Minecraft anticheat comparison 2026

This is a Minecraft anticheat comparison written by a vendor, so read it with that in mind. We have tried to make it the page we wanted when we were choosing one ourselves: what each option costs, where its checks actually run, which versions it covers, and who it genuinely suits. There are servers on this list we would send you to instead of us, and we say so.

Three questions that decide it

Anticheats are not ranked on a single axis, and any page that hands you a winner is selling something. Three questions decide most of it.

Where do the checks run? A self-hosted plugin does its work on your server, using your CPU. A cloud-assisted anticheat moves some of that work off the box. Neither is automatically better, but it changes what you are buying: one costs TPS, the other costs a subscription and a network dependency. Our post on what an anticheat costs your TPS covers how to measure the first of those on your own hardware.

Is the source public? Open source means you can audit the checks, and so can cheat developers. Closed source means neither of you can. That is a genuine trade, not a flaw on either side.

What happens on a false positive? This matters more than detection rate and almost nobody compares it. A false ban costs you a paying player and everyone they tell. Ask what the anticheat does before it bans.

The comparison

	Cost model	Where checks run	Bedrock via Geyser	Best fit
Sheriffguard	$10 to $49 a month by size, Enterprise above	Plugin plus our cloud	No	Servers and networks
GrimAC	Free, open source (GPL)	Your server	No	Any size, especially on a budget
Vulcan	Paid plugin	Your server	No	Single servers wanting a supported plugin
Polar	Subscription, tiered by player count	Plugin plus their cloud	No	Servers wanting mitigation without running it
Spartan	Free under a small player cap, then paid	Your server	Yes	Long-running servers, wide version spread
Themis	Free	Your server	Yes	Cross-play servers on no budget

Version coverage moves fast, so treat any figure as a starting point and check the listing before you install. Broadly: GrimAC and Vulcan reach back to the 1.8 era, Themis covers 1.17 and up, Spartan spans a wide range, and Sheriffguard targets 1.21+ only.

Sheriffguard vs GrimAC

GrimAC is free, open source under the GPL, and genuinely good. Its movement prediction is the reference much of this space measures itself against, and it supports versions back to 1.8, which we do not.

The honest summary: if you run one server and you have not tried GrimAC, try GrimAC first. It costs nothing, and if it solves your problem you have saved money and gained the ability to read exactly what every check does.

That last property cuts both ways, and GrimAC is refreshingly candid about it. Its own repository describes it as "bypassable", in quotation marks, because anyone writing a cheat can read the same source you can and see precisely where each threshold sits. We are closed source and run a client-signature layer on top of behavioural checks, which is a different bet: you cannot audit our checks, and neither can the person writing the bypass.

Where we differ structurally is scale. GrimAC is a plugin on one server. Sheriffguard tracks a player across every server in a network and tunes checks as a service rather than handing you a config file.

Sheriffguard vs Vulcan

Vulcan is a paid, closed-source plugin with a long history and broad version support, and it sits in the most crowded part of this market: buy it once, host it yourself, configure it yourself.

Against us the split is delivery rather than philosophy. Vulcan gives you a jar and a support channel. We give you a jar, a cloud that does part of the analysis, and check tuning done by us against your traffic. If you have an admin who enjoys tuning an anticheat, Vulcan is a reasonable buy and cheaper than we are. If nobody on your staff wants that job, paying someone else to do it is the point of what we sell.

Sheriffguard vs Polar

Polar is our closest peer and the comparison we take most seriously. Both of us are cloud-assisted, both lead with mitigation rather than instant bans, and both do cross-server tracking.

Both of us publish tiers, so the split that used to exist here, where they were self-serve and we were quote-only, has gone.

What is left is what a tier actually buys. Ours changes the player cap and nothing else: the $10 plan runs the same 24 checks, the same mitigation and the same client detection as the largest one. That is worth checking against whoever you compare us to, because tiers that hold checks back until you pay more are common enough in this market to be worth two minutes before you buy.

Above 700 players we quote instead, with onboarding and custom check tuning included rather than sold as an extra.

