Pixelmon Server Hosting

Pokemon in Minecraft. Catch, battle, and trade with your friends on a server built for the mod's custom spawning, structures, and battle system.

Pixelmon brings the Pokemon franchise into Minecraft. It adds hundreds of Pokemon species that spawn in the world based on biome, time of day, and weather conditions. Players catch them with Pokeballs, train them through battles against wild Pokemon and other players, and evolve them using the same mechanics from the main Pokemon games. It is the closest thing to an open-world Pokemon MMO that exists in Minecraft.

The mod also adds custom structures to the world. Pokemon Centers heal your team, shops sell items like potions and TMs, and gyms appear in villages where players can challenge NPC trainers. These structures generate alongside vanilla Minecraft terrain, which means the world feels like a blend of both games rather than a total conversion.

Multiplayer is where Pixelmon shines. Trading Pokemon with other players, challenging them to competitive battles, and building shared Pokemon Centers or breeding facilities gives the mod a social layer that single-player cannot match. Running a dedicated server lets your group share a persistent world where everyone's progress carries over between sessions.

Pixelmon is lighter than kitchen-sink modpacks because it focuses on a single gameplay system rather than loading hundreds of mods. The server still needs to track every spawned Pokemon entity, their stats, and their AI behavior, but the total mod count is low enough that memory usage stays manageable.

For a small group of 2 to 8 players, 4 to 6 GB of allocated RAM is enough. The Starter plan with 8 GB covers this comfortably with overhead for the operating system and JVM internals. Pokemon entities are lighter on memory than mobs from packs like RLCraft because their AI is simpler when they are not in battle.

If you plan to host 20 or more players, step up to 8 GB of allocated RAM. Larger servers generate more Pokemon spawns, keep more chunks loaded, and handle more battle calculations simultaneously. The Standard plan at 12 GB is a good fit for popular Pixelmon communities that expect steady traffic.

Pixelmon replaces most vanilla mob spawning with its own system. Pokemon appear based on biome type, so players who want a specific species need to travel to the correct environment. Desert biomes spawn Ground and Fire types, ocean biomes spawn Water types, and forests spawn Grass and Bug types. This biome-based spawning encourages exploration and gives different parts of the map distinct identities.

The spawning system is fully configurable. Server owners can adjust spawn rates, add or remove species from specific biomes, and set rarity tiers. If you want legendary Pokemon to appear more frequently, you change a config value. If you want to disable certain species entirely, you remove them from the spawn list. All of these files live in the config folder and are editable through the panel's file manager.

Custom structures add to the world generation load. Pokemon Centers, gyms, and shops are generated during chunk creation, which means new chunks take slightly longer to generate than vanilla. NVMe storage helps here because the additional structure data writes to disk faster. Once chunks are generated, they load at normal speed.

Pixelmon runs on Forge, the same mod loader used by most major modpacks. That means you can add other Forge-compatible mods alongside Pixelmon without conflicts in most cases. Popular additions include JourneyMap for minimap functionality, JEI for recipe lookup, and various economy plugins if you want to add a shop system.

Some server owners run Pixelmon alongside server-side mods like FTB Utilities for claim protection or LuckPerms for permission management. These do not add Pokemon content but make the server more manageable for communities. Adding mods increases RAM usage, so account for an extra 1 to 2 GB on top of the base Pixelmon requirements if you plan to run a dozen additional mods.

Setting up a Forge server for Pixelmon follows the standard process. Install the correct Forge version for your Minecraft version, drop the Pixelmon JAR into the mods folder, and start the server. The first launch generates all the config files you need. Adjust spawn rates, enable or disable features, and configure world settings from there.