Overview

Quilt Loom is a Gradle plugin that extends Fabric Loom for Quilt mod projects. It is best suited to developers who need Quilt-specific metadata and mappings in their build workflow. Its focused integrations are useful, though a patch-based contribution process may be a hurdle for people planning to work on the plugin itself.

Key features

Quilt Loom reads quilt.mod.json and supports features such as Jars-in-Jars (JiJ), transitive access wideners, and interface injection. For Quilt mod projects, that connects Quilt metadata to the build plugin rather than leaving those capabilities outside the Loom workflow.

It automatically adds the Quilt Releases repository to projects and applies Quilt Mappings on Loom. Quilt Loom also uses Quiltflower by default through loom-quiltflower by Juuxel. These choices make it a targeted fit for Quilt development, not a general-purpose Minecraft build tool.

The plugin is based on a Fabric Loom subproject with Quilt-specific patches, and Gradle wrapper scripts are provided for build tasks. Contributors generate the patched subproject with ./gradlew applyPatches and submit changes as new patches for maintainers to merge manually. That process is worth weighing before choosing the project as a contribution target.

Pricing

Quilt Loom is free: the Quilt Loom plan costs 0.00 USD per free and is MIT-licensed. The license permits use, modification, distribution, and sale subject to its stated conditions. There is no paid tier or trial to weigh against the free option.

Platforms

Quilt Loom supports Linux, macOS, and Windows. It is a Gradle plugin, so its role is build tooling for Quilt projects rather than a standalone modding editor. Quilt is the supported loader.

Who it's for

Choose Quilt Loom if you are building a Quilt mod and want Quilt metadata handling, mappings, and the Quilt Releases repository integrated into a Fabric Loom-based Gradle project. It is less suitable if you need a published release to anchor adoption: the GitHub Releases page has no releases listed. Quilt suggests asking questions on its Discord or opening an issue for support.

Pros and cons

Pros

Quilt-specific metadata support: quilt.mod.json enables JiJ, transitive access wideners, and interface injection.
Useful build integrations: Quilt Mappings and the Quilt Releases repository are applied automatically.
Free and permissively licensed: the MIT License allows broad use subject to its conditions.

Cons

No listed releases: adopters looking for a published release may find the project less straightforward to take on.
Patch-based contributions: changes go through a patch series that maintainers merge manually.
Narrow scope: its Quilt focus does not make it a general Minecraft development environment.

Alternatives

For other options, see Minecraft Mod Development Tools. Consider Architectury Loom if its experimental project suits your setup; it requires Gradle 8.1 or newer and supports IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code. Choose Fabric when you need the Fabric Loader instead, bearing in mind that its loader download is the bare minimum and most mods also require Fabric API. ForgeGradle is another free option for Forge-oriented Gradle development.

Gradle is the underlying free open-source build system, rather than a Quilt-specific extension. Choose IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse IDE, or Visual Studio Code when you want an IDE or editor instead of a Gradle plugin. Blockbench is another free option.

Verdict

Quilt Loom is the right choice for Quilt mod developers who want Quilt metadata, mappings, and repository setup integrated into a Fabric Loom-based Gradle project at no cost. Look elsewhere if a listed release is essential to your adoption decision or if you need a broader development environment.

	CurseForgeGradle	Quilt Loom
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Free trial	No	No
Paid from	Free	Free
Open source	No	No
Platforms	api	Linux, macOS, Windows
Supported loaders	Forge, Fabric, Quilt, NeoForge, Rift	Quilt
Dependency management	Yes	Yes
Free plan	—	Yes

CurseForgeGradle vs Quilt Loom

CurseForgeGradle

Quilt Loom