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pterodactyl/panel

★ 8,877PHPAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 4/5LicenseSetup · hard

TLDR

Pterodactyl is a free open-source web dashboard for hosting and managing game servers (Minecraft, Rust, and dozens more) inside Docker containers, with support for multiple machines from one central panel.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((pterodactyl))
    What it does
      Game server hosting
      Web dashboard control
      Multi-machine support
    Supported Games
      Minecraft variants
      Rust Terraria
      CS GO ARK TF2
    Architecture
      PHP React panel
      Go Wings daemon
      Docker containers
    Extensibility
      Community eggs
      Blueprint add-ons
      Themes
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Host and manage Minecraft, Rust, or other game servers via a web interface without touching a terminal.

USE CASE 2

Run many isolated game servers on one machine using Docker so they can't interfere with each other.

USE CASE 3

Manage game servers spread across multiple physical machines from a single central web dashboard.

USE CASE 4

Install community-built game configurations called eggs to add support for additional game types.

Tech stack

PHPReactGoDocker

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Requires a Linux server with Docker, a web server, MySQL, and a separate Wings daemon on each game host machine.

Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you keep the copyright notice.

In plain English

Pterodactyl is a free, open-source control panel for hosting and managing game servers. If you run a Minecraft server, a Rust server, or any of dozens of other supported games, Pterodactyl gives you a web interface to start, stop, configure, and monitor those servers without logging into a terminal every time. The panel isolates each game server inside its own Docker container. A Docker container is a self-contained environment that keeps the game server separate from everything else on the machine, so one server can't interfere with another and the host system stays clean. This also means you can run many different game types on one machine without worrying about conflicting software. The web interface is built with PHP and React, and the backend daemon that actually manages the containers is written in Go. There is a companion component called Wings that runs on each host machine and handles the actual container operations. The panel talks to Wings over the network, so you can manage servers spread across multiple machines from one central dashboard. Supported games include Minecraft (with Paper, Sponge, BungeeCord, and Waterfall variants), Rust, Terraria, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Garry's Mod, ARK: Survival Evolved, and many others. The community has built additional game configurations called "eggs" that extend support further. A companion project called Blueprint provides a package manager for installing add-ons and themes. Pterodactyl is released under the MIT license and has documentation covering installation of both the panel and the Wings daemon.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Walk me through installing the Pterodactyl panel on an Ubuntu server including the Wings daemon.
Prompt 2
How do I add a new Minecraft server to my Pterodactyl panel and configure its memory and CPU limits?
Prompt 3
Show me how to set up Pterodactyl to manage game servers on two different machines from one dashboard.
Prompt 4
How do I install a community egg to add a game type that is not built into Pterodactyl by default?
Prompt 5
What are the minimum server requirements to run Pterodactyl with five concurrent game servers in Docker?
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