How to make your own agar.io server

The short answer

In 2026 you do not need Node.js, a VPS or port forwarding to run your own agar server. On alis.io you build a gamemode in a visual editor, press publish, and it goes live on a free hosted server with its own page and link. The whole thing takes about three minutes and your server stays up without your computer being on.

Why the guides from 2015 no longer work

Almost every tutorial you will find for this search is a decade old. They all describe the same stack: an open-source server called Ogar, or one of its forks like MultiOgar and OgarII, running on Node.js on your own machine, with config files to edit and a port to forward so friends could reach your IP address.

That ecosystem is gone. The original Ogar project was archived in 2020 and its maintained forks stopped updating between 2021 and 2023. The tutorials still rank in search results, but following them today means running unmaintained code, keeping your machine online for as long as anyone wants to play, and debugging protocol versions from 2016. The paid alternative, renting an agar server from a game-hosting company, starts around $8 a month for the same decade-old software.

If you would rather actually run the software yourself, we wrote an honest walkthrough of OgarII and MultiOgarII, the Node version pitfalls and where to host.

Making your server on alis.io

1. Open the editor. Go to alis.io/create on a desktop browser and sign in with Discord (free, and it makes the mode yours to edit later).
2. Pick a starting point. Templates cover the classics: free-for-all, instant merge, team battles. Or start blank.
3. Tune the rules. World size, split behavior, merge timers, viruses, bots, teams and win conditions are all sliders and toggles. This is where your server stops being a clone of everyone else's.
4. Draw a map if you want one. Walls and pellet zones with snap and symmetry tools, in the same editor. See the map maker for what is possible.
5. Publish. Your gamemode gets a page, a link and a live hosted server with player counts. Share the link anywhere; players click and spawn in.

Prefer a private match on an existing mode instead of building one? Open any gamemode page, choose Host, and set the room to invite-only. That path is covered in playing with friends.

What you control

Everything the old server configs exposed, and the parts they never had: physics (split velocity, merge time, cell caps, decay), the map (walls, pellet zones, world size), the format (free-for-all, teams, Domination-style objectives, win conditions), and the population (bot counts, player caps, public or invite-only). Published modes appear in the community browser where anyone can play them, rate them and remix them.