Crux vs Metaplay
Crux
crux.supercraft.host
Metaplay
metaplay.ioSide by side
| Figure | Crux | Metaplay |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $10/mo | €195/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 17 |
| Spec score · Game Leaderboard Software | 8.6 (#12) | 9.0 (#4) |
| Spec score · Game LiveOps Software | 8.6 (#12) | 9.0 (#5) |
| Integrations | The maker lists Unity, Roblox, Godot, and custom game servers as supported integrations, and publishes JavaScript, Godot, Unity, and Roblox client SDKs. | 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 | Crux says it is best suited to dedicated-server and multiplayer survival or co-op games, including indie and mid-size studios, and less suited to offline single-player games. | Metaplay describes its audience as ambitious game studios building server-authoritative games, from prototype through global launch, including teams operating multiple titles. |
| Product | Crux provides multiplayer game backend services including player authentication, persistent data, leaderboards, server registry, live config, economy, and matchmaking. | Metaplay is a backend platform for building and operating live service games. |
| Security | Crux describes PostgreSQL row-level security, environment isolation, and separate API key, server token, and player JWT access modes. | The maker describes TLS-encrypted client-server communication, encrypted database data at rest through the cloud provider, role-based access controls and audit logs. |
| Support | Dev includes community support, Launch includes email support, and Scale includes priority email support. | 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. |
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
Crux
Crux provides multiplayer game backend services for player authentication, persistent data, leaderboards, server registration, live configuration, game economies, and matchmaking. Authentication supports email and password, guest sessions, Google, GitHub, and Discord OAuth, as well as Roblox verification. Developers can store player- or project-scoped JSON documents and configure ranked or seasonal leaderboards with recurring resets. Economy tools handle currencies, virtual items, and inventories through atomic, server-authoritative updates. Matchmaking queues players by game mode and region, then assigns them to live servers from the dedicated server registry. The maker lists Unity, Roblox, Godot, and custom game servers as integrations, with client SDKs for JavaScript, Godot, Unity, and Roblox. The hosted API is documented with OpenAPI, and client SDKs are MIT-licensed; the managed backend is proprietary. Crux has a free Dev plan and paid plans from $10.00 per month. Runtime is a capacity-gated closed alpha for Godot 4 Linux dedicated-server exports, with Dev evaluation limited to admitted projects. Crux says it best suits dedicated-server multiplayer survival or co-op games.
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.