5Stack vs Metaplay
5Stack
5stack.gg
Metaplay
metaplay.ioSide by side
| Figure | 5Stack | Metaplay |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | €195/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 | 17 |
| Spec score · Game Matchmaking Software | 8.2 (#14) | 9.0 (#6) |
| Integrations | The listed integrations include Discord, Valve and FACEIT match imports, and external streaming sources Twitch, YouTube, and Kick. | Metaplay lists analytics export to BigQuery and S3, purchase validation for Google Play, App Store and Steam, and sign-in options including Google, Apple, Facebook, Steam and custom web login. |
| Intended users | The maker describes the platform for communities and Discord servers, league and tournament operators, server hosts, organizations, schools, and LANs. | Metaplay describes its audience as ambitious game studios building server-authoritative games, from prototype through global launch, including teams operating multiple titles. |
| 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. | Private Cloud documentation states TLS in transit, AWS IAM, RBAC, OAuth2/OIDC support, private VPC networking and encryption at rest. |
| Support | The maker's documentation directs users to Discord for questions, help, and contact with people running 5Stack. | The pricing page offers community Discord support, weekday engineer support tiers, and a critical incident add-on with 24/7 availability and a one-hour response SLA. |
| What it does | 5Stack is a self-hosted Counter-Strike 2 competition platform covering server provisioning, matchmaking, tournaments, statistics, replays, broadcasts, and community moderation. | Metaplay is a backend platform for building, operating and scaling live-service games. |
Plans
Metaplay
- Community supportFree
- Community SupportFree
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Starter€195 a month
- Starter€195 a month
- Pre-launch€995 a month
- Pre-Launch€995 a month
- Standard support€1,500 a month
- Standard Support€1,500 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.
Metaplay
Metaplay is a backend platform for building and operating live-service games. It uses a server-authoritative C# game server with a Unity client library and shared client-server logic. Its LiveOps dashboard includes player segmentation, A/B testing, over-the-air configuration updates, events, economy management, and player support tools. The SDK also includes guilds, social features, leaderboards, leagues, and asynchronous matchmaking; synchronous matchmaking is in active development. Hosting choices include managed Metaplay Cloud, customer AWS infrastructure, another Kubernetes cluster, or on-premises deployment. The platform supports Unity games on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and WebGL, with Unity 2020.3 LTS and later. The free plan provides the full SDK and a local server for local development. Starter costs €195 a month. Managed Metaplay Cloud supports single-region deployments; multi-region deployments are supported on self-hosted infrastructure.