Calagopus vs AMP
AMP (Application Management Panel) by CubeCoders has been in active development since 2014, and it takes a noticeably different approach from the Pterodactyl family. It runs natively on both Windows and Linux, without requiring Docker for most applications, and offers deep, per-game integrations instead of relying on a generic server console. It also includes WebAuthn and OIDC single sign-on out of the box. The trade-off is that AMP is closed-source and commercially licensed, with pricing based on the number of game-server instances rather than being freely available.
Calagopus takes the opposite approach when it comes to licensing: it's MIT-licensed, free to use at any scale, and follows the same Docker-per-server model used by Pterodactyl and Pelican. It's also built from the ground up in Rust. This comparison focuses on the areas that matter most when choosing between the two - licensing, architecture, and feature depth - rather than treating them as identical products solving the problem in exactly the same way.
Quick Summary
| Calagopus | AMP | |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Rust | C# (.NET) |
| First release | June 2025 | 2014 |
| License | MIT (open source) | Proprietary (closed source) |
| Price | Free | Paid, per-instance |
| Commercial Use | Allowed | Requires Enterprise Edition |
| Extension System | ✅ | ✅ |
| Windows Panel Support | ✅ | ✅ |
| ARM64 Support | ✅ | ✅ |
Architecture
Calagopus uses the same basic architecture as Pterodactyl and Pelican: a panel communicates with a Wings node daemon, which runs each game server inside its own Docker container.
AMP takes a different route. By default, it manages applications as native processes on the host operating system and only uses Docker when it's useful for a particular scenario. Neither approach is inherently better. Docker gives Calagopus strong per-server isolation out of the box, while AMP's process-based model avoids Docker for the common case, which can be especially appealing to operators running Windows environments.
AMP isn't included in our benchmarking suite. It doesn't use the same kind of API-based, scriptable deployment that the suite is designed around, so we don't have a direct throughput comparison like we do for Pterodactyl and Pelican.
Feature Comparison
The table below is based on the full feature reference and focuses specifically on Calagopus and AMP.
| Feature | Calagopus | AMP |
|---|---|---|
| Free & Open Source | ✅ | ❌ |
| Live Console | ✅ | ✅ |
| File Manager | ✅ | ✅ |
| Backup Browsing Support | ✅ | ✅ |
| Database Management | ✅ | ✅ |
| Redis Server-Database Support | ✅ | ❌ |
| Backups | ✅ | ✅ |
| Schedule Tasks | ✅ | ✅ |
| Advanced Schedule Triggers | ✅ | ✅ |
| Extra Allocations | ✅ | ✅ |
| SFTP Support | ✅ | ✅ |
| Collaborative File Editing | ✅ | ❌ |
| Subuser Management | ✅ | ✅ |
| WebAuthn Authentication | ✅ | ✅ |
| OAuth Support | ✅ | ✅ |
| User Management | ✅ | ✅ |
| Support for Multiple Nodes | ✅ | ✅ |
AMP is particularly strong when it comes to server management. It integrates heavily with the games it supports, while Calagopus offers a more generic approach out of the box.
Where Calagopus Goes Further
Licensing and Cost
This is arguably the biggest difference between the two.
Calagopus is MIT-licensed and completely free for personal or commercial use. There are no per-instance fees and no limits on the number of servers or nodes you can operate.
AMP's Standard, Professional, and Advanced editions are one-time purchases rather than subscriptions. They're licensed by instance count, with standard pricing. However, those tiers cannot be used to commercially resell game-server hosting.
Commercial reselling requires AMP Enterprise Edition, which is covered by a separate commercial agreement. So if you're running a hosting business rather than a personal or community server, that distinction is considerably more important than the entry-level price alone.
File Management
Both panels provide a file manager, but Calagopus goes further with file-edit history and a diff viewer, the ability to browse .zip, .tar, and .7z archives without extracting them first, cross-server file copying, and real-time collaborative file editing.
AMP's file manager doesn't offer these same capabilities, but does have built-in configuration editors tailored to specific games.
Database Types
Through its dedicated database agent, Calagopus can provision PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL/MariaDB and Redis as server-attached database types.
AMP can also run these databases (except Redis) as seperate instances, but does offer less flexibility in terms of deployment on seperate servers.
Migrating from AMP
There isn't currently an automated AMP importer like the ones available for Pterodactyl or Pelican. AMP's instance model doesn't map neatly onto Calagopus's node-and-server structure, so migrating requires setting up Calagopus from scratch and recreating your server configurations.
For most small-to-medium-sized setups, that's a manageable, if somewhat manual, process. The best place to start is the installation guide.
Ready to Switch?
If you're moving away from AMP because of its cost, closed-source model, or another reason, you can install Calagopus from scratch and manually recreate your existing server configurations.
On the other hand, if AMP's per-game integrations or native Windows process model are important to your workflow, those are perfectly valid reasons to stick with it. There isn't a reason to pick one over the other, they simply do different things. Pick what is right for you.
More comparisons: Calagopus vs Pterodactyl · Calagopus vs Pelican