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Features

5Stack is a comprehensive Counter-Strike management system, servers, matchmaking, tournaments, leagues, stats, and everything you do with a match after it ends. This is the full picture of what the platform offers.

Pages linked below go deeper on the bigger features.

Play

  • Quick Play & Matchmaking: jump into 1v1, 2v2, or 5v5, spin up instant scrims, or queue into latency-aware regional matchmaking with a party.
  • Draft Lobbies: host a pick-up game with real structure: auto-split, captains draft, host-assigned, or pre-made teams, with a pick clock, benches, and a substitute waitlist.
  • Matches: server selection (on-demand, dedicated, or third-party), access modes and invites, map/region veto, check-in, and full match rules (knife, overtime, pauses, best-of, coaches, and more).
  • Scrim Finder: advertise when your team plays, set who you'll play, and negotiate scrims without a Discord thread.
  • Custom Map Pools: curated pools for every format (1v1, 2v2, 5v5), including workshop maps.

Compete

  • Tournaments & Brackets: open or private tournaments with multi-stage Single Elimination, Double Elimination, Round Robin, or Swiss formats, group stages, seeding, byes, prizes, awards, and a live, embeddable bracket.
  • Leagues: seasonal divisions, weekly match play, captain-negotiated scheduling, playoffs, and promotion/relegation.
  • Events: wrap a LAN or a cup weekend into one page with its own medal table, leaderboard, and media gallery.
  • Competitive Seasons: periodic Elo resets with season-scoped stats and leaderboards.

Match review & media

  • Match Analysis: scoreboard lenses, economy and buy-type breakdowns, clutches, head-to-head, detected roles, heatmaps and movement paths, plus team veto tendencies and a veto simulator.
  • Match Replay (2D & 3D): re-watch any map as a top-down radar replay or a full 3D fly-through, right in the browser.
  • In-Browser Demo Playback: GOTV-style demo viewer with player POV switching, X-ray, and round-by-round navigation.
  • Highlights: automatic highlight reels of multikills and clutches, plus an in-app clip builder.
  • Live Streaming: broadcast matches from the panel with the Stream Deck, a public watch hub, a scoreboard overlay, and picture-in-picture.
  • Demos: automatic upload, storage, retention, and download.

Stats

  • Stats & Leaderboards: HLTV-style ratings, KAST/ADR, opening duels, clutches, roles, Elo, and global leaderboards, including imported Valve/FACEIT matches.
  • Performance Rating: Aim, Positioning, and Utility scored out of 100 against every other player, with focus areas and coaching notes.
  • External Matches: import your Valve and FACEIT matches (or upload a demo) to get full stats, replay, and highlights.

Community

  • Teams, Lobbies & Chat: teams, friends, parties, and smart, context-aware chat that bridges the web app and in-server.
  • Steam Presence: see what friends are playing, in 5Stack and outside it.
  • Moderation & Sanctions: bans, mutes, gags, and silences that follow a player everywhere, plus automatic VAC ban detection.
  • News: first-party announcements written and published from inside the panel.
  • Discord Integration: create matches, manage lobbies, run map veto, and sync roles from Discord with the 5Stack bot.

Servers & infrastructure

  • Flexible Server Management: on-demand servers, dedicated hardware, or third-party machines, all from one panel.
  • Automatic CS2 updates: servers stay on the latest CS2 build (and 5Stack plugin) automatically, with optional version pinning when you need stability.
  • Regional Servers: multi-region and LAN-capable, with built-in Steam Relay to hide your real server IPs.
  • Server Insights: live CPU / memory / disk, logs, CPU pinning, and low-latency kernel status.
  • GPU Nodes: power highlights, demo playback, and live streaming rendering.

Platform

  • Installable app (PWA): add 5Stack to your home screen or desktop for an app-like experience, with offline-aware caching.
  • 17 languages: the interface and the in-game plugin are fully localized, with automatic detection of your browser language.
  • Embeds & popouts: drop a live, auto-cycling tournament bracket onto a stream or site, and pop replays and broadcasts out into their own windows for a second monitor.
  • Search: fast player and entity search from anywhere in the app.
  • API & personal keys: generate personal API keys for programmatic access to your data.
  • 5Stack Plugins: embed your own web applications as native panel pages, sharing the panel's session and design system. (For CS2 server-side plugins, see Game Plugins.)

For administrators

5Stack gives admins deep control over how the platform behaves:

Several features are optional and can be switched on or off instance-wide from Settings → Application: matchmaking, leagues, seasons, events, news, the Scrim Finder, plugins, and linked accounts.

Rendering features need a GPU

Highlights, in-browser demo playback, and live streaming are all rendered on a GPU node. See GPU Nodes.