A Minecraft server with friends: what it actually costs
Every group asks it: "how much each?". The answers you find online range from "it's free" to "budget €30 a month", which helps nobody. Here's the arithmetic, laid out plainly.
What actually sets the price
One thing, in practice: RAM. Player count only matters because it pushes the RAM you need: reckon on about 1 GB, plus 300 MB per player online at the same time (the full reasoning is in how much RAM your server needs). Four people on vanilla therefore fit in just over 2 GB; those same four on a heavy modpack want two to three times that.
Be wary of plans billed "per slot" — per player seat. It's a widely criticised practice: it charges for an artificial limit, when what genuinely costs money is memory and CPU.
The maths for a group of four
Take the common case: four friends, vanilla or a few plugins, a world that lasts. That needs just over 2 GB: an Iron plan (4 GB, €6.99 a month) leaves headroom. Split four ways, that's €1.75 each — less than a coffee.
The same four on a heavy modpack aim for a Gold (6 GB, €9.99), €2.50 each; a very heavy pack will want a Diamond (8 GB, €14.99), €3.75 each.
At six or seven players on vanilla you reach about 3 GB: the Iron still fits, and the cost drops to roughly €1 a head. Cost per person falls as the group grows: the only pleasant surprise in this calculation.
What "free" actually costs
Free offers exist and they're honest about one thing: they don't take your money. They take something else — the server stops when nobody is playing, you have to restart it and sit in a queue, RAM is tight, and backups are often limited.
For an occasional game that's a perfectly reasonable trade. For a world that runs for months, where you build things, the constant restarting ends up costing more in ruined evenings than in euros. Our article on servers that shut down explains the mechanism.
What about self-hosting?
Running the server on your own PC looks free. In reality it costs electricity, forces you to leave the machine on whenever your friends want to play, exposes your connection, and eats resources your game needs. The subject deserves its own article, and it has one: self-hosting versus a host.
The questions worth asking before you pay
- Is the price shown without having to create an account?
- Is there a public status page with a history you can read?
- Can you take your backups and leave?
- How long does support take to answer, and who answers?
Our prices are on the pricing page, and how much RAM your server needs turns your player count into GB. No account needed to see them.