How to make a Minecraft server (2026 guide)

Making a Minecraft server isn't hard, but there are a handful of decisions early on that are annoying to undo later — self-host or pay for hosting, Vanilla or a plugin-friendly fork, how much RAM to give it. This guide walks through all of them in order, with no assumption that you already know the jargon.

Step 1: self-host on your PC, or use a hosting provider?

This is the first fork in the road, and it's a genuine trade-off — neither option is "correct."

Self-hosting means running the Minecraft server software on your own computer.

• Cost: free, aside from electricity. You already own the hardware.
• Port forwarding: to let friends connect from outside your home network, you'll need to forward TCP port 25565 on your router to your PC's local IP, and either note your public IP or set up a free dynamic-DNS service if your ISP rotates it. This is the step that trips up most first-timers — router UIs vary wildly, and some ISPs use carrier-grade NAT that blocks inbound connections entirely, which no amount of router config can fix.
• Uptime: the server is only up while your PC is on and the server process is running. If you go to sleep or close your laptop, everyone gets disconnected. Fine for a Saturday-afternoon session with people who are all online at once; awkward for an SMP where people log in at different times across the week.
• Performance: your gaming PC's CPU is often better per-core than a budget hosting box, but it's also doing everything else you use the PC for at the same time.

A hosting provider runs the server on their hardware, always reachable at a domain or IP they give you.

• Cost: anywhere from free (with trade-offs) to a few dollars a month, depending on the host and how much RAM/CPU you need.
• Port forwarding: none — the host already has a public address, you just share it.
• Uptime: the server can be reachable whenever a host process is running, independent of whether your own PC is on. Some hosts hibernate an idle server and wake it back up automatically when a player connects, which trades a short reconnect delay for not paying to keep an empty server running around the clock.
• Performance: varies by host and price tier — this is the part worth checking before you commit, because "8 GB of RAM" doesn't tell you whether the CPU behind it is dedicated to your server or shared with a dozen other people's servers during peak hours.

Rule of thumb: self-host for a one-off build session with people who are all online together right now. Use a host once you have a recurring group, people in different time zones, or you're tired of babysitting your router.

Step 2: pick your server software

"Minecraft server" isn't one piece of software — there are several, and the choice determines what you can install later.

• Vanilla is the official server jar from Mojang. No plugins, no mods, exactly the game as shipped. Simplest option, and the only one guaranteed to behave identically to singleplayer.
• Paper is a high-performance fork of the Bukkit/Spigot lineage. It runs the same worlds and the same game as Vanilla but adds a plugin API (server-side add-ons — no one needs to install anything client-side) and a long list of performance and stability patches. Paper is the default choice for most serious servers today: SMPs that want a couple of quality-of-life plugins, anti-grief tools, or just better tick performance out of the box.
• Purpur is a fork of Paper that adds extra configuration knobs — mob AI behavior, gameplay tweaks, more granular performance settings — on top of everything Paper already does. It's plugin-compatible with Paper, so if you outgrow Paper's defaults but don't want to touch mods, Purpur is the next step up.
• Fabric and Forge (and its actively-maintained continuation, NeoForge) are modding platforms, not plugin platforms. Mods change the actual game — new blocks, new mechanics, sometimes new dimensions — and everyone connecting needs the matching mod loader and mod files installed client-side too. Fabric tends to be lighter-weight and is often the first platform to support a brand-new Minecraft version; Forge/NeoForge has the deeper, longer-established catalog, especially for older or larger modpacks. If you're installing a modpack (a curated bundle of mods from a site like Modrinth or CurseForge), the modpack's page will tell you which loader it needs — you don't choose Fabric vs. Forge in the abstract, the pack chooses for you.

If you're not installing plugins or mods, Vanilla is fine. If you want a couple of plugins or just better performance, go Paper. If you want mods, the modpack tells you the loader.

For the performance numbers themselves — the actual heartbeat of whether any of this is running smoothly — see what TPS and MSPT mean and how to read them. Short version: your server should hold 20 TPS; if it's dropping, more RAM alone won't fix it if the bottleneck is CPU, which is a common misconception.

