5Stack vs brainCloud
5Stack
5stack.gg
brainCloud
getbraincloud.comSide by side
| Figure | 5Stack | brainCloud |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $5/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 15 |
| Spec score · Game Matchmaking Software | 8.2 (#14) | 9.3 (#2) |
| Integrations | The listed integrations include Discord, Valve and FACEIT match imports, and external streaming sources Twitch, YouTube, and Kick. | Documented integrations include Amazon GameLift, Kafka, SAML, Segment, SendGrid, Slack and WebPurify. |
| Security controls | Administrators can require sign-in to view live streams and set minimum roles for streaming or spectating; the documentation advises treating API keys like passwords. | Client calls use authenticated connections, TLS encryption, app-secret check codes, packet IDs against replay and access-control lists for user-owned data. |
| Support | The maker's documentation directs users to Discord for questions, help, and contact with people running 5Stack. | The maker lists free best-effort developer support through chat and forums, with paid support options that add response commitments and guidance. |
| What it does | 5Stack is a self-hosted Counter-Strike 2 competition platform covering server provisioning, matchmaking, tournaments, statistics, replays, broadcasts, and community moderation. | brainCloud is a hosted backend service for games, applications and other connected products, combining APIs, SDKs and a browser design and debugging portal. |
Plans
brainCloud
- Developer supportFree
- DevelopmentFree
- DevelopmentFree
- Development Plus$5 a month
- Lite$15 a month
- Lite$15 a month
- Lite Plus$25 a month
- Standard$30 a month
- Standard$30 a month
- Standard Plus$50 a month
In their own words
5Stack
5Stack is a free, self-hosted Counter-Strike 2 competition platform for communities, Discord servers, leagues, tournament operators, server hosts, organizations, schools, and LANs. It combines server provisioning, matchmaking, tournaments, statistics, replays, broadcasts, and community moderation. Players can queue for 1v1, 2v2, or 5v5 matches, with party support and regional matching based on latency. Organizers can run Single Elimination, Double Elimination, Round Robin, and Swiss formats, including multi-stage brackets and seasonal leagues. Match analysis includes economy breakdowns, clutches, roles, heatmaps, and movement paths. Browser-based 2D and 3D replays, demo playback, and automatic highlights are available; some rendering requires a GPU node. Broadcast tools include Stream Deck control, scoreboard overlays, a public watch hub, and picture-in-picture. Integrations include Discord, Valve and FACEIT imports, Twitch, YouTube, and Kick. Hosting requires a Linux server and domain, and GPU features require an NVIDIA GPU on native Linux.
brainCloud
brainCloud is a cloud-based backend-as-a-service platform for games, apps, and other digital services. It provides cloud data, multiplayer, leaderboards, tournaments, push notifications, chat, in-app purchases, inventory management, analytics, and Cloud Code. Client libraries are listed for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, and web JavaScript, with Unity and Unreal support. Named multiplayer technologies include AWS GameLift, Unity Netcode, and Unreal Engine Networking; developers can also use Edgegap game-server orchestration from the developer portal. The free Development plan costs nothing and is limited to 100 daily active users and 1,000 accounts; it includes one million free API calls, 100 MB of storage, and 1 GB of transfers, but no live in-app purchases. Lite costs $15 a month and Standard costs $30 a month. Paid subscriptions include a base API-call allotment, with additional use charged by consumption. Private licenses provide managed instances in a customer's cloud environment.