Deploy and Host PumpkinMC on Railway

PumpkinMC is a Minecraft server written entirely in Rust, offering full multithreaded tick execution instead of the single-threaded JVM tick loop that Bukkit, Spigot, and Paper are built on. It supports both Java Edition and Bedrock Edition clients, is configured through TOML files instead of server.properties, and aims to be a lightweight, high-performance alternative for admins who want lower memory overhead than a traditional Java server.

About Hosting PumpkinMC

Hosting PumpkinMC means running a single Rust binary in a Docker container, with a persistent volume for your world data, player data, and TOML configuration files. Unlike JVM-based servers, there's no memory or garbage collection tuning involved. Networking needs both a TCP port for Java clients and a UDP port for Bedrock clients, so your deployment should expose both if you want cross-play. PumpkinMC is still under active, heavy development, so admins should expect some rough edges around world persistence and chunk loading rather than treat it as a production-ready replacement for a mature server like Paper.

Common Use Cases

Testing and experimenting with a Rust-based server as an alternative to JVM servers like Paper or Spigot
Small private servers for a friend group who want lower resource usage
Cross-play servers supporting both Java and Bedrock Edition clients from a single server instance

Dependencies for PumpkinMC Hosting

A persistent volume mounted at /pumpkin for config, world, and player data
A TCP proxy or port mapping for the Java Edition port (default 25565)
A UDP port mapping for the Bedrock Edition port (default 19132), if Bedrock support is needed

Implementation Details

The official Docker image runs as a non-root user (UID/GID 2613) for security, which means a freshly created volume owned by root will cause permission errors on startup (Permission denied (os error 13)) when Pumpkin tries to create its world and player data directories. Fix this by chowning the mount to UID 2613 in your Dockerfile before the container starts:

FROM ghcr.io/pumpkin-mc/pumpkin:master
USER root
RUN chown -R 2613:2613 /pumpkin
USER 2613

Standard run command for reference:

docker run --rm \
  -p 25565:25565 \
  -p 19132:19132/udp \
  -v pumpkin-data:/pumpkin \
  -it ghcr.io/pumpkin-mc/pumpkin:master

Why Deploy PumpkinMC on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying PumpkinMC on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.