How to Add Leaderboards to Your DayZ Server (2026 Guide)

Your DayZ server deserves more than a spreadsheet and a pinned Discord message for tracking player stats. With a proper leaderboard, your players get rich stat profiles, achievements to chase, and a reason to keep coming back.

This guide walks you through adding a full leaderboard to your DayZ server using Rankly — from signup to seeing your first stats come in. The whole process takes about 5 minutes.

What You Get

Once set up, your server gets:

PvP kill tracking with weapon, distance, bodypart, and gear data
Player profiles with 6 tabs of analytics (Combat, Survival, Activity, Social, Fun, Achievements)
36 achievements across 5 categories with Bronze through Platinum tiers
Danger zone heatmaps showing kill hotspots on your map
Weapon mastery stats with body hit maps
Live kill feed visible to all your players
Server dashboard with population trends, weapon meta, and more
Admin panel to manage visibility, wipes, and server settings

What You Need

A DayZ server you have admin access to
Access to the server's launch parameters and config folder
A Steam account (for the Workshop mod)

Step-by-Step Setup

Create Your Rankly Account

Head to rankly.gg/signup and create an admin account. You'll be asked for your server name and some basic details. Once created, you'll land on the admin dashboard where your API key is displayed.

Copy your API key now — you'll need it in step 3. It looks like: RNKLY-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

Subscribe to the Steam Workshop Mod

Open the Steam Workshop page for the Rankly mod:

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3683623007

Click Subscribe. Then add the mod to your server's launch parameters:

bash

-servermod=@RanklyStats

If you already have other server mods, separate them with semicolons:

bash

-servermod=@OtherMod;@RanklyStats

Configure the API Key

Create a file called RanklyConfig.json in your server's profiles directory. If you use -profiles=config in your launch params, that's the config/ folder.

json

{
  "apiKey": "RNKLY-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX",
  "endpoint": "https://rankly.gg/api/ingest"
}

Replace the API key with the one from your dashboard.

Restart Your Server

Restart your DayZ server with the updated launch parameters. When the server starts, the Rankly mod will:

Read your server config files (serverDZ.cfg, types.xml)
Begin tracking all player events
Send data to your Rankly dashboard

Verify It's Working

Go to your Rankly admin dashboard. Within a few minutes of players connecting, you should see:

Events appearing in the event log
Player entries on the leaderboard
Your server's public page going live

If no events appear after 5 minutes, check the server RPT log for any Rankly errors. The most common issue is a missing or incorrect API key.

What Happens Next

Stats are tracked in real-time as players do things on your server. Aggregated stats (like awards, percentiles, and danger zones) are computed in batch jobs that run overnight. Within 24 hours of setup, your server will have a fully populated leaderboard.

Share your server's Rankly page with your community — it's the URL shown on your admin dashboard.

Free vs Paid

Rankly has a free tier that covers basic stats and leaderboards. Paid plans unlock advanced features like custom branding, outlier alerts, and priority support. Check rankly.gg/signup for current pricing.

How to Add Leaderboards to Your DayZ Server