Best Garry's Mod Alternatives With Dedicated Servers (2026)

The best Garry's Mod alternatives with dedicated servers are Brickadia, Tower Unite, Modiverse, Midnight Ghost Hunt, SCP: Secret Laboratory, Pavlov, Stormworks, Onset and Space Engineers. Garry's Mod is really four things, a physics sandbox, a platform for party modes like TTT and Prop Hunt, a roleplay engine and a hangout space, and each alternative covers one or two of those. Brickadia is the best pick for building with logic, Midnight Ghost Hunt for Prop Hunt fans, and Tower Unite for a place to hang out.

Before you go, remember that Garry's Mod is still very much alive, with servers up to 128 slots and a Workshop that never stops. The alternatives below are for groups that want something new, not because Gmod is dead.

Garry's Mod alternatives at a glance

1. Brickadia

A brick building sandbox in the spirit of Blockland, which is itself a cousin of Gmod's building scene. You build with bricks, wire up logic for doors, scoring and contraptions, then use game rules to turn a build into an arena or minigame. It came to Steam in Early Access in July 2025. Build servers, minigame servers and roleplay towns all exist.

• RAM: 6 GB for a small group, 8 GB for large detailed worlds with active contraptions.

2. Tower Unite

From developers who worked on Gmod's GMod Tower, Tower Unite is a social hangout game: a Plaza with activities, minigames like Ball Race and Minigolf, and condos you decorate. A dedicated condo stays open for clubs, dance nights and contests without anyone hosting from their PC.

• RAM: 4 GB for a hangout condo, 8 GB for a heavily decorated condo with 32 guests.

3. Modiverse

The most direct copy of the Gmod formula: physgun, gravity gun, ropes, thrusters and props, plus TTT, Deathrun, Sandbox and a light roleplay mode out of the box. It costs less than a dollar on Steam. Be aware that the developers have not posted an update in years and the player base is small, so it is a game for your own group rather than for finding strangers.

• RAM: 4 GB for a small TTT or Deathrun group.

4. Midnight Ghost Hunt

If Prop Hunt was your Gmod mode, this is the full game version. Ghosts possess props, Hunters sweep the rooms, and at midnight the ghosts turn the tables. Steam and Epic players can play together once they link accounts in game.

• RAM: 4 GB for 4v4, 6 GB for 6v6 or Darkness with bots.

5. SCP: Secret Laboratory

Free, round based and built on proximity voice chat. Every round splits players into sides that lie to each other, which gives it the same energy as a good TTT server. The EXILED server type adds plugins for custom roles and events.

• RAM: 4 GB for vanilla around 20 players.

6. Pavlov

A VR shooter whose community modes read like a Gmod server list: Trouble in Terrorist Town, Prop Hunt, zombies, Gun Game and tank battles, plus custom maps from mod.io. If your group has headsets, it is TTT with your own hands.

• RAM: 4 GB for a private VR group.

7. Stormworks: Build and Rescue

For Gmod players who spent their time building cars with Wiremod: Stormworks is vehicle building with real engines, electrics, fluids and logic, then taking the result into a storm to rescue people. Up to 32 players share the islands.

• RAM: 4 GB for a small group with modest vehicles, 6 GB for 10 plus players or big ships.

8. Onset

An open world sandbox with no built in objective, where every mode comes from server side Lua packages: roleplay cities, racing, prop hunt or freeroam. Over 400 scripting functions give Gmod developers a familiar playground. The developers have not shipped an update in several years and the player count is small, so it suits scripting communities.

• RAM: 2 GB for private freeroam, 4 GB for roleplay with a database.

9. Space Engineers

Physics building at a much bigger scale: ships, stations and planetary bases, all destructible. If your Gmod sessions were about building something huge and then crashing it, Space Engineers takes that to orbit.

• RAM: 8 GB for a small survival server.

Staying with Garry's Mod

If the problem is the server you play on rather than the game, your own Gmod server fixes it. Paste a Workshop collection ID in the panel and the server pulls those addons every start, pick the gamemode, map and slots, and you have TTT, DarkRP or Sandbox your way. How to add Workshop addons to a Garry's Mod server and how to install ULX cover the basics.

Host your group's new sandbox

A GamezServers server for any of these is live in about a minute, with your own address, a file manager and SFTP for addons and packages, and one click backups before you load a risky mod. You can switch game from the panel, so the same server can run Gmod this month and Brickadia the next. Start with Garry's Mod or Brickadia.

FAQ

What is the closest game to Garry's Mod?

Modiverse copies the formula most directly, with a physgun, TTT and Deathrun. Brickadia is the stronger building sandbox.

Is there a Prop Hunt game like Garry's Mod?

Midnight Ghost Hunt is a full game built on prop hiding, with a midnight twist where ghosts hunt the hunters.

Is Garry's Mod still worth hosting in 2026?

Yes. Community servers for TTT, DarkRP and Sandbox are still busy, and servers run up to 128 slots.

What Gmod alternative is free?

SCP: Secret Laboratory is free on Steam. Modiverse costs less than a dollar.