CTFd Alternative
CTFd is a great open-source project — until you're the one patching servers at midnight before a 500-player event. CTF-Hub gives you the same capture-the-flag experience as a fully managed cloud platform, with isolated labs, white-label branding and enterprise auth built in.
| CTF-Hub | CTFd (self-hosted) | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting & operations | Fully managed cloud | You host, patch and scale it |
| Isolated lab per player | Built in | Separate infra you build |
| Drag-and-drop authoring studio | Yes — validators, hint packs, points logic | Admin forms + plugins |
| White-label (your subdomain & brand) | Business plans | Fork the theme |
| SAML SSO / magic-link onboarding | Included | Plugins / custom dev |
| Multi-tenant (run per-client events) | Native | One instance per client |
| Analytics & CRM export | Built in | DIY from the database |
| Event-day support | Real humans on paid plans | GitHub issues |
| Price to start | Free tier | Free (software) + your infra time |
Honest take: if you have infra engineers to spare and full control matters more than time, self-hosted CTFd is legitimate. If the event, the audience and the outcomes are the point — a managed platform pays for itself the first weekend you don't spend debugging Docker. Full breakdown: CTFd vs CTF-Hub in depth.
1. We map your CTFd categories, challenges, flags and hints into the CTF-Hub authoring studio (assisted on paid plans). 2. You brand your event space and connect SSO if you need it. 3. Invite links go out, the scoreboard goes live, and nobody on your team is on call for it. Most migrations complete in under a week.
If you want the CTF without the ops: yes. Managed infrastructure, isolated per-player labs, white-label branding, SAML SSO and analytics are built in rather than bolted on.
Yes — challenges, flags, hints and categories can be recreated or imported, and our team assists with migrations on paid plans.
Yes, a forever-free plan for small events — see pricing.