Rust Pulse is a Rust+ companion app for players. You log in with Steam, pair your Rust servers from the in-game Rust+ menu, and from then on Rust Pulse runs alongside your wipe — watching team chat, world events, your Smart Devices, and the map for you.
It is not an admin tool. Rust Pulse only sees what your Rust+ account sees — your team, your devices, your map markers — so it works on any Rust server (Facepunch official, community, modded) without any server-side install or RCON access.
What it actually does for you
There are three sides to it, all running off the same paired-server brain:
Type !cargo, !heli, !pop, !track, !shops, or !pulse in Rust team chat and the bot answers in chat. Open the dashboard or the in-game overlay and see your team, deaths, alarms, and events live on a second screen. Smart Alarm triggers ping you in chat, on Discord, and on your phone — automatically.
The pieces:
- Team-chat bot. Anyone on your team types
!help,!heli,!small,!nearby, etc. and the bot replies in team chat. Over 30 built-in commands, plus your own custom commands wired to Smart Switches. See All commands. - Web dashboard at rustpulse.app. Live map, alarm timeline, devices grid, team roster, player intel, shop watch, heatmaps, raid/craft tools. See Dashboard overview.
- In-game overlay (premium). A transparent always-on-top minimap that paints your team, deaths, world events, tags, and monuments over Rust. F8 toggles it, F9 toggles click-through. See Overlay.
- Discord integration. Route alerts to channels you choose, plus a support Discord with
/faq,/ticket, and a live status board. See Discord. - Automatic watchers. Even if nobody types anything, the bot watches for Smart Alarm raids, teammate deaths, Cargo / Heli / Chinook / Oil Rig activity, Deep Sea Merchant surfaces, and suspicious vending machines — and pins them on the timeline. See Automatic watchers.
Why it's safe to pair
The only credential anyone really cares about — the Rust+ pairing token that lets a client speak as you on your server's socket — is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it ever touches our database. The encryption key never lives in the database. Even a full database leak does not expose it.
That makes Rust Pulse safer than self-hosted bots like rustplusplus, which keep that same token as a plaintext file on the operator's machine. See Security & encryption and the comparison vs rustplusplus for the full story.
Where to go next
Start with Getting started — five minutes to your first paired server. Then try !pop in team chat.
- Plans & pricing — what Scout / Operator / Overlord each unlock.
- All in-game commands — the full command list with examples.
- Web dashboard — every dashboard page, feature by feature.
- Overlay — install, hotkeys, what it draws on top of Rust.
- Credentials Helper — the little desktop app you use once to pair.
Press ⌘ K (or Ctrl K) anywhere on the wiki to search.