Starter Plan

Starter is where most first servers land: enough memory for a small community running plugins like EssentialsX, and enough cores that a light modpack does not stutter. It is also the floor of what we can buy as a separate machine, which is why Mini sits on the same hardware with half the memory.

A block of coal, the icon of the Starter Minecraft server plan

4 vCPU
8 GB RAM
80 GB SSD

What the Starter plan costs on each billing term.
Term	Price per month	Setup fee
24 months	€8.79	None
12 months	€9.89	None
6 months	€10.49	None
Monthly	€10.99	€2.99 once

Order the Starter plan

The size most people should start on

Starter gives you 8 GB of memory, 4 vCPU and 75 GB NVMe, and it is the step where Minecraft stops being about the plan and starts being about what you install on it. A hundred to two hundred mods fit here. So does a Paper server with thirty plugins and a town of regular players.

Eight gigabytes is the number the modpack authors themselves quote most often, which is not a coincidence: it is what a modern pack asks for once its dimensions have generated and its machines are running while nobody is watching them.

Modpacks that fit, and the ones that do not

Create, Pixelmon and the mid-sized kitchen sink packs run here. All The Mods 10 and RLCraft are the two that people try on this size and regret: they will boot, they will play, and then they will spend their evenings garbage collecting instead of ticking. Those two belong on Standard or higher.

Chunk generation is the other thing that eats this plan. A fresh pack world generates its own dimensions, and that is the heaviest hour your server will ever have. It settles down afterwards.

Price, storage and growing out of it

Starter costs EUR 10.99 per month, or EUR 8.79 per month on a twenty-four month term, with 75 GB NVMe of disk. Storage matters more on a modded server than people expect, because every dimension a pack adds is another world folder that grows while you play.

When you do outgrow it, the upgrade is the same day and keeps the address, the files and the world seed.

Where the eight gigabytes actually goes

A modded server does not hand all of 8 GB to your world. The pack itself takes a fixed slice on startup: mod classes, recipes, registries and item textures on the server side. What is left over is what holds chunks and entities, and that is the part that runs out on a Friday evening.

That is why a pack that boots fine with two players can stutter with eight. Nothing changed about the pack; the part of memory that is left for the world got shared out further.

The first two days of a new pack

New pack, new world, and the heaviest hours of that server's life happen before anyone builds anything. Every dimension the pack adds generates on demand, and generation is the most expensive thing a Minecraft server does. Pre-generating a few thousand blocks around spawn turns that into a one-time job instead of a stutter every time someone walks somewhere new.

After that first weekend a Starter server settles into a rhythm, and the memory graph stops looking dramatic.

Plugins or mods on this size

You can spend 8 GB in two very different ways. Thirty plugins on Paper leave most of the memory to the world, so the server carries plenty of players. A hundred and fifty mods eat a fixed slice before anyone joins, so the same plan carries a smaller group through a much richer game.

Both are correct. What goes wrong is doing both at once and expecting the numbers of the first with the content of the second.

Backups on a modded server

A modded world is worth more per hour than a vanilla one, because the machines people build cannot be rebuilt in an evening. Take a backup before every pack update, not after, and keep the one from before the update until a week has passed.

Updates are where modded servers die: one mod moves, one recipe changes, and the world that loaded yesterday does not load today. A copy from ten minutes earlier turns that from a disaster into an afternoon.

Signs you picked the right size

The pack boots in a couple of minutes and stays boring. Restarts take the same time on Sunday as they did on Monday. Memory settles somewhere below the ceiling and stays there when six people are online in different chunks. Those three together mean 8 GB was the right call and nothing needs your attention.

The one number worth checking now and then is the disk. Modded worlds grow quietly, and 75 GB NVMe is generous until a pack starts writing three dimensions at once.

Common questions on this plan

Can I swap from Forge to NeoForge later? Yes, from the panel, and the world comes along as long as the mod list does. Can I run two servers on it? Technically yes, sensibly no; a lobby plus a pack wants the next size up.

Does the plan include the AI Copilot? It does, and on a modded server it is worth more than on a plain one, because it reads the crash report and names the mod instead of leaving you with a stack trace.

Coming from a single-player world

Half the people who order Starter are moving a world off their own computer, usually because staying online until midnight got old. Upload the save folder, point the pack at it, and the world keeps its seed, its structures and its chests exactly where they were.

Two things change once it leaves your machine: mods that only exist on the client are not the server's problem any more, and the world keeps ticking while you sleep, which is the whole point of moving it.

The same step on Bedrock and crossplay

Pocket at 4 GB is where a Bedrock-only group lands when their Java friends would be on Starter. Bedrock does not run mods the way Java does, so this comparison is about people rather than packs.

Mixed group? The crossplay version of this size runs the pack on the Java side and lets the Bedrock players into the same world, which is a very different thing from running the two lists side by side.

How to tell whether Starter is enough

The honest test for a modded server is the tick time on a Friday, not the memory graph on a Tuesday. If ticks stay inside their fifty milliseconds while six people are in six different chunks, the plan is doing its job.

If they do not, look at what is loaded before you look at the price list: a stuck mob farm and a badly configured chunk loader have ruined more Starter servers than the plan size ever has.

What a mod list weighs

Rough numbers from packs people actually install here: a light quality-of-life set of forty mods sits around three gigabytes with a few players on, a Create-style pack lands near five, and a kitchen sink pack of two hundred mods is knocking on the ceiling of 8 GB before the second dimension exists.

Use those as a sanity check rather than a promise: the same pack behaves differently depending on how many machines your players leave running while they sleep.

How it compares

Starter has 4 GB more memory than Mini, for €1.80 more a month on the twenty-four month term. If this gets tight, Standard is the next step up: 4 GB more for €4.80 more a month.

What runs comfortably on it

With 8 GB on tap, Starter clears everything the RAM guide puts at or below that mark: RAM guide.

Workloads the Starter plan's memory covers.
What you run	Memory the guide lists
Vanilla 1-5 players	2-4 GB
Vanilla 10-20 players	4-8 GB
Light modpack (50 mods)	4-6 GB
Medium modpack (100-200 mods)	6-8 GB
Heavy modpack (300+ mods)	8-12 GB

Our RAM guide names the Starter plan as the cheapest one that clears these 3 workloads: vanilla 10-20 players, light modpack (50 mods), medium modpack (100-200 mods).

Where you can run it

Modded servers punish latency twice, because every block you place waits for the same round trip. Pick the region closest to most of your players at checkout: 9 locations across the US, the UK, the EU, and Asia-Pacific are included, and the Germany (EU) region costs nothing on top of the plan price. This plan is also available on 18 extra regions in the wider network behind Astroworld, next to the regions we run on our own hardware.