Server Browser

Welcome to Edgegap Server Browser OPEN BETA. We hope you enjoy the opportunity to preview our new service, and help shape it's future through roundtable discussions in our Discord.

Server Browser is a managed service for Match-Bound and Persistent servers:

• help players search and join suitable servers based on capacity, latency, or game parameters;

• pre-warm new servers to serve global audiences at scale and prevent frustrating queues;

• streamline server operations including updates, restarts, persistence, meshing, and more.

Looking to match players based on strict rules, without allowing server choice? Consider Matchmaking.

✔️ Preparation

Testing this service is entirely free, no credit card required.

Free Tier allows up to 3 hours of runtime on our shared test cluster, after each restart.

This tutorial assumes you have already:

• understood Edgegap’s deployment model,

• published your server application on Edgegap (Unreal Engine, Unity),

• successfully connected from a game client to your server on Edgegap.

Flow and Hierarchy

Server Browser: Flow and Hierarchy

Server Browser offers two main features:

▶️ Start Browsing with Game Clients to:

• Discover and find suitable server instances, view slots, and reserve available capacity.

• Reserve seats in an instance slot, retrieve connection details, and connect to servers.

• Authenticate player connections from Deployments using Federated Identity.

• Update instance slots' available capacity and/or metadata to modify discovery criteria.

🚀 Automated Scaling (optional) with Scaling Policies to:

• Monitor available server instances, slots, capacity - per region and/or other criteria.

• Deploy Servers to increase capacity with prewarming or just-in-time scaling.

• Automate ops with special policies for demos, updates, testing, QA, tournaments, and more.

After release, your server browser will need to run 24/7 to ensure players across the world can join servers.

▶️ Start Browsing

Learn about server/player lifecycle and their responsibilities to ensure efficient server use.

Authenticate

All requests must send an Authorization HTTP header with your secret Auth Token:

Authorization: xxxxxxxx-e458-4592-b607-c2c28afd8b62

Keep your tokens secret and safe! Edgegap staff will never ask you for your tokens.

Server Browser automatically generates two types of tokens:

• Server Token - required for Server API methods, can be injected as app version variable.

  • Grants access to all API methods, and is handy for testing, devops, or custom orchestration.

• Client Token - required for Monitor API and Seat Reservation API used by Game Clients.

  • We recommend storing this token in a third party secret store to make token rotation easier.

Discover Instance

New Deployments must create a new Instance with at least one Slot when initialized.

See 🚀 Automated Scaling to learn about Scaling Policies and start deployments automatically.

Optional custom metadata parameters for player filtering, sorting, and browsing.

Examples:

• slot information - team capacity and team-specific metadata (e.g. team name),

• name and tags - customizable, unique, human-readable and searchable labels;

• connection details - URL, IP, external ports, or other parameters;

• compatibility data - server version or supported client versions;

• latency qualifiers - city and region identifiers, and assigned Ping Beacons details;

• game parameters - level/scene/map, game mode, difficulty, mods used;

• any other custom parameters to help players filter and find a suitable server.

Metadata parameters above are just examples, you can define any parameters including the above. All metadata parameters are optional, and some instances may not need to define all parameters.

Metadata supports string keys and values containing string, number, boolean, or array of strings.

To serialize nested objects try encoding their accessor path in the key as "object.child.property".

Servers may update instance or slot metadata anytime to modify their discoverability criteria.

Server Instances must periodically send a keep-alive heartbeat to verify their ongoing availability and prevent players from joining crashed or offline servers. Missing heartbeat for the configured expiration period will automatically delete instance and any pending seat reservations.

See Persistence for managing persistent world state and Active Caching for faster deployments.

Search and Browse

Players may list server instances and paginate through results to find a server they'd like to join. To display ping (latency) data, read each instance's Ping Beacons details and measure latency.

Instances and slots may be filtered by joinable seats or indexed metadata parameters.

Parameter	Operators	Example Filter (based on Simple Example)
"joinable_seats"	eq or ne or lt or le or gt or ge	?filter=joinable_seats gt 0 &orderby=joinable_seats desc
"string" (metadata)	eq or ne or lt or le or gt or ge or contains	?filter=metadata.custom_name contains 'my game' and metadata.server_version le '1.1.0' and metadata.server_version ge '1.0.0' &orderby=metadata.custom_name asc
"int" , or "float" (metadata)	eq or ne or lt or le or gt or ge	?filter=metadata.xp_multiplier gt 1.0 &orderby=metadata.xp_multiplier desc
"bool" (metadata)	eq or ne	?filter=metadata.allows_new_connections eq true

Filter by regions and/or cities to narrow down selection before measuring latency to servers.

