What is Calagopus?
Calagopus is a modern, open-source game server management panel built with Rust and React. It provides a fast, secure interface for deploying, monitoring, and maintaining game servers - built for everyone from solo homelabbers to large hosting operators.
It draws inspiration from Pterodactyl but is written from scratch in Rust, with a focus on performance, security, and extensibility. The panel includes a rich extension API and welcomes community contributions.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is Calagopus different from Pterodactyl?
Calagopus is built in Rust, where Pterodactyl uses PHP. The result is meaningfully better performance - throughput improvements of over 32,800% in our benchmarks - alongside Rust's memory-safety guarantees. Calagopus also ships its own extension API designed around Rust traits, rather than the PHP-based plugin systems of older panels. We provide a migration guide for existing Pterodactyl users.
How is Calagopus different from Pelican?
Pelican is a Pterodactyl fork that retains the same PHP/Laravel architecture. Calagopus is a complete rewrite in a different language stack, so the two share goals but very little code. If you're already on Pelican, see the migration guide.
What games does Calagopus support?
Calagopus uses an "egg" system (compatible with the Pterodactyl ecosystem) to support arbitrary games. Anything that runs in a Linux Docker container can be managed - Minecraft (Java and Bedrock), Rust, ARK, Valheim, FiveM, source-engine games, and many more. See egg repositories for available presets.
Is Calagopus open source?
Yes. The source is on GitHub. Core components are MIT-licensed; check individual repositories for specifics.
Is Calagopus free to use?
Yes - for personal and commercial use, with no feature gating.
Can I migrate from Pterodactyl or Pelican?
Yes. Calagopus provides migration tooling for both panels. See the Pterodactyl migration guide or Pelican migration guide.
Does Calagopus have an Extension API?
Yes. Extensions can add backend logic, custom routes, UI elements, database migrations, and more. The API uses Rust traits for type safety and performance. See the Extension Development Guide to get started.
Does Calagopus support Blueprint extensions?
No. Blueprint targets the PHP-based Pterodactyl architecture and isn't compatible with Calagopus's Rust-based system. Calagopus's native extension API covers the same use cases - and more - with better performance and type safety.
Can I run Calagopus on Windows?
The panel runs natively on Windows and via Docker Desktop. Wings (the daemon that runs game servers) requires Linux - WSL2 works for local testing, but a real Linux host is recommended for anything production-adjacent.
Can I run Calagopus on a Raspberry Pi?
Yes. Calagopus supports ARM64 and the Docker Compose setup works on a Raspberry Pi out of the box. Resource limits apply - running multiple CPU-intensive game servers on a Pi will hit hardware ceilings quickly.
Do I need Linux experience to use Calagopus?
Not much. After the initial setup, day-to-day operation happens through the web UI. Some terminal familiarity helps for troubleshooting, but isn't required. The Discord community is there if you get stuck.