SHSelfHostIndex

KAPLAY vs Luanti

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted game engines & frameworks options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
KA KAPLAY Fun JavaScript library for making browser games fast VS LU Luanti Open-source voxel game engine and server
FeatureKAPLAYLuanti
CategoryGame Engines & FrameworksGame Engines & Frameworks
LicenseMITLGPL-2.1
LanguageTypeScriptC++
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB512 MB
Deploymentsourcedocker, bare-metal, binary, source
GitHub stars★ 1,766★ 13,421
First released20212010
ReplacesPhaserMinecraft

Why pick each one

Choose KAPLAY if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (1.8k GitHub stars)
  • Written in TypeScript
KAPLAY details

Choose Luanti if…

  • Lightweight server
  • Highly moddable
Luanti details

Frequently asked questions

Is KAPLAY or Luanti better?

Neither is universally better. Luanti has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are KAPLAY and Luanti free and open-source?

Yes. KAPLAY is licensed under MIT and Luanti under LGPL-2.1. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run KAPLAY and Luanti with Docker?

KAPLAY: check the project docs for container support. Luanti: yes.

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