TrueTick vs Exaroton: two pay-as-you-go hosts, compared honestly

If you've already decided flat monthly hosting is a bad deal for a server you don't run 24/7, you've probably found Exaroton — it popularized hourly, pay-as-you-go Minecraft hosting and has a loyal following for good reason. TrueTick is built on the same core conviction: you shouldn't pay for hours your server is asleep. Where we differ is in the billing unit — we meter by the gigabyte-hour — and in the guarantee underneath it: a dedicated per-server CPU share the platform refuses to oversell. Here's the honest comparison, not a sales pitch dressed up as one.

Who each one is actually for

Exaroton is for players who want simple, predictable, pay-as-you-go hosting with a credit system they top up and watch drain. It's a mature product with a straightforward mental model: buy credits, spend them by the hour, done.

TrueTick is for players who want that same "don't pay for sleep" deal with a hard resource guarantee underneath it. We meter by the gigabyte-hour instead of a flat hourly rate regardless of size, and every active server gets a dedicated CPU share the platform refuses to oversell — admission control turns down a new server before it ever lets a node get overcommitted.

The comparison

Both of us reject the "pay full price whether you play or not" model. The difference is in the unit of billing and in the guarantee underneath the price — a dedicated per-server CPU share the platform refuses to oversell. Checked July 2026:

	Exaroton	TrueTick
Billing model	Pay-as-you-go: buy credits, spend per hour the server runs	Metered: $0.012 per active GB-hour (or flat $3/GB-month if you want always-on)
Billing granularity	Hourly rate scales with server size/plan tier	Per-second metering against an hourly rate, billed in GB-hours — small servers cost proportionally less
Idle cost	$0 while stopped — you control start/stop yourself	$0 while asleep — auto-sleeps on inactivity, no manual stop/start required
Wake on join	Manual — you (or a Discord bot integration) start the server	Automatic wake-on-join: connecting to the server address starts it, no dashboard visit needed
CPU guarantees	Plan-based resource allocation	Guaranteed CPU per active server enforced by admission control — we refuse to overcommit a node
Mods/plugins	Supported across common loaders	Supported (Forge/NeoForge/Fabric, Modrinth/CurseForge catalog)

Exaroton's credit system is a real, working pay-as-you-go model — we're not claiming otherwise. The two meaningful differences are billing granularity (per-GB-hour vs. a size-tiered hourly rate) and the guarantee underneath the price: TrueTick sells a dedicated per-server CPU share the platform refuses to oversell.

Where Exaroton is the right call

• You want start/stop in your own hands. Exaroton's manual control model is a feature if you specifically want to decide exactly when the server is up, rather than have a connection auto-wake it.
• You're already invested in their ecosystem. Existing Exaroton credits, a Discord bot setup you like, plugins you've built around their API — switching cost is real and worth weighing against any improvement we offer.
• A flat per-hour number is simpler for your group to reason about. If your group prefers "one number, regardless of server size" over GB-hour math, that's a legitimate preference, and Exaroton's pricing is built around it.

This isn't a case of one host being broadly worse — it's two different takes on the same honest idea, and the right one depends on how your group actually plays.

Where it hits a ceiling

Pay-as-you-go billing solves the "why am I paying for sleep" problem. It doesn't, by itself, answer a different one: is your server's CPU actually yours when it's running, and what stops a host from quietly stacking more servers onto your core? A credit system bills you fairly for time; on its own it doesn't remove a host's incentive to oversell the hardware underneath you.

That's the second half of what we built TrueTick around:

• Capacity honesty enforced in code. We track real node capacity and block creating or starting a server that would oversell it, rather than relying on policy alone.
• Metered, gigabyte-hour billing. You pay for the CPU share you're guaranteed, sized to the hours you actually play — not a flat hourly rate regardless of server size.

Verdict

If you want pay-as-you-go billing with manual start/stop control, Exaroton is a solid, established choice — we mean that. If you want the same "don't pay for sleep" deal plus a dedicated per-server CPU share the platform refuses to oversell, check the GB-hour math for your server or create one and watch your server's live TPS line for yourself.