Learn about cursor-based Pagination to let users fetch more results.

Reserve Seats

Before joining a server, a seat reservation is required to ensure that the instance offers sufficient available capacity. Reservations can include a group of players or a solo individual.

Reservations exceeding slot's joinable seat capacity will be automatically rejected (409 Conflict). Joinable seats are any available seats which have not been reserved by other players yet.

Federated Identity: Players must provide a unique third party player ID in their reservation. Sending the same ID once they Connect to Server will allow the server to verify their identity.

Once a reservation is made successfully (200 OK) players should attempt connecting immediately. Pending reservations will expire after 30 seconds unless they are confirmed by your server.

Server may forcefully change any slot's capacity, add, delete, or update any slots. All reservations for a given slot will be removed if any pending reservations exceed new available slot capacity.

Connect to Server

Once a player found a suitable instance, they can retrieve required connection details from metadata (URL, IP, External Port). As soon as the seat reservation is made, players may proceed to connect to your deployment's game server and pass their player ID.

Unreal Engine

To connect from PIE (Editor) during development and testing, press the tilde key ~ and type open {URL}:{port} and wait for your editor to load the map.

In case of failed connections or dark screen consult our troubleshooting guide.

Unity

To authenticate new connections, your server must send a bulk reservation confirmation request with all new players' IDs, receiving information in confirmation response:

• assignment of accepted player reservations to their preferred slot,

• assignment of expired player reservations to their preferred slot,

• a list of unknown player IDs.

Your server may decide how to handle each group of players and whether to allow or kick/ban expired or rejected users. Each of the instance's slots must be updated immediately with the new available seat count to ensure new reservations won't exceed capacity.

Abandon Server

When players leave, the server must update their assigned slot to reflect new available seat capacity.

If your game design allows a reconnection period, your server may wait before releasing seats.

We recommend stopping servers with no players to optimize your hosting cost. Waiting a few minutes before doing so can reduce the amount of restarts during short periods of idling.

Read about Recovery Objectives to prevent frustrating persistent server rollbacks.

🚀 Automated Scaling

Server Browser is compatible with several different methods of autoscaling:

• pre-warming method - starting servers strictly with Server Browser scaling policies,

• just-in-time method - start through Matchmaking and fill with Server Browser,

• custom autoscaler - start through custom game backend and fill with Server Browser.

The following guide will focus on pre-warming with Scaling Policies as the primary method.

Learn how to stop deployments in Unreal Engine, Unity, or with API to manage lifecycle reliably.

Monitor Capacity

Scaling policies continuously refresh the list of your server instances (discovered Deployments), repeating every monitoring_interval . Each policy can include a filter using the same filtering syntax as players do when searching for instances - per region, capacity, or other criteria.

Your configured minimum_active_instances amount can be treated either as a:

• fixed capacity of deployments that you wish to keep running at all times,

• pre-warm standby deployment buffer to hide initialization delays.

Fixed Capacity

Keeping a fixed amount of servers can be useful particularly for games with Persistence, particularly when such games offer players to rent Community Servers.

This type of policy configuration is also sometimes used for Quality Assurance, Tournaments, Closed Alphas, Publisher Demos, or other kinds of limited capacity events and operations.

Scaling policy helps you automatically restart and recycle crashed or stopped servers on the fly.

Pre-Warm Standby

Starting servers ahead of player demand can be advantageous when:

• launch major releases or updates and expect rapid inflow of players in a short timespan,

• or server initialization requires more than 30 seconds (not including deployment time),

• or game implements meshing strategies requiring complex or circular network dependencies.

With matchmaking, you'll need to Backfill Match to utilize this capacity before starting new deployments.

Deploy Servers

New deployments will be started automatically when the amount of monitored server instances falls below the configured minimum of active instances. All deployments are requested immediately and retried infinitely after deployment_registration_period elapsed.

Verify that new deployments perform auto-discovery and create instances matching your policy filter correctly, or your policy may loop infinitely and create large amounts of unused deployments!

When defining a deployment request for your policy, we use the standard deployment parameters allowing deployment in Private Fleets (with Overflow to Cloud) or directly to Cloud:

• application and version - build version, resources, and other orchestration parameters,

• users - a single set of coordinates for preferred server placement,

• private host IDs - leave empty for cloud, or specify hosts within the desired region,

• tags - tag with policy name to find deployments started with this policy later on,

• environment variables - pass custom parameters and secrets to servers,

• webhooks - notify your game backend (or matchmaker) of deployment lifecycle events,

• require cached locations - if you prefer faster deployments only in cached locations.

Example Policies

Test and modify any of these policies as you need. Most games will use multiple policies.

