Is Pelican free and open source?

Updated

Yes. Pelican (pelican.dev) states that it is "100% free to use forever" for yourself, friends, family, and others, and that all of its code is completely open source on GitHub. The site shows no pricing page, paid tier, or payment platform, so there is no published paid version to compare against.

What "free" covers

According to the site, the free-to-use terms are not limited to personal use. The stated scope is:

  • Yourself
  • Friends
  • Family
  • Others

That wording matters if you are deciding whether Pelican fits a small private server or a larger gaming community. The site also describes the panel as scalable, saying it covers both "some friends that want to play together" and "a gaming community."

What "open source" means here

The site says all code is completely open source on GitHub. It does not list a specific license in the provided page content, so if license terms matter to your project, check the GitHub repository directly before relying on it.

What Pelican actually is

Pelican is a game server control panel. Its stated features:

Feature What the site says
Interface Updated, intuitive, one-click installations
Isolation Each server runs in its own Docker container, completely isolated
Hardware Works on almost any machine because of Docker
Security SSL, 2FA, AES-256 encryption, and more
Updates Automatic updates
Support Comprehensive documentation, active community support

Which games it supports

The site lists Minecraft, Terraria, Palworld, Valheim, Enshrouded, Factorio, "and so much more," referring to these as "eggs."

How to decide

Choose Pelican if you want a self-hosted game server panel with no stated cost, container isolation per server, and source code you can inspect. Before committing, verify two things the homepage does not settle: the exact open-source license on GitHub, and whether your specific game has an egg available.