Comparison · Aug 21, 2026

Pterodactyl vs PufferPanel: two game panels that share nothing but the job

Pterodactyl or PufferPanel for game hosting? Two panels that share nothing but a purpose. The scale gap, and the API differences we measured against both.

By Provibr

Most game-panel comparisons are between Pterodactyl and something derived from it. This one is not. PufferPanel is not a fork of Pterodactyl. It is an older, independent project with a completely different design, and if you assume the two work alike you will be wrong in almost every specific.

We have no stake in which you pick. Provibr supports both live, and a customer on either pays us the same. We built an integration against each, and the surprising part of that work was how little the two have in common under the surface.

The scale, measured today

These figures come from the GitHub API and were measured on 21 August 2026. They will be out of date in a year, which is exactly why the date is here.

The Pterodactyl panel repository shows 9,164 stars and 2,657 forks, with its latest release v1.15.1 published on 14 August 2026. It is the default choice for commercial game hosting and has been since 2015.
https://github.com/pterodactyl/panel · 2026-08-21

The PufferPanel repository shows 1,736 stars and 267 forks, is licensed Apache 2.0, and was created in October 2013, making it older than Pterodactyl. It is a smaller, quieter project aimed more at self-hosters than at large commercial fleets.
https://github.com/pufferpanel/pufferpanel · 2026-08-21

There is the whole shape of it. PufferPanel is the older project (it predates Pterodactyl by roughly two years), and yet it carries a fraction of the attention. That is not a knock; it tells you what each project is for. Pterodactyl became the commercial default and grew a large ecosystem around selling game servers. PufferPanel stayed lean, general-purpose and self-hoster-shaped, and its development is concentrated rather than crowd-sourced.

Where they are genuinely different

With Pterodactyl and Pelican, a migration is realistic because they share a shape. Here there is no shared shape, so treat a switch as a rebuild, not a port. Every row below is something we ran into building the two integrations.

Subject	Pterodactyl 1.x	PufferPanel 3.x
API structure	two APIs: an Application half and a Client half	one `/api/*` surface, scoped per endpoint
Authentication	two static keys (`ptla_` / `ptlc_`)	OAuth2 client-credentials; the token expires in an hour
Token scope	fixed to the key type	inherits the scope of whoever created the client
Server blueprint	an egg, living in a nest, addressed by id	a template, often defined inline at create time
Starting inventory	eggs shipped and importable	the templates table starts empty: no template, no server
Console	a Wings websocket	a poll loop (`GET`/`POST /console`), no websocket
Suspend / unsuspend	first-class panel actions	no suspend primitive at all
Status vocabulary	rich lifecycle states	only `running` or `installing`
Deleting a running server	handled	refused with a 500 until you stop or kill it first
Default database	MySQL	SQLite
Nodes	explicit node records	an embedded node (`id: 0`) plus any you add

A few of those decide how much work a switch really is.

PufferPanel has no concept of suspension, and that is the sharpest edge. There is no /suspend endpoint, and the servers table has no suspended column. Nothing in the panel will stop a server and keep the customer from turning it back on. If your business model needs to suspend a non-paying customer, and a hosting business does, that behaviour has to be built above the panel, by stopping the server and refusing to let the owner start it again. Pterodactyl gives you suspend and unsuspend as buttons. This single difference is why the two panels feel so unlike each other in a commercial setting.

The console is a different mechanism, not a different flavour. Pterodactyl hands you a websocket into the Wings daemon, and you stream it. PufferPanel has no websocket; you poll an endpoint for output and post to it for input. Both work, but a client written for one does not adapt to the other; it gets replaced.

OAuth2 sounds stricter than two static keys, and here it is looser than it looks. A PufferPanel API client is created by a user and inherits that user's scope, so a client made by an admin is an admin. You cannot narrow it down at creation through the simple path; you need a second, already-scoped user to get a limited client. The token also expires every hour, so the integration has to refresh. Pterodactyl's two keys never expire but are trivially confusable (the only thing distinguishing an Application key from a Client key is the prefix), so anything sane checks it.

The failure modes leak. Create a server with an identifier that already exists on PufferPanel and you get a 500 carrying a raw SQLite constraint message, not a clean conflict. Delete a server that is still running and you get a 500 too, because the daemon refuses; you have to stop or kill it first, then the delete succeeds. These are the kind of thing you find by hitting them, not by reading the docs.

So which one should you pick?

Pick Pterodactyl if you are selling to paying customers, you need to suspend for non-payment, or you want the largest ecosystem of eggs, guides and tooling. It is the commercial default for good reasons, and v1.15.1 shipped in August 2026, so it is not standing still.

Pick PufferPanel if you want a lighter, single-binary, self-hostable panel, you host a wide variety of game types and like its inline-template flexibility, and you do not need per-server suspension baked in. It has been quietly doing its job since 2013.

Do not treat a move between them as a migration. They share a purpose and almost no mechanics. If you are switching, budget for a rebuild of anything that touches the API, and test a rollback you have actually run.

The part that makes either one usable at scale

The hardest thing about running a game-hosting business is rarely the panel. It is that a panel is one control plane, and a growing business ends up with more than one: an old fleet on Pterodactyl, an experiment on PufferPanel, and two logins, two ways of counting what you sold, two places to look when a customer calls.

Provibr connects both to the same account. Both appear in the same server list, both count towards the same capacity and the same monthly invoice, and Provibr synthesises the suspension PufferPanel does not have on its own, stopping a server and refusing the owner a restart, so overage handling and reseller limits behave the same no matter which panel is underneath. The agent dials outward from your own network, so neither panel needs an inbound port opened and nothing is installed on either. Servers you did not create through Provibr are left alone until you import them.

You still choose the panel you bet on. You just do not have to run two businesses to run two panels.

Frequently asked questions

Is PufferPanel a fork of Pterodactyl?

No. PufferPanel is an older, independent project, created in October 2013 and so roughly two years older than Pterodactyl, with a completely different design. If you assume the two work alike you will be wrong in almost every specific.

Can I suspend a customer on PufferPanel?

Not with the panel alone. There is no suspend endpoint and the servers table has no suspended column, so suspension for non-payment has to be built above the panel by stopping the server and refusing the owner a restart.

Is switching between the two a migration?

Treat it as a rebuild. They share a purpose and almost no mechanics: two APIs versus one, static keys versus OAuth2, eggs versus inline templates, and a Wings websocket console versus a poll loop.

Which one fits a paying customer base?

Pterodactyl, if you need suspension for non-payment and the largest ecosystem of eggs, guides and tooling. PufferPanel fits a lighter, single-binary, self-hosted setup with a wide variety of game types and inline templates.