🍀 Quality Assurance Pool (Minimal Example)

A simple policy to keep one server deployed for testing at all times.

{
  "name": "sb-qa-pool",
  "filter": "metadata.POLICY_NAME eq 'sb-qa-pool'",
  "deployment_request": {
    "private_host_ids": [],
    "application": "my-game-server",
    "version": "2024.01.30-16.23.00-UTC",
    "users": [
      {
        "user_type": "geo_coordinates",
        "user_data": {
          "latitude": 41.881832,
          "longitude": -87.623177
        }
      }
    ],
    "tags": ["sb-qa-pool"],
    "environment_variables": [
      {
        "key": "SB_POLICY_NAME",
        "value": "sb-qa-pool",
        "is_hidden": false
      }
    ]
  },
  "minimum_active_instances": 1
}

🌡️ Pre-Warm Release Per Region

Each region starts a deployments prior to the release in anticipation of demand.

{
  "name": "sb-v1.0.0-chicago",
  "filter": "joinable_seats gt 0 and metadata.POLICY_NAME eq 'sb-v1.0.0-chicago'",
  "deployment_request": {
    "private_host_ids": [],
    "application": "my-game-server",
    "version": "2024.01.30-16.23.00-UTC",
    "users": [
      {
        "user_type": "geo_coordinates",
        "user_data": {
          "latitude": 41.881832,
          "longitude": -87.623177
        }
      }
    ],
    "tags": ["sb-v1.0.0-chicago"],
    "environment_variables": [
      {
        "key": "SB_POLICY_NAME",
        "value": "sb-v1.0.0-chicago",
        "is_hidden": false
      }
    ]
  },
  "minimum_active_instances": 10
}

❄️ Server Meshing Group

One policy per group of servers, where game backend adds new policy for each group.

{
  "name": "sb-meshgroup-pqyt8sxcb",
  "filter": "metadata.POLICY_NAME eq 'sb-meshgroup-pqyt8sxcb'",
  "deployment_request": {
    "private_host_ids": [],
    "application": "my-game-server",
    "version": "2024.01.30-16.23.00-UTC",
    "users": [
      {
        "user_type": "geo_coordinates",
        "user_data": {
          "latitude": 41.881832,
          "longitude": -87.623177
        }
      }
    ],
    "tags": ["sb-meshgroup-pqyt8sxcb"],
    "environment_variables": [
      {
        "key": "SB_POLICY_NAME",
        "value": "sb-meshgroup-pqyt8sxcb",
        "is_hidden": false
      }
    ],
    "webhook_on_ready": {
      "url": "https://my-webhook.com"
    },
    "webhook_on_terminated": {
      "url": "https://my-webhook.com"
    }
  },
  "minimum_active_instances": 9
}

🔑 Community Server

One policy per server owner, passing a custom password used for server authentication.

{
  "name": "sb-owner-jnjnc8mid",
  "filter": "metadata.POLICY_NAME eq 'sb-owner-jnjnc8mid'",
  "deployment_request": {
    "private_host_ids": ["alpha-north-america-95fab093"],
    "application": "my-game-server",
    "version": "2024.01.30-16.23.00-UTC",
    "users": [
      {
        "user_type": "geo_coordinates",
        "user_data": {
          "latitude": 41.881832,
          "longitude": -87.623177
        }
      }
    ],
    "tags": ["community", "sb-owner-jnjnc8mid"],
    "environment_variables": [
      {
        "key": "SB_POLICY_NAME",
        "value": "sb-owner-jnjnc8mid",
        "is_hidden": false
      },
      {
        "key": "SB_SERVER_PASSWORD",
        "value": "password1234",
        "is_hidden": false
      }
    ],
    "webhook_on_ready": {
      "url": "https://my-webhook.com"
    },
    "webhook_on_error": {
      "url": "https://my-webhook.com"
    },
    "webhook_on_terminated": {
      "url": "https://my-webhook.com"
    }
  },
  "minimum_active_instances": 1
}

🔒 Region-Locked MMO

Each region adds deployments as available capacity drops below a threshold.

