No. 15 of 25 ·Game Networking Middleware

DarkRift 2

Windows · Linux · Self-hosted

Freedom report

Two barsScore 6.4

DarkRift 2 is ranked #15 of 25 in game networking middleware on Freedom251. It runs on Linux, Self-hosted, Windows. There is a free plan.

DarkRift 2 plans and pricing

DarkRift 2 Free Free and open source · no CCU limits github.com · 8 Oct 2026

Purpose: DarkRift is a multithreaded networking library for multiplayer experiences that need an authoritative server.
Transport: DarkRift 2 supports TCP and UDP with bi-channel communication.
Performance: The project says UDP overhead can be as low as 3 bytes.
Server modes: It supports Unity embedded servers and standalone servers.
Scalability: The project describes server clustering and says it has no concurrent-user limits.
Metrics: Built-in Prometheus metrics can integrate with monitoring solutions such as Grafana or Datadog.
Other features: The project lists basic matchmaking support, custom metrics, and a chat filter.
Extensibility: Developers can replace the Bichannel Network Listener with another low-level networking library.
Support: The project says support is entirely community driven and directs users to its community Discord.
Maintenance: The README says Unordinal is no longer able to maintain the project and the community now cares for it.
Build requirement: The project requires Visual Studio 2022 or newer to build because at least one Visual C# project fails in Visual Studio 2019 and earlier.
License: Most source files use MPL 2.0, while Unity scripts use MIT.
Release status: The 2.11.0 release is marked pre-release, with the note that problems remain to be ironed out.
Price from: Free

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