Introducing Struxa

If you've ever managed game servers at scale, you know Pterodactyl. It's been the go-to open-source game server panel for years — and for good reason. It works. But anyone who has spent time with it also knows its limitations: a PHP backend that's increasingly hard to extend, a frontend that predates modern React patterns, and a codebase that discourages contribution rather than inviting it.

We wanted something better. So we built Struxa.

What Is Struxa?

Struxa is an open-source, self-hosted game server management panel. It lets you create, manage, and monitor game servers across one or many nodes through a clean web interface. Think of it as Pterodactyl, rewritten from scratch with the tools we actually want to use in 2026.

The stack:

Next.js 16 + React 19 — full-stack, type-safe, fast
oRPC — end-to-end typed API layer with no codegen step
Drizzle ORM + MySQL — lean schema definitions, safe migrations
Better-Auth — modern authentication without the boilerplate
Bun — fast installs, fast runtime
Tailwind CSS — utility-first, consistent design

Everything is TypeScript. End to end.

Why Not Just Contribute to Pterodactyl?

We considered it. The Pterodactyl project has a large community and a well-understood protocol (Wings) that handles the actual daemon communication. We didn't want to throw that away.

Struxa is Wings-compatible. Any egg that works on Pterodactyl works on Struxa. The daemon communication protocol is the same. What we replaced is everything above that layer: the panel, the API, the data model, the UI.

The reason we didn't contribute upstream is architectural. The changes we wanted to make — a fully typed API layer, a React-first frontend built with modern conventions, a clean relational schema — would require a rewrite anyway. A fork of a PHP backend into TypeScript is not a fork, it's a new project.

What You Can Do With Struxa Today

Struxa is in active development. Here's what's already working:

Server management — Create, start, stop, restart, and delete game servers. Full lifecycle control from the panel. Power state tracked in real time.

Node management — Add nodes, configure allocation pools (IP + port ranges), and monitor resource usage. Nodes communicate via the Wings daemon.

File manager — Browse and edit server files directly in the browser. No SSH needed for routine config changes.

Real-time monitoring — Live CPU, RAM, disk, and network usage per server, with sparkline history graphs. 30-second polling with WebSocket console streaming.

Multi-user access — Role-based access control. Admins manage everything. Subusers can be granted access to specific servers.

Backups — Create, list, and restore backups per server.

Scheduled tasks — Cron-based automation for recurring server actions.

Database management — Create and manage per-server databases with encrypted credentials.

Admin panel — Locations, nests, eggs, users, settings — all manageable from the admin UI.

What's Coming

We're working toward a stable alpha. Upcoming work includes:

API key management
Advanced permission system
Egg/image marketplace
Struxa Cloud — a fully managed hosted version, so you don't need to run your own infrastructure

Self-Hosting Struxa

Struxa is free to self-host. The full source is on GitHub under an open-source license. You'll need:

A server running the Wings daemon (same as Pterodactyl nodes)
A MySQL/MariaDB database
Node.js 20+ or Bun

Detailed setup instructions are available at docs.struxa.cloud.

Contributing

Struxa is built to be contributed to. The codebase is TypeScript all the way down — no context switching, no PHP/JS boundary. If you've built with Next.js and oRPC before, you'll feel at home within minutes.

Issues are on GitHub. PRs are welcome. If you're building something with Struxa or have feedback, reach out at hello@struxa.cloud.

We're just getting started. If you've been waiting for a Pterodactyl alternative with a codebase you'd actually want to work in, this is it.