{
  "name": "sb-mmo-chicago",
  "filter": "joinable_seats gt 5 and metadata.POLICY_NAME eq 'sb-mmo-chicago'",
  "deployment_request": {
    "private_host_ids": ["alpha-north-america-95fab093"],
    "application": "my-game-server",
    "version": "2024.01.30-16.23.00-UTC",
    "users": [
      {
        "user_type": "geo_coordinates",
        "user_data": {
          "latitude": 41.881832,
          "longitude": -87.623177
        }
      }
    ],
    "tags": ["sb-mmo-chicago"],
    "environment_variables": [
      {
        "key": "SB_POLICY_NAME",
        "value": "sb-mmo-chicago",
        "is_hidden": false
      }
    ],
    "webhook_on_terminated": {
      "url": "https://my-webhook.com"
    }
  },
  "minimum_active_instances": 3
}

⚙️ Configuration

Server Browser API is generated from a JSON configuration specified when you create a new (or quick-restart) Server Browser. You may specify server and slot expiration, and custom metadata:

🍀 Simple Example

sb-simple-example-v0-0-5.json

{
	"version": "0.0.5",
	"server_instances": {
		"expiration_period": "1m",
		"indices": {
			"name": "string"
		}
	},
	"server_instance_slots": {
		"indices": {
			"name": "string"
		}
	},
	"seat_reservations": {
		"expiration_period": "1m"
	},
	"scaling_policies": {
		"monitoring_interval": "10s",
		"deployment_registration_period": "1m"
	}
}

🎈 Social Games

🤝 Cooperative Games

⚔️ Competitive Games

For best performance, avoid specifying indices for metadata not used for filtering or sorting. Non-indexed params can be still set and read with server instance or slot details API methods, see 📗 API.

☁️ Hosting Cluster

Server Browser is conveniently hosted and managed 24/7 around the clock by Edgegap.

Choose a hosting option best suited for your goal:

• Free Cluster (shared) to test all features and explore synergies with your design,

  • shuts down after 3 hours automatically, requiring restart to continue testing.

• Private Cluster (dedicated) to ensure a stable environment for your production needs,

  • pick your region and get 24/7 support for live games to release with confidence.

Private Cluster Tiers

We currently offer 3 private cluster tiers to cater to everybody’s needs:

Tier	Hobbyist Tier	Studio Tier	Enterprise Tier
Best Suited For	enthusiasts, solo developers	commercial releases	high-traffic launches
Resources	1 vCPU + 2GB RAM	6 vCPU + 12GB RAM	18 vCPU + 48GB RAM
Redundancy	1x virtual node	3x virtual nodes	3x virtual nodes
Rate Limit (req/s)	200	750	2,000
Price, hourly	$0.0312	$0.146	$0.548
Price, 30 days (nonstop usage)	$22.464	$105.12	$394.56

Upgrade to a private cluster with one click to benefit from highly available hosting maintained by Edgegap team with 24/7 live support for publicly released games.

Resource requirements for your instance will depend on factors:

• number of players - more players result in more API requests,

• number of requests per player - faster retries increase service load and consume resources,

• number of servers - more servers result in more data stored and more API requests,

• client retry fallback logic - retrying with jittered backoff helps spread traffic burst peaks,

• average match duration - shorter sessions require more frequent server browser interaction.

Our clusters use cloud machines featuring AMD/Intel CPUs with clock speed 2.4 - 3.2 GHz.

📗 API

Game Clients and Dedicated Servers send API requests throughout their lifecycle to Server Browser.

Unity/Android - consider using raw string interpolation to prevent code stripping of hardcoded JSONs.

Swagger Web UI: deploying your service will generate an openAPI specification and a convenient web UI. Open the URL in your browser to view and test all API endpoints, and to review payload examples.

73KB

edgegap-server-browser-005.yaml

Open

Import API specification to Scalar API Web Client or Swagger Editor to inspect details.

Pagination

Server Browser provides cursor pagination to fetch filtered data incrementally in a specific order. This approach requires sending a cursor (starting point) and a page size (number of response items) whenever fetching more results, as opposed to the traditional limit-offset pagination.

Combined with our proprietary database indexing system developed for game server metadata, cursor pagination provides a fast, consistent, and flexible user experience for filtering highly dynamic data.

Our goal is for users to find a suitable server on the first page. For best experience, we recommend showing cached results for previous pages, and only refreshing results when the user clicks Search.

🔖 Changelog

Semantic Versioning

Our matchmaker uses official Semantic Versioning guidelines. Each configuration JSON is tied to a specific version of the service. Service version dictates which rules and settings are available in your configuration and API. Once a version is released, it will never change.

The latest version of server browser is 0.0.5 . Keep an eye out for updates and announcements.

0.0.5 (Mar 18, 2026)

• Introducing 🚀 Automated Scaling and Example Policies.

• Adding more ⚙️ Configuration Examples for your inspiration.

• Improved Flow and Hierarchy diagram to get started faster.

0.0.4 (Jan 05, 2026)

• Entering OPEN BETA, introducing filtering and sorting for server instances and slots!

0.0.3 (Nov 28, 2025)

• Initial release of Server Browser service launched in CLOSED BETA.

• List Servers, Manage Capacity, and Get Connection Details.

• Support for match sessions with Cloud Deployments and always online with Private Fleets.