Luanti

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 817 words

Luanti is the voxel engine formerly called Minetest, renamed in October 2024, and its dedicated server is the cheapest multiplayer block-world you can run: free, LGPL-2.1, about 512 MB of RAM for a small group, one UDP port. The trap is that the engine ships with no game worth playing. Luanti is to games what a browser is to websites; until you install a game from ContentDB, your server hosts an empty world with a menu. Choose the game first and the rest of the setup takes an evening.

The engine is empty on purpose, so choose a game first

Everything you can see and do in a Luanti world comes from a "game": a bundle of Lua mods that defines blocks, crafting, mobs, and rules. The historical default, Minetest Game, is in maintenance mode and feels bare. The two that people actually want are VoxeLibre (the project formerly named MineClone2, which reproduces the Minecraft survival experience closely enough that children do not notice the difference) and Mineclonia, a fork of the same codebase that prioritises stability over new features. NodeCore and Exile are the interesting original games for adults who want something other than a Minecraft clone. All of them are on ContentDB at content.luanti.org and install with one click in the client or one download on the server.

A server config that works for a family or a friend group

Install from your distribution (luanti-server on current Debian and Ubuntu; older releases still call it minetest-server) or use the linuxserver.io container. Then a config file:

# ~/luanti.conf
server_name = Murphy family world
motd = Be nice. Backups nightly at 03:00.
port = 30000
max_users = 15
server_announce = false
default_game = mineclone2
enable_damage = true
creative_mode = false
disallow_empty_password = true
default_privs = interact, shout
server_map_save_interval = 5.3
active_block_range = 3

Start it with luantiserver --config ~/luanti.conf --world ~/worlds/family --gameid mineclone2 and forward 30000/udp on your router, or better, keep it inside Tailscale and skip the port forward. server_announce = false keeps you off the public server list; flip it only when you have moderation and a password policy in place. disallow_empty_password matters because the default lets anyone create an account with no password at all.

Mods drop into one directory and one line

Server-side mods go in ~/.luanti/mods/ (older installs use ~/.minetest/mods/) and are enabled per world by editing world.mt:

load_mod_protector = true
load_mod_beds = true

Clients do not need mods installed; the server sends media on join, which is why a heavy texture pack makes first connections slow. The Lua API is the reason Luanti has 13,495 stars and a decade of community content: anyone who can write 30 lines of Lua can add a block, and the mod ecosystem covers protection (protector, areas), economy, mobs, and nearly anything a Bukkit plugin does on the Minecraft side.

Resource use is small until you make it big

The catalogue's 512 MB minimum covers a survival world for 5 to 10 players. CPU is the real constraint: map generation and the active-block simulation run on the main thread, so a fast single core beats many slow ones, and active_block_range is the knob that decides how much of the world is simulated around each player (3 is sane, 5 will hurt). Map data lives in SQLite by default and grows with exploration; a heavily explored VoxeLibre world can reach several gigabytes, and a PostgreSQL backend is available if that becomes a problem. Compared with a modded Java Minecraft server that wants 4 GB before anyone joins, this is a different category of hosting cost, which is the main argument on the Minecraft alternatives page.

Clients and the compatibility question

Every player needs the free Luanti client: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android (F-Droid and the Play Store), with an iOS port that has lagged behind. There is no bridge for Minecraft clients; Geyser-style translation does not exist here because the protocols share nothing. The pitch to a group already on Minecraft is therefore "free, runs on the old laptop, we can mod it ourselves", not "your existing client connects". The game engines category covers the rest of the self-hosted game-server field.

What I'd do

VoxeLibre as the game, luantiserver from the distribution package on a small box or a 1 GB VPS, the config above with server_announce = false, Tailscale instead of a port forward for a private group, the protector mod from day one, and a nightly copy of the world directory. For anyone who already runs Docker and wants the ops side spelled out, the companion page on the dedicated server covers backups, database backends, and tuning in more detail. It is the best free answer to "can we have our own Minecraft" that I know of, provided everyone accepts that it is not Minecraft.