ATS build. The ATS store page also links DLC pages for British Columbia, North Dakota and Indiana, all marked as not yet available, with no dates or prices. And no page I fetched states a Steam Deck compatibility rating for either game, so this piece does not claim one.