JoinGG

Measured, not estimated

How many people still play Half-Life?

286 players are on the 171 Half-Life servers JoinGG is reaching right now, of 204 listed.

Across the 127 hours covered well enough to compare, that count has run between 230 and 414.

Every figure on this page was measured by JoinGG. We ask all 204 Half-Life servers listed here every hour, over Valve's A2S status query (the same request the in-game server browser makes), and write down what each one answers. Nothing is scraped from another site, modelled, or extrapolated to servers we do not list — which is also the limit of it: these are the Half-Life servers on JoinGG, so read the counts as a large sample of public community servers rather than as a census of the game.

Last sweep . This page rebuilds every five minutes.

286
Players connected

reported by the servers themselves

171
Servers answering

33 listed but silent

204
Servers listed

every one queried directly

6.9%
Slots used

of 4,152 slots those servers reported

These figures rest on 29,357 status checks across 168 measured hours, of which 127 cover enough of the Half-Life list to compare with the others. Readings are kept for 7 days, so this page gets deeper as they accumulate rather than longer. By players on listed servers, Half-Life is the 11th busiest of the 32 games JoinGG measures.

Players on Half-Life servers, hour by hour

29,357 status checks · 168 hours measured

Mon 08:00 UTC — only 28 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableMon 09:00 UTC — 273 players on 204 serversMon 10:00 UTC — 256 players on 204 serversMon 11:00 UTC — only 175 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableMon 12:00 UTC — 312 players on 204 serversMon 13:00 UTC — 310 players on 204 serversMon 14:00 UTC — 313 players on 204 serversMon 15:00 UTC — 312 players on 203 serversMon 16:00 UTC — 365 players on 204 serversMon 17:00 UTC — only 29 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableMon 18:00 UTC — 380 players on 203 serversMon 19:00 UTC — only 176 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableMon 20:00 UTC — 395 players on 204 serversMon 21:00 UTC — 353 players on 203 serversMon 22:00 UTC — 332 players on 204 serversMon 23:00 UTC — 369 players on 204 serversTue 00:00 UTC — 376 players on 204 serversTue 01:00 UTC — only 28 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableTue 02:00 UTC — 346 players on 204 serversTue 03:00 UTC — only 176 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableTue 04:00 UTC — 319 players on 203 serversTue 05:00 UTC — 297 players on 204 serversTue 06:00 UTC — 296 players on 204 serversTue 07:00 UTC — 280 players on 203 serversTue 08:00 UTC — only 29 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableTue 09:00 UTC — only 176 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableTue 10:00 UTC — 296 players on 203 serversTue 11:00 UTC — 307 players on 204 serversTue 12:00 UTC — 295 players on 204 serversTue 13:00 UTC — 296 players on 203 serversTue 14:00 UTC — only 112 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableTue 15:00 UTC — only 121 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableTue 16:00 UTC — only 176 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableTue 17:00 UTC — 357 players on 203 serversTue 18:00 UTC — 369 players on 204 serversTue 19:00 UTC — 343 players on 204 serversTue 20:00 UTC — 351 players on 203 serversTue 21:00 UTC — only 29 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableTue 22:00 UTC — 379 players on 204 serversTue 23:00 UTC — 348 players on 195 serversWed 00:00 UTC — 230 players on 184 serversWed 01:00 UTC — 340 players on 204 serversWed 02:00 UTC — 352 players on 203 serversWed 03:00 UTC — 352 players on 204 serversWed 04:00 UTC — 308 players on 204 serversWed 05:00 UTC — 313 players on 204 serversWed 06:00 UTC — only 28 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableWed 07:00 UTC — 303 players on 204 serversWed 08:00 UTC — only 176 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableWed 09:00 UTC — 307 players on 203 serversWed 10:00 UTC — 310 players on 204 serversWed 11:00 UTC — 307 players on 204 serversWed 12:00 UTC — 315 players on 203 serversWed 13:00 UTC — 324 players on 204 serversWed 14:00 UTC — only 29 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableWed 15:00 UTC — 374 players on 204 serversWed 16:00 UTC — only 175 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableWed 17:00 UTC — 401 players on 204 serversWed 18:00 UTC — 411 players on 204 serversWed 19:00 UTC — 369 players on 203 serversWed 20:00 UTC — 386 players on 204 serversWed 21:00 UTC — only 29 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableWed 22:00 UTC — 362 players on 203 serversWed 23:00 UTC — only 176 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableThu 00:00 UTC — 355 players on 204 serversThu 01:00 UTC — 357 players on 203 serversThu 02:00 UTC — 340 players on 204 serversThu 03:00 UTC — 338 players on 204 serversThu 04:00 UTC — 315 players on 204 serversThu 05:00 UTC — only 28 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableThu 06:00 UTC — 298 players on 204 serversThu 07:00 UTC — only 176 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableThu 