5 best alternatives to official Minecraft launcher

Minecraft is a game famous for the amazing community-created content centered around it. This makes sense, as the game is an incredible conduit for creativity, and so those with the ability to make wonderful things tend to congregate around it. One of the best examples of this content is the different launchers that have popped up to make playing the game with mods easier.

There is no shortage of these modded launchers, each with unique UIs and options to set themselves apart from the competition. Detailed below are five of the best among these alternative Minecraft launchers.

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Minecraft's 5 best alternative launchers

1) Prism Launcher

Prism is the best modded launcher available (Image via Prism)

Prism Launcher is to MultiMC what Modrinth is to CurseForge. That is to say, Prism takes everything that makes the best modded launchers amazing and pushes them all to the next level. The UI is clean and elegant; there are plentiful options for controlling and organizing profiles; and the mod selection is truly next level.

Prism is able to pull mods and modpacks from AT Launcher, CurseForge, FTB Legacy, Modrinth, and Technic. This means that players using Prism will effectively have access to every mod currently being updated for the game, from horror mods like Minecraft's Silence mod to technological and tinkering-based mods like Minecraft's Tinkers Construct mod.

This combination of choice and amazing UI is what makes Prism the best modded launcher option out there.

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2) MultiMC

The clean homepage for Minecraft's MultiMC launcher (Image via MultiMC)

Outside of the basic modded launchers, MultiMC probably has the biggest piece of the pie. It is an incredibly well-known and well-put-together launcher intended to help keep modpacks and installations organized. The interface might not be the cleanest of the launchers here, but its customization and ability for organization more than make up for this.

MultiMC also makes checking logs easier, which is super useful for players putting together a custom pack using Minecraft's best overhaul mods that need to find potential incompatibilities. It does this by adding color coding to logs to help with legibility.

Lastly, MultiMC pulls from the most major mod sources, hitting Modrinth, FTB, Technic, AT Launcher, and FTB Legacy. Having access to what is effectively the entire history of Minecraft's best modpacks means that there should be no shortage of packs to try.

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3) AT Launcher

The AT Launcher's home page (Image via AT Launcher)

AT Launcher is one of the best out there for modded players for a few reasons. The first of which is that similar to other modded launchers, AT Launcher features its own set of modpacks as well as mods from several different launchers to combine and customize.

These launchers that ATL pulls from are CurseForge, Modrinth, and Technic, the last of which is known for featuring Minecraft's best technical mods.

Additionally, players using the AT Launcher can actually click through the mods available on the different launchers. Most modded launchers can download content from one another, but actually being able to click into each one and see what the available mods are is a nice touch.

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4) CurseForge

CurseForge has been the most popular modded launcher for a long time (Image via CurseForge)

A true classic, CurseForge is probably the most used of alternative launchers simply due to its age and popularity. CurseForge has had the most mods uploaded to it over the years, giving it one of the widest spreads of mods available, minus the launchers that pull from it from other sites.

CurseForge can even be used for multiple different games, making it a one-stop shop for modding solutions—something that pretty much no other modded launcher can claim. This is what makes it one of the game's best modded launchers.

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5) Modrinth

The Modrinth modded Minecraft launcher's homepage (Image via Modrinth)

Modrinth is one of the newest modded launchers out there and was in part made to address long-standing and systemic issues with CurseForge. Modrinth is a cleaner and more modern launcher, and it is by far the best to both look at and use. It may not have as many mods as the other launchers due to its age, but it's so nice to use that it's still worth considering.

As more players and modders take the time to look at all of the differences between Minecraft's CurseForge vs Modrinth, more and more start to jump ship for Modrinth. However, until the massive backlog of mods makes it to this launcher, it sits solidly as the fifth-best alternative.