How to Make a Minecraft Server

The three routes, and what each really costs

All three routes work. Most guides to this question pick one route and leave out the other two; the table below shows all three. Which one fits you depends on three things: how often your group plays, at what hours, and whether you are willing to leave a computer running for people who are not in the room.

Most people start on their own machine. In the second week they discover that nobody can play while they are asleep, and then they choose between a free host and a paid one. If you already know that your group plays at different hours, you can skip the first two weeks and start on a host.

Route one: Host a Minecraft server on your own computer

Hosting a Minecraft server on your own PC is free and it works. You download the official server file for the version you want, put it in a folder of its own and run it once, so it writes its files. Then you open the file it leaves behind, eula.txt, accept the licence and run it again. The world appears in the same folder. On the same machine you join at localhost; on the same house network, at the machine’s local address.

Getting players from outside the house in requires port forwarding. Java Edition listens on port 25565 and Bedrock on 19132. Your router has to send that port to the machine running the server, and the address your friends type is then your home connection. Most tutorials leave out the three consequences:

1. The server only exists while the computer stays on.
2. Everything anyone does on that server uses your household upload speed.
3. Everyone who joins gets the public address of your home connection.

That is fine for a weekend with people you know. For a public server, it is not.

Count the electricity as well. A desktop left running around the clock for a month is not free: on most tariffs it costs about the same range as the smallest plan on this page. That is simply what a machine that never sleeps costs.

Hosting a Minecraft server locally on your own PC, step by step

These are the full steps of route one, for anyone who wants to self-host a Minecraft server before paying anyone. They cover the official Java Edition server on Windows, macOS or Linux. The first setup takes about twenty minutes, and every step below is one where people actually get stuck.

1. Install the Java version your Minecraft version asks for

   The Java Edition server is a Java program, so the computer needs Java before anything else. The version is not free to choose: Minecraft 1.18 up to 1.20.4 runs on Java 17, 1.20.5 up to the last 1.21 release needs Java 21, and the releases numbered by year, from 26.1 on, need Java 25. A newer Java than required runs an older server fine; an older one refuses to start it.

2. Download the official server file

   The server file for the current release is on the download page of minecraft.net and is called server.jar. It is the same file for Windows, macOS and Linux. Bedrock has its own program, the Bedrock Dedicated Server, on the same site, for Windows and Ubuntu only. Put the file in an empty folder of its own, because the first start fills that folder with the world, the settings and the logs.

3. Start it once from that folder

   Open a terminal in the folder and start it with the line below. The two numbers are how much memory it may use, here two gigabytes, which carries vanilla for a few friends. The first start stops again almost immediately, and that is on purpose: it has written a licence file and waits for you to accept it.

   java -Xms2G -Xmx2G -jar server.jar nogui

4. Accept the licence and start it again

   Open eula.txt in the same folder, change the last line to the one below, save it and run the start line again. Now it generates the world, which takes a minute the first time, and it is running once the log says Done. On Windows the firewall asks at this point whether Java may use the network; allow it on private networks, or nobody else in the house can connect.

   eula=true

5. Join from inside the house

   On the computer running the server you join at localhost. Anyone on the same home network joins at that computer's local address, which on most home networks starts with 192.168 or 10. This is different from Open to LAN in the game menu: that opens a single-player world for as long as you play it, while this is a server that keeps running when you leave.

6. Forward the port for friends outside the house

   Tell your router to send TCP port 25565 to the computer running the server (for Bedrock it is UDP 19132), and friends outside the house join at your public address. If that still does not work, your provider may share one public address between many homes, and then no forward on your own router can help; only your provider or a host solves that.

7. Stop it with the stop command, not the close button

   Type the word below into the server window. It saves every loaded part of the world and then closes. Closing the window or switching off the computer while it runs skips that save, and that is how local worlds lose their last hour or end up with a broken chunk. When you outgrow the home computer, the whole world folder moves to a host as it is.

   stop

Route two: A free host for your Minecraft server

Free Minecraft server hosts are real and they are not a scam. The limit is waiting time: your server exists, but it is asleep unless somebody is on it, and waking it puts you in a queue behind everyone else waking theirs. The length of that queue decides how usable the free plan is. What you may install is also decided for you, because a free host cannot let thousands of anonymous servers run arbitrary code.

A free host is a good choice for a world you visit on Saturdays with the same four people who all get on at the same time. It stops working well when somebody wants to log in alone for twenty minutes, or when your group grows and the queue becomes a daily wait. We keep a comparison page per free host with what each one actually gives, taken from their own published pages rather than from our opinion of them.

How Aternos compares and how Minehut compares are the two most people are choosing between, and the full comparison list has the paid ones next to them.

Route three: A host you pay for your Minecraft server, step by step

On a paid Minecraft server host you make the decisions yourself: you choose a size and a place for the server rather than accepting whatever is free. These are the eight steps, in the order they actually come up.