08:00 UTC — 300 players on 203 serversThu 09:00 UTC — 310 players on 204 serversThu 10:00 UTC — 326 players on 204 serversThu 11:00 UTC — 322 players on 203 serversThu 12:00 UTC — only 29 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableThu 13:00 UTC — 333 players on 204 serversThu 14:00 UTC — only 175 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableThu 15:00 UTC — 363 players on 204 serversThu 16:00 UTC — 319 players on 204 serversThu 17:00 UTC — 335 players on 203 serversThu 18:00 UTC — 331 players on 204 serversThu 19:00 UTC — only 29 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableThu 20:00 UTC — 345 players on 204 serversThu 21:00 UTC — only 175 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableThu 22:00 UTC — 340 players on 204 serversThu 23:00 UTC — 357 players on 204 serversFri 00:00 UTC — 338 players on 203 serversFri 01:00 UTC — 345 players on 204 serversFri 02:00 UTC — only 29 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableFri 03:00 UTC — 342 players on 203 serversFri 04:00 UTC — only 176 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableFri 05:00 UTC — 285 players on 204 serversFri 06:00 UTC — 275 players on 203 serversFri 07:00 UTC — 237 players on 204 serversFri 08:00 UTC — 248 players on 204 serversFri 09:00 UTC — 250 players on 204 serversFri 10:00 UTC — only 28 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableFri 11:00 UTC — only 176 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableFri 12:00 UTC — 255 players on 204 serversFri 13:00 UTC — 303 players on 203 serversFri 14:00 UTC — 313 players on 204 serversFri 15:00 UTC — 360 players on 204 serversFri 16:00 UTC — only 28 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableFri 17:00 UTC — 314 players on 189 serversFri 18:00 UTC — 396 players on 204 serversFri 19:00 UTC — 404 players on 204 serversFri 20:00 UTC — only 14 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableFri 21:00 UTC — 312 players on 195 serversFri 22:00 UTC — 386 players on 204 serversFri 23:00 UTC — 322 players on 199 serversSat 00:00 UTC — 376 players on 203 serversSat 01:00 UTC — 354 players on 204 serversSat 02:00 UTC — only 14 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSat 03:00 UTC — 334 players on 204 serversSat 04:00 UTC — 278 players on 196 serversSat 05:00 UTC — 322 players on 203 serversSat 06:00 UTC — 322 players on 204 serversSat 07:00 UTC — 273 players on 198 serversSat 08:00 UTC — only 14 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSat 09:00 UTC — 302 players on 204 serversSat 10:00 UTC — 261 players on 196 serversSat 11:00 UTC — 323 players on 204 serversSat 12:00 UTC — 299 players on 203 serversSat 13:00 UTC — 284 players on 199 serversSat 14:00 UTC — only 88 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSat 15:00 UTC — only 129 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSat 16:00 UTC — 298 players on 197 serversSat 17:00 UTC — 371 players on 204 serversSat 18:00 UTC — 381 players on 202 serversSat 19:00 UTC — 343 players on 199 serversSat 20:00 UTC — only 163 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSat 21:00 UTC — only 55 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSat 22:00 UTC — 334 players on 196 serversSat 23:00 UTC — 386 players on 204 serversSun 00:00 UTC — 325 players on 203 serversSun 01:00 UTC — 380 players on 204 serversSun 02:00 UTC — 304 players on 198 serversSun 03:00 UTC — only 14 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSun 04:00 UTC — 289 players on 197 serversSun 05:00 UTC — 314 players on 204 serversSun 06:00 UTC — 291 players on 202 serversSun 07:00 UTC — 248 players on 199 serversSun 08:00 UTC — 293 players on 204 serversSun 09:00 UTC — only 13 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSun 10:00 UTC — 268 players on 197 serversSun 11:00 UTC — 309 players on 204 serversSun 12:00 UTC — 307 players on 203 serversSun 13:00 UTC — 291 players on 198 serversSun 14:00 UTC — 342 players on 204 serversSun 15:00 UTC — only 14 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSun 16:00 UTC — 313 players on 197 serversSun 17:00 UTC — 414 players on 204 serversSun 18:00 UTC — 401 players on 204 serversSun 19:00 UTC — 378 players on 203 serversSun 20:00 UTC — 407 players on 204 serversSun 21:00 UTC — 351 players on 203 serversSun 22:00 UTC — only 9 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableSun 23:00 UTC — 362 players on 203 serversMon 00:00 UTC — 315 players on 197 serversMon 01:00 UTC — 345 players on 204 serversMon 02:00 UTC — 347 players on 203 serversMon 03:00 UTC — 339 players on 203 serversMon 04:00 UTC — 278 players on 204 serversMon 05:00 UTC — only 8 of 204 servers were reached this hour, so its total is not comparableMon 06:00 UTC — 254 players on 197 serversMon 07:00 UTC — 298 players on 204 servers
Mon 08:00 UTCMon 07:00 UTC
Busiest hour measured
414 at Sun 17:00 UTC
Quietest hour measured
230 at Wed 00:00 UTC
Latest sweep
298 players
Hours plotted
127 of 168

41 hours are marked but not plotted. The poller reached under 90% of the list in those hours, so the totals are low because fewer servers were asked — not because fewer people were playing. Drawing them on the same line would invent a drop.