The piece we would point to as genuinely different is our client detection layer, which matches the client on join rather than waiting for it to misbehave. Whether that matters depends on whether your problem is players who cheat occasionally and carefully, which is exactly where behaviour-only detection takes longest to reach a verdict.

Sheriffguard vs Spartan

Spartan has been shipping since 2016, which in this space is a long time, and it advertises Folia, Geyser and cross-version support. It is free below a small player cap and paid above it.

If your server spans many Minecraft versions, or you need Bedrock players checked properly, Spartan covers ground we do not. We target 1.21+ and Java only. That is deliberate narrowing rather than a roadmap gap: modern versions changed enough that supporting 1.8 well and 1.21 well in one codebase means compromising both.

Sheriffguard vs Themis

Themis is free and has real Bedrock support through Floodgate, which is rarer than it sounds. Plenty of anticheats support Geyser by exempting Bedrock players from every check, which is not support.

For a cross-play server with no budget, Themis is a sensible first install, and we are not a competitor to it in any meaningful sense. We do not check Bedrock players at all.

Do you need a network-scale anticheat?

Most servers do not. A Minecraft anticheat for networks solves problems a single server does not have.

A player banned on one server keeps playing on the other six. If your anticheat state lives on one box, your ban list does too.
Check tuning multiplies. Custom velocity on a KitPvP server and custom movement on a Skyblock server need different thresholds, and one config cannot serve both.
Nobody owns the anticheat. On a large network, the person who tuned it has usually left.

If none of those describe you, buy the cheapest thing that works and spend the difference on something your players will actually notice.

Where something else may suit you better

Stated plainly, because a comparison page that never says this is an advert. None of these are hard rules. If one nearly describes you, ask us and we will give you a straight answer, including when that answer is one of the names below.

You want it free. GrimAC and Themis cost nothing and are genuinely good. Our smallest plan is ten dollars a month, which is not much, but it is not nothing.
You need 1.8 through 1.20 support. GrimAC, Vulcan or Spartan.
You need Bedrock players checked. Themis or Spartan.
You want to read the source. GrimAC, and only GrimAC.
You need it running this afternoon. We quote and onboard, which takes longer than a download.

Frequently asked questions

Is GrimAC bypassable?

Every anticheat is bypassable, and GrimAC is unusually honest about it. Its repository description puts the word in quotation marks precisely because being open source means a cheat developer can read the same code you can. That transparency is a real advantage for you as an operator and a real advantage for the person writing the bypass, at the same time.

Which anticheats support Bedrock Edition?

In this comparison, Themis and Spartan both advertise Bedrock support through Geyser and Floodgate, and Themis is the one most often recommended for it specifically. Sheriffguard does not check Bedrock players, and neither GrimAC nor Polar leads with Bedrock support. Check the current listing before committing, because this changes.

What is the best free Minecraft anticheat?

GrimAC if you want the strongest movement checks and do not need Bedrock. Themis if you do need Bedrock players checked. Spartan if your server is small enough to sit under its free cap. All three are genuinely usable, which is why we do not pretend a paid anticheat is mandatory.

Is there a Minecraft anticheat that mitigates instead of banning?

Polar and Sheriffguard both lead with mitigation: cancelling the movement, correcting the position or nerfing the hit rather than removing the player. Most self-hosted plugins can be configured to punish without banning too. The question worth asking a vendor is what the default is, because that tells you what they actually believe about their own false-positive rate.

Is Sheriffguard a replacement for GrimAC or Vulcan?

GrimAC is free and Vulcan is a paid plugin you host yourself, so on a single server both can work out cheaper than a subscription. What the subscription buys is cross-server tracking, client-signature detection on join, and the tuning done for you instead of by you. If those three are not worth ten dollars a month to you, they are the better buy and we would rather you knew that now.

Verify this yourself

Every claim above was checked against public listings in September 2026, and this space moves fast enough that some of it will be stale by the time you read it. Costs change, version support changes, and Bedrock support in particular has a habit of appearing and quietly regressing.

Install two of them on a test server, run the questions worth asking past both, and trust what you measure over what any vendor writes, including us.