1. Pick a size before anything else

   Memory decides what your server can hold, and everything after this follows from it. Two to four gigabytes carries vanilla survival for a handful of friends; a modpack of three hundred mods wants twelve or more. The table further down maps player counts and pack sizes to a size, and our four question size picker does the same in about a minute.

2. Pick where it stands

   Distance is the one part of lag you cannot fix later with settings. Pick the region closest to the people who will play, not to you, and if your group is split across two continents pick the one with the most players in it. We run 9 regions and each has its own page with what it costs there.

3. Pick the edition your friends actually own

   Java Edition and Bedrock Edition are two different games that cannot join each other's servers on their own. Console and phone players own Bedrock; most PC players own Java. If your group is mixed, you want a server that carries both rather than two servers.

4. Pick the server software

   Vanilla is the game as it ships. Paper is the same game with the rough edges taken off and support for plugins, which is what most public servers run. Forge and Fabric are for mods, and a modpack decides that choice for you. You can change this later without starting a new world.

5. Install it and let it generate the world

   In our panel you pick the software and the version from a list and it installs itself, including a whole modpack from a link if that is what you are running. The first start writes the world, and that takes longer than every start after it.

6. Set the handful of settings that change how it plays

   Difficulty, whether players can hurt each other, how far they can see, and how many may join at once: four settings out of 63 that decide most of what the server feels like. Every one of them is listed with its default and its range.

7. Give your friends the address

   A server is reachable at an address and a port. Java players type the address into Multiplayer; Bedrock players add it as an external server with the port in its own field. Both are on the page about your play address.

8. Make sure a bad day is recoverable

   Someone will eventually blow up something that mattered. Every server here keeps 10 backup slots, and a backup that rolls out of the last slot stays recoverable for another 7 days after that.

How much memory you need: RAM for a Minecraft server

Memory (RAM) is the most important decision on a paid host. Too little memory shows up as lag, without an error message. The mapping below is the same one our size picker uses, and it is built from what these workloads actually take.

Two things to know before you pick a size:

1. Going up a size later keeps your world, so you can start one step below your ambition and upgrade with a later click.
2. Memory is not the only limit. View distance and the number of loaded chunks can cost more than the players themselves, so reducing lag is worth reading before you buy more of anything.

Which server software to run: Paper, Purpur, Spigot, Forge or Fabric

The word “server” covers half a dozen different programs here. Picking the wrong one is the single most common reason a plugin or a mod does nothing at all. The short rule: plugins need Paper, Purpur or Spigot, mods need Forge or Fabric, and neither works on the other.

If you want to run a modpack, the pack decides this for you: it is built for one loader and one Minecraft version. Everything about each option is on the server types overview, and you can move between them later without starting over.

The four settings to change on day one

A new server has 63 settings, and you do not need most of them. These four change how the server plays more than the rest put together. The defaults below are the real values the game ships with.

Be careful with view distance. Raising it makes the world feel bigger, and it costs memory and processor time for every player at once. When the server starts to stutter on a busy evening, view distance is the first thing to lower. The complete list, with the range and the default of every key, is on the server settings page.

Getting people in, and keeping the server alive

Until players can reach it, a server is only files on a disk. Java players add the address under Multiplayer; Bedrock players add it as an external server, with the address and the port in separate fields. That separate port field is the step people most often miss. Your play address covers both, including a name to hand out if you would rather not give anyone a number to remember.

After that, the two things that decide whether a server is still running in three months are backups and permissions.

1. Backups, because somebody will eventually break or delete something that mattered.
2. Permissions, because a friend who gets the ability to help also gets the ability to delete.

Both are worth setting up on day one; together they take about ten minutes: how backups work here and setting up permissions.

Opening a server to strangers is a separate step. Before you post the address anywhere, the Minecraft server launch checklist on astroworldmc.site lists 40 things to check first, from restoring a test backup to joining from each edition you support. Once it is open, How to get players on a Minecraft server covers server lists, voting and what your Discord and website should show a newcomer.

Questions people ask before they start

Every price, size and setting on this page is read straight from the files this site runs on, so a change there changes this page with it. The player counts and memory ranges come from the same table our size picker uses. The port numbers and the licence step are set by Minecraft itself.

Two lines, and which one to start on

Every plan here exists twice. The standard line puts you on shared cores and is enough for vanilla with friends. The Performance line gives the same memory a thread of its own on an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X in Germany or an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X with DDR5 RAM in Poland, which is what you want if the first thing you install is a modpack or a redstone contraption. You can start on either one and keep the same address.

Starter Performance, 8 GBStandard Performance, 12 GB

A dedicated thread against a shared vCPUHow TPS and MSPT are read

The first problems after launch

Two messages come up a lot in a new server's first week: friends told they are not whitelisted, and players dropped with a Disconnected or Kicked screen. How to Fix "You Are Not Whitelisted on This Server" and Fix 'Disconnected' / 'Kicked' Errors in Minecraft cover both. To give the server an address without a port number on the end, see SRV Records for Minecraft Servers Explained, and to bring your singleplayer world along, How to Import a Singleplayer World to Your Server.