The other player count

286
Players here

on the 171 servers JoinGG reached

423
In game (Valve)

everyone running it anywhere, per Steam

These two count different things

Players here is ours: people connected to the Half-Life servers JoinGG lists, counted by asking each server. In game (Valve) is Steam's live count of everyone running Half-Life anywhere — official matchmaking, single-player, community servers and idle menus included. Neither is a subset of the other that we can compute: our list is not every community server in existence, and Valve's total is not limited to multiplayer. So both are printed and neither is divided by the other.

Valve's figure comes from the Steam Web API and is cached for an hour, so it can lag ours by up to that much.

Where those players are right now

The Half-Life listings with the most people on them at the last sweep. Every figure in the row is what that server answered — the ping is our round trip to it, not yours, so read it as a rough measure of where the box is rather than of what you will get.

The Half-Life servers listed on JoinGG with the most players on them at the last status query, with the player count, map and round trip each one reported.
ServerMapPlayersPingWhere
ZA -=HLDM=- (with RCBot) [DEFAULT MAPS]crossfire2004tourney12 / 24345 msSouth Africa 🇿🇦
Dawn Half-Lifeadoge_crowbar11 / 20102 msRussia 🇷🇺
US | gamersgrave.net | Extreme Deathmatch | Botsrocket_frenzy10 / 32234 msUnited States 🇺🇸
[APG] - Science and Industry 1.4 [FastDL]si_retrovirus10 / 1634 msFrance 🇫🇷
[US] Ultimate Hardcore Survival (+Anti-Rush) [UHS] #1hlins2_c07_a29 / 32123 msUnited States 🇺🇸
BRUT.me Half-Life TeamPlay REALstalkyard8 / 1927 msSlovakia 🇸🇰
GoldSrcSaturdays.com DMCdmc_fact38 / 32182 msUnited States 🇺🇸
GoldSrcSaturdays.com/discord - Cold Ice Remasteredstalkyard28 / 32188 msCanada 🇨🇦
Little-NZ - Deathmatch serverstalkyard8 / 16561 msNew Zealand 🇳🇿
SIVAS KIRAATHANE | YAPI ELEMANLARI GIREMEZcrossfiree8 / 3243 msTürkiye 🇹🇷
All 204 Half-Life servers

Half-Life player counts — the questions

Is Half-Life still alive in 2026?
Yes, and this is the measurement rather than an opinion. 286 players are on the 171 Half-Life servers JoinGG is reaching right now, of 204 listed. Across the 127 hours covered well enough to compare, that count has run between 230 and 414. Every one of those numbers came from asking the servers themselves.
When is Half-Life busiest?
Around 18:00 UTC. Averaged over 7 days of readings, that hour carries about 381 players across the Half-Life servers listed here.
How many Half-Life servers are there?
204 Half-Life servers are listed on JoinGG, and 171 of them answered the last status query. The other 33 stayed silent, which is recorded as silent rather than as empty — a server that does not answer and a server with nobody on it are different facts and we only measured one of them.
Why is this different from Steam's Half-Life player count?
They measure different populations. Steam counts everybody running Half-Life anywhere right now — official matchmaking, single-player, community servers and idle menus — and reports 423. We count people connected to the 171 Half-Life servers we reached, which is 286. Neither figure is a subset of the other that we can compute, so both are printed and neither is divided by the other.
How is this counted?
Every figure on this page was measured by JoinGG. We ask all 204 Half-Life servers listed here every hour, over Valve's A2S status query (the same request the in-game server browser makes), and write down what each one answers. Nothing is scraped from another site, modelled, or extrapolated to servers we do not list — which is also the limit of it: these are the Half-Life servers on JoinGG, so read the counts as a large sample of public community servers rather than as a census of the game.

Readings are kept for 7 days and pruned by the poller, so this page describes the last week rather than all time — it gets deeper as readings accumulate rather than longer. Hours are measured in UTC and shown in your own clock; hover any of them to read the UTC figure behind it. The answers above stay in UTC, because each is also published as structured data for search engines, where a reader’s zone means nothing.

How many people still play the others

Every game JoinGG measures with enough servers behind it to publish, busiest first. The number on each is the players we can see on its listed servers right now.

Minecraft35,785FiveM27,782Counter-Strike 1.68,254Counter-Strike: Source3,589Team Fortress 21,980Garry's Mod1,626Counter-Strike 21,272Counter-Strike: Global Offensive429Day of Defeat318Left 4 Dead 2295Day of Defeat: Source281Counter-Strike: Condition Zero271Team Fortress Classic214Half-Life 2: Deathmatch128Natural Selection79Insurgency (2014)62Zombie Panic! Source36Left 4 Dead32Rust31Space Engineers17Fortress Forever127 Days to Die9Alien Swarm0Insurgency (Source)0