Step 3: how much RAM do you actually need

RAM requirements depend far more on what's running than on raw player count — a modded server with two players can need more memory than a twenty-player Vanilla server. Treat this table as a starting point, not a guarantee, and adjust upward if you're seeing memory-related slowdowns:

Setup	Players	RAM (rough guide)
Vanilla / Paper, no plugins	1–5	2–4 GB
Paper + a handful of plugins	5–10	4–6 GB
Paper/Purpur, busy SMP + plugins	10–20	6–8 GB
Light modpack (Fabric, small mod list)	1–5	6–8 GB
Heavy modpack (Forge/NeoForge, large mod list)	1–10	10–16 GB

Two things worth knowing before you pick a number: first, giving a server more RAM than it needs doesn't make it faster — Minecraft's tick loop is single-threaded, so extra memory mostly just sits idle rather than speeding anything up. Second, modpacks are the exception to "more players = more RAM" — the mod list itself, not the player count, tends to be the bigger driver of memory use, because every player's client is loading the same large set of mod data whether there are two of them or twenty.

Step 4: create the server and set the version

The exact steps differ slightly depending on the path from Step 1.

Self-hosting:

1. Install a matching Java version for the Minecraft version you want (recent versions need recent Java releases — check the version's requirements before downloading).
2. Download the server jar (Vanilla from Mojang's official site, or Paper/Purpur/Fabric/Forge from their respective project pages) for the version you want to run.
3. Run it once to generate the folder structure, then open eula.txt and set eula=true to accept Mojang's EULA — the server won't start until you do.
4. Set memory flags when launching, e.g. java -Xmx6G -Xms6G -jar server.jar nogui for a 6 GB allocation.
5. Forward port 25565 on your router (see Step 1) and start the server.

Hosting provider: most hosts collapse this into a form — pick the RAM tier, pick the server software and version from a dropdown, click create, and the server is provisioned for you with the address ready to share. TrueTick, for example, works this way and offers both a metered plan and a flat always-on plan: metered costs by the hour the server's actually awake and sleeps at $0 cost when nobody's connected, waking automatically the moment someone joins — worth it if your group only plays a few evenings a week; flat charges a fixed monthly rate for a server that stays up around the clock, which suits a group that's online at unpredictable times and doesn't want any wake delay. See pricing for the numbers, or how that compares to a free host like Aternos in our honest comparison.

Whichever route you take, pick the Minecraft version deliberately: everyone connecting needs a client on the same major version (a 1.21 client can't join a 1.20 server), and if you're installing a modpack, the pack dictates the version for you.

Step 5: share the address and invite your friends

Self-hosted: give friends your public IP (or dynamic-DNS hostname) and the port if it's not the default 25565. Hosted: you're usually handed a ready-made address (often a subdomain) the moment the server is created — copy it into Minecraft's multiplayer "Add Server" screen and you're in.

Either way, do one test join yourself first — from a different network if you can (mobile data works) — before telling everyone else it's ready. It's the fastest way to catch a port-forwarding or firewall issue before your friends hit it.

FAQ

Is making a Minecraft server free? Self-hosting costs nothing beyond electricity you're already paying for. Free hosting tiers exist too (Aternos is the best-known) with trade-offs like shared hardware and startup queues — see the Aternos comparison for specifics. Paid hosts charge either a flat monthly rate or meter by the hour the server is actually running — TrueTick offers both, so you can pick per server.

How much RAM do I actually need? Use the table above as a starting point. For a small Vanilla or Paper server with a handful of friends, 2–4 GB is typically enough; modded servers need more regardless of player count because of the mod data itself.

What's the difference between a plugin and a mod? Plugins (Paper/Purpur) run only on the server — nobody installs anything to join. Mods (Fabric/Forge/NeoForge) change the game itself, so every connecting player needs the same mod loader and mod files installed on their own client.

Do I need a powerful gaming PC to self-host? No — Minecraft servers are more CPU-bound than GPU-bound (the server never renders graphics), so a modest, always-on machine is often a better fit than a gaming rig you turn off at night.

Can I switch server software later? Vanilla to Paