BanManager vs ChatSentinel

BanManager is a free, open-source suite of moderation plugins and apps for Minecraft servers. It supports bans, IP blocks, mutes, profane-name blocking, and chat moderation that can include shadow muting. Players can report behavior while staff are offline, then staff can track and resolve reports. Configurable warning thresholds can trigger commands with increasing severity. Staff can add notes and review player records, including unbans and who issued them. Downloads are listed for Bukkit variants, BungeeCord, Fabric, Sponge, and Velocity. Data can be stored locally in H2 or remotely with MySQL or MariaDB. The optional self-hosted WebUI adds appeals, reports, role-based permissions, and a dashboard for one or more servers. That interface requires BanManager-WebEnhancer and MySQL 5+ or MariaDB 10+; the default H2 database is unsupported. Its setup page is initially unauthenticated, so the documentation recommends setting a setup token before exposing it to the internet. A developer API lets other plugins read or modify punishment data and receive change events.

ChatSentinel is a self-hosted moderation plugin for Minecraft Paper servers. Its local trie filter checks chat and can load word lists for 28 languages, with leet-speak normalization and abbreviation expansion. It can also moderate whispers, signs, books, and anvil renames. Flagged content can be blocked or masked, with configurable escalation to warnings, mutes, or staff alerts. Optional moderation API and LLM review layers can add checks; both are disabled by default, so the local filter can operate without API keys. The first layer uses an OpenAI-compatible moderation endpoint. The second accepts compatible chat-completions providers, including Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, Azure OpenAI, Together, and Groq. SQLite is the default database, with MySQL and PostgreSQL also supported. An optional PlaceholderAPI integration exposes moderation-related player details as placeholders. The README lists Java 21 or later and a Paper server as requirements. It describes a fail-open pipeline: local filtering remains active if APIs are unreachable, with a configurable timeout before messages pass through. ChatSentinel is free and open source.