What's a planet?

Planets are a type of Urbit ID that is useful for providing individuals long-term access to the Urbit network.

Where to get a planet

There are a few ways to get your own planet:

• Getting an invitation from a friend (or stranger)
• Purchasing a planet, including hosting, from a hosting provider
• Manually setting up and hosting a planet purchased from a third party marketplace

Hosting Providers

Hosting providers will often sell you a planet and run it for you. This option is very simple but will probably cost a regular fee.

Urbit is designed to be portable. This means that if you sign up for hosting now but later want to leave your hosting provider and run your Urbit yourself, you should be able to work with them to obtain all of your data and boot your planet back up without losing anything.

Using hosting does mean that you're trusting your provider with your data, but so long as you have your planet, you'll always own your identity.

Current hosting providers are:

• UrbitHost
• escape pod store
• Third Earth
• Tlon Corporation

Buying a planet

There are many places to buy a planet using either cryptocurrency or fiat.

Layer 1 planets are the most available through marketplaces, however they can be expensive due to Ethereum gas fees. You will need an Ethereum wallet such as Metamask to purchase these planets, and will later need to sign in to Bridge with your wallet to configure your planet.

Layer 2 planets do not require any crypto wallet management, but are at present less readily available on marketplaces.

Don’t worry, both types work the same on the network.

Here are a few of the places where you can buy planets:

Next steps

Got your planet?

Get your planet set it up locally with Port.

Read the Server setup guide to learn how to get it set up on a server.

Or, follow the instructions of a hosting provider and set up your planet there.

Remember, your planet is yours and you can always change how you run your urbit in the future.