Change Team Size on Your Rust Server

How many players can share a team is one number, and you can change it with a single convar: relationshipmanager.maxteamsize. Type it exactly as written, including the relationshipmanager. part. Checked against Rust build 2635 and Facepunch's Rust wiki, October 2026.

What it controls

The game describes the convar as the maximum number of players allowed in a single team. The default is 8, and 0 means teams are disabled. Facepunch's Softcore gamemode shows the idea: its wiki page caps teams at four players and says that limit can be changed with relationshipmanager.maxteamsize <value>. The same page lists "Auth limited to team size (4)" for Softcore, so in that mode the number also governs how many people can be authorised on a base.

See what it is set to now

Open the Console tab and search for the convar:

find maxteamsize

The reply gives the game's own description and, in brackets at the end, the current value. A new server shows (8). Note the number before you change anything, so you can put it back.

Change it for this session

In the same Console, give the convar a value:

relationshipmanager.maxteamsize 4

That sets teams to a maximum of four. The game's description says that changing it while the server runs updates all active teams, so you don't need to restart for it to take effect. A command typed into the Console is held in memory only, though, so it is gone the next time the server restarts.

Make it permanent

A new server has no server.cfg file, so you create one the first time. We tested relationshipmanager.maxteamsize 4 in a server.cfg on a test server and the game reported 4 after a restart.

1. Open the File Manager and go to server/rust/cfg. You should see users.cfg and bans.cfg there but no server.cfg.
2. If server.cfg isn't there, make a plain text file called server.cfg on your computer and Upload it into that folder. Rust server.cfg and admin commands describes the file in more detail.
3. Open it and add a line on its own:

relationshipmanager.maxteamsize 4

4. Save the file and Restart the server. Rust only reads server.cfg at startup.

Facepunch's server setup page says entries in server.cfg are written without the leading + or - that a startup parameter uses, which is why the line above has no +.

Before you lower it

Tell your players the limit in your server description, which you edit in the Startup tab under Server Description. The game's own description of the convar says changing it while the server runs updates all active teams, so announce a lower limit before you apply it.