Open Source Rust Minecraft Mods

Arnis is a free and open-source desktop application that generates playable Minecraft worlds from real-world geographic data. The project processes large datasets from sources such as OpenStreetMap and elevation data to recreate terrain, buildings, roads, and landmarks with impressive spatial accuracy inside Minecraft. By converting geographic information into Minecraft blocks and structures, Arnis allows users to explore real cities, neighborhoods, and landscapes in a virtual environment that mirrors the real world. The tool handles large-scale geospatial processing and transforms raw mapping data into a format compatible with Minecraft world generation. Users can generate entire regions, including detailed urban layouts and natural terrain, making it useful for education, visualization, or creative world-building projects.

modrinth is the primary open-source monolithic repository that contains the backend, web interface, and core infrastructure powering the Modrinth mod distribution platform. The project consolidates the codebase used to operate the Modrinth website, its APIs, and related services that allow users to discover, publish, and manage Minecraft mods, plugins, and modpacks. The platform is designed to support a modern ecosystem for mod distribution, providing developers with tools to upload and maintain projects while giving players an easy way to search and install community-created content. Built largely with Rust and modern web technologies, the codebase emphasizes performance, reliability, and scalable infrastructure capable of serving large modding communities. The repository acts as the central development hub where contributors can implement improvements, security updates, and new features for the Modrinth ecosystem.

A minimalistic, lightweight Minecraft server written in Rust, designed to handle simple multiplayer tasks.

Pumpkin is an open-source Minecraft server implementation written entirely in the Rust programming language with the goal of delivering high performance, efficiency, and modern architecture for hosting multiplayer worlds. Unlike the original Java-based server, Pumpkin focuses on leveraging Rust’s memory safety and performance advantages to create a fast and stable server environment. The project aims to replicate the core mechanics and gameplay of Minecraft while providing a flexible foundation for customization and optimization. Its architecture emphasizes efficient networking, resource management, and scalability, allowing servers to handle more players with reduced system overhead. Pumpkin is designed to be approachable for developers and server administrators who want to run Minecraft servers with improved performance and modern tooling.

Ferium is a fast and feature rich CLI program for downloading and updating Minecraft mods from Modrinth, CurseForge, and GitHub Releases, and modpacks from Modrinth and CurseForge. Simply specify the mods you use, and in just one command you can download the latest compatible version of all the mods you configured.

A Minecraft 1.20.4 creative server built for Redstone. Each 256x256 plot runs on a separate thread, allowing for less lag, more concurrency, and many awesome extra features. MCHPRS is very different from traditional servers. Because this server is tailored to the use of computation redstone, many things that are a part of Vanilla Minecraft servers don't exist here. That being said, MCHPRS comes with many of its own unique features.

Rust framework for building Minecraft: Java Edition servers. Built on top of Bevy ECS, Valence is an effort to create a Minecraft-compatible server completely from scratch in Rust. You can think of Valence as a game engine for Minecraft servers. It doesn't do much by default, but by writing game logic yourself and leveraging Bevy's powerful plugin system, you can make almost anything. Opinionated features like dynamic scripting, dedicated executables, and vanilla game mechanics are all expected to be built as optional plugins. This level of modularity is desirable for those looking to build highly custom experiences in Minecraft such as minigame servers.

FerrumC is a re-implementation of a server for the game Minecraft (version 1.21.8) built from scratch in Rust, designed to offer significantly improved performance and memory efficiency compared to vanilla server implementations. By using Rust’s concurrency and safety guarantees, FerrumC runs fully multithreaded, allowing it to utilize all available CPU cores — which helps deliver smoother, low-latency, high-throughput multiplayer experiences. The project aims both at providing a fast, lean server for typical use (friends or small communities) and offering a foundation that could support large-scale servers, mod/plugin systems, and custom server configurations. FerrumC supports importing existing Minecraft worlds, making it easy for users to migrate from standard servers without losing progress. Its networking, world encoding (chunks, NBT, Anvil format), and entity systems are custom-built with efficiency in mind, which results in fast world loading, minimal I/O lag.

SteelMC is an independent Minecraft Java Edition server implementation written in Rust. It aims to reproduce vanilla behavior while using modern multicore processors more efficiently. Gameplay updates remain synchronous, while chunk generation, lighting, packet processing, and chunk transmission can run outside the main server tick. Players can join persistent multiplayer worlds, move, interact with blocks, manage inventories, use commands, chat, and return to previously saved areas. Its networking layer supports Java Edition authentication, encryption, compression, and protocol communication. World generation is currently its most complete system and is tested against reproducible vanilla chunks for block-level parity. SteelMC remains in pre-alpha, with incomplete survival mechanics, limited entity behavior, no plugin system, and no compatibility with Bukkit, Paper, Fabric, Forge, or NeoForge extensions.

Hematite is an experimental open-source project that attempts to reimplement aspects of the Minecraft game engine using the Rust programming language. Developed within the Piston ecosystem, the project serves primarily as a technical experiment exploring how Rust can be used to build complex game systems such as rendering, world simulation, and client architecture. Hematite aims to replicate core elements of Minecraft’s mechanics while leveraging Rust’s safety guarantees and modern performance capabilities. The project also explores the possibility of building alternative server implementations or game engines compatible with Minecraft-style gameplay. By rewriting core systems in Rust, the developers hope to create a more efficient and flexible architecture compared with the original Java-based implementation. The project includes components for rendering Minecraft-like worlds and experimenting with game engine features within the Piston graphics framework.