Please move away from Pterodactyl now
What has happened?
Okay, hear me out.
In December 2025, the Pterodactyl project (pterodactyl.io) was acquired by Infraly, LLC. You may know them from WISP.
After years of what felt like near-silence from the maintainers, this acquisition initially seemed like it could be an opportunity for some much-needed updates. Unfortunately, aside from security updates, very little happened over the following nine months. We mostly heard promises like “v2 is coming.”
Well, the time finally seems to have arrived. Pterodactyl v2 appears to be on its way, but with some rather unexpected surprises.
A few days before the announcement, they removed their community moderators, and replaced them with their own staff.
The community has been doing some digging, and it appears that the Pterodactyl team is introducing Pterodactyl+, a subscription-based model for certain features. Presumably, this will work through extensions or similar add-ons, much like what was offered with WISP.
On top of that, a staging panel was discovered. It didn't take long for community members to download the frontend files, map them onto v1, and create a working prototype.
When the Pterodactyl team discovered this, they began banning people from their Discord server, primarily accusing members of the Blueprint project of “leaking information.”
Who or what is Blueprint?
Blueprint is a non-profit organization that has spent years building an extension system for Pterodactyl.
After four years of development and active participation in the community, seeing the project treated this way is extremely disappointing. This is just a way to silence criticism.
Why should you care?
This is yet another instance of a for-profit corporation buying out a project, and enshittifying it. We can't let this happen *again*. The best way to be against this, is to replace your Pterodactyl instance with something else.
Please consider taking a look at:
Hydrodactyl: https://hydrodactyl.dev/
Calagopus: https://calagopus.com/
Both projects provide migration guides to help you make the switch.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
Do not cause trouble in the Pterodactyl Discord server, since they do not seem to appreciate that.
Disclosure: I am affiliated with the Calagopus project. This does not change my perspective on this manner, I just want to be transparent.