Rocket League Beginner Guide: Controls, Boost, Ranks

Rocket League is cars playing soccer, and that sentence leaves out most of what a new player has to learn. The rest is three systems: boost, which is your fuel and your jump height, air control, which decides whether you land on your wheels, and the ranked ladder, which decides who you get matched against. This guide covers all three using Epic's and Psyonix's own support pages, the official Rocket League site and Epic Games Store listing, plus the community wiki where those are silent. It has no mechanics tutorial beyond the basics, because the advanced material (flip resets, air dribbles) deserves its own posts.

Is Rocket League free, and where can you play

Yes. The Epic Games Store listing reads "Play Rocket League for free!" and shows the base game at Free with in-app purchases. Psyonix released the game on July 7, 2015 (per the same listing) and moved it to free-to-play on September 23, 2020, according to the community wiki's page on that update.

The official site's Play page links to four storefronts: the Epic Games Store for PC, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox store and Nintendo's Switch page. On PC you need an Epic account. Epic's listing gives the minimum Windows spec as Windows 7 (64-bit) or newer, a 2.5 GHz dual-core CPU, 4 GB of memory, 20 GB of storage, DirectX 11 and an NVIDIA GeForce 760 or Radeon R7 270X class GPU.

Steam is the confusing one. The Steam store page still exists, but Steam's own store data reports the game as not free and shows no price, and 2020 coverage (for example SlashGear) reported that Rocket League left Steam for new buyers when it went free-to-play. Epic's support article on cross-platform play still lists Steam alongside the Epic Games Store, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, so players who already own it on Steam are matched with everyone else. If you are starting fresh on PC, use the Epic Games Store.

Cross-play is on by default. Per Epic, players on all of those platforms can matchmake with or against each other in every online match type, and you can switch it off in Settings under the Gameplay tab.

Controls: jump, boost and air roll

The core inputs are accelerate, reverse, steer, jump, boost, powerslide (also called handbrake) and air roll. The community wiki lists these console defaults, though its controls page was last edited in 2022, so treat the table as a starting point and check Settings under Controls:

Keyboard and mouse is the part that has moved. Season 24 (September 23, 2026) shipped, per the official patch notes, modernized mouse and keyboard defaults, a new Free Look camera and an optional center-dot reticle. The notes do not list the new defaults and I could not find a published list, so this guide does not quote them. Open the in-game binding menu, which lets you rebind almost any button according to Epic's Crash Course page.

Epic's own Crash Course page gives the beginner tips worth learning first:

• Hold Jump to jump higher.
• Use Air Roll when falling to land on your wheels.
• Tap or feather boost in the air to hold altitude efficiently.
• Dodge forward to gain speed without spending boost.
• Dodge into the ball at the last moment before impact for extra power.
• Holding Jump and Boost together is the quickest way to gain aerial altitude.
• Use the handbrake to turn more quickly than normal.

Also in that list: the ball bounces softer off your car's wheels. The Controller Deadzone setting lets you make steering and aerial controls more sensitive, and a higher Camera FOV gives a wider view of the field.

Epic's hitbox page says every car has the same stats and that each body uses one of six hitbox types (Breakout, Dominus, Hybrid, Merc, Octane and Plank) with small differences in length, width and height. So the body you pick changes the hitbox, not the stats.

Boost and boost pads

Boost is the resource that separates a car that drives from a car that flies. The wiki's Boost page gives these numbers:

Do the arithmetic and a full tank is about three continuous seconds of boost, while a small pad is roughly a third of a second. That is why experienced players do not hold the button down. The large pad also gives you the full 100 regardless of what you had, and it will not be consumed if your meter is already full. Large pads normally sit at the corners and edges of the arena, with the smaller ones placed further in.

Two interface options help you manage this. Epic says Boost Nameplate Indicators (added in Season 14) show a circle next to each teammate's name that fills as their boost fills, so you can see who can take the next aerial. A Team-Colored Boost Meter option, under Settings and then Interface, tints the meter blue or orange to match your team.

Private and custom matches can change the rules. The official Season 24 patch notes added a Boost Pad Recharge Rate mutator, and the wiki lists a mutator that makes boost rechargeable automatically.

Casual, Competitive and Extra Modes

The two core online categories are Casual and Competitive. The community wiki describes Casual as the unranked option, where friends with a big skill gap can queue together. Competitive is the skill-tier ladder covered below.

If you do not know what to pick, press Quick Play. Epic says it repeats the playlists and regions from your last session, and a brand-new player is sent to a 3v3 Standard match in the Casual playlist.

The size-based playlists are Duel (1v1), Doubles (2v2) and Standard (3v3). The wiki also lists a 4v4 Chaos playlist in Casual.

Extra Modes change the rules of the match. Epic's support pages describe these:

• Rumble adds randomized power-ups on a timer, 11 in total, including the Boot, Grappling Hook, Plunger and Tornado. Epic says Rumble sits in the Extra Modes tab alongside Hoops and Snow Day.
• Dropshot swaps the goal for a breakable floor: hit the ball into the opposing team's floor panels, and score through the gaps. It was introduced on a hexagonal arena called Core 707.
• Heatseeker makes the ball seek the opposing net after a hit and gain speed on every touch. First team to seven goals wins. Epic lists it under Private and Local Matches.
• Knockout is an eight-player brawl with three lives, played on custom arenas, where you knock opponents off the platform.

Two things for practice. Online Free Play, which arrived in Season 17, lets up to eight players hang out in a session with ball controls for the party leader. And offline play works: Epic says you can play online or offline with a friend locally, including split-screen on consoles.

Season 24 also added Honor Duels. During a match you can challenge another player to a 1v1 in the same match type; if they accept, both of you drop into the duel when the current match ends, and the rest of the lobby can spectate.

How ranked works

Competitive ranks, according to Epic, run in this order from lowest to highest: Unranked, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Champion, Grand Champion and Supersonic Legend. Each tier from Bronze through Grand Champion has three levels (I, II and III), and every rank has four Divisions. Epic's example is that Gold III Division II means you are three divisions away from Platinum I.

That graphic is the official artwork from the free-to-play update. Here is how you earn a rank:

1. Placement matches. When a new season begins, the first ten matches in any Competitive playlist are your placements. Epic says they determine your starting skill level.
2. Separate ladders. The community wiki notes each playlist has its own progression, so you can be Silver in Doubles and Diamond in Standard. Epic's matchmaking article adds that your rank may be adjusted upward after placements if the system sees that your first rank is too low, using your ranks in other playlists.
3. No fixed games-to-rank-up number. Epic says it depends on wins, losses and how difficult the matches were. Lower-ranked players earn more from beating higher-ranked ones.
4. Seasonal rewards are by wins, not by rank alone. Epic says each reward level takes 10 additional wins at that rank or higher, and that you keep the rewards from your highest rank even if your rank later drops.

Two rules matter before you queue with friends. In a two-person party queueing for 3v3 Standard, the two of you must be within 3 ranks of each other; Epic's example is that Platinum 3 and Diamond 3 can queue but Platinum 2 and Diamond 3 cannot. And leaving or disconnecting from a Competitive match gets you a matchmaking ban that starts at five minutes, then 10, 20, 40, 60 and 120 minutes, then 24 hours for each further offense. Epic says the ban level drops one step every 12 hours, and a disconnect you recover from only costs five minutes after the match.

Season 24 also added Top 100 titles, which the patch notes say go to players in the top 100 of the global Soccar leaderboards and are granted at the end of the season.

XP, the Rocket Pass and what is cosmetic

XP level is not skill. Epic's support page says level does not reflect player skill and that matchmaking considers rank, not level or total XP. XP comes from completing online matches and advances your Rocket Pass tiers.

The Rocket Pass has a free track you earn just by playing online. Premium costs 1,000 Credits. Weekly Challenges reset each Wednesday, and New Driver Challenges are aimed at players who started after the free-to-play switch. Rocket Pass Premium is also included with a Fortnite Crew subscription, which our Fortnite Crew guide covers.

What changed recently

Season 24 launched on September 23, 2026 and brought Honor Duels, Black Market Trade-Ins, custom scoreboards and the keyboard and mouse update.

Looking ahead, Epic and Psyonix announced in May 2026 that Rocket League will move to Unreal Engine 6, and I found no confirmed date. Nothing in this guide depends on it, but controls and menus may change when it ships.

What this guide leaves out

This guide stays at the basics and leaves out advanced mechanics, rotations and positioning, and it quotes no tier list because rankings of cars or settings are opinion. The boost recharge times and starting boost come from fan-maintained sources rather than Psyonix, and the console controls table comes from a wiki page last edited in 2022, so verify both in-game. If a detail differs from what you see on screen, trust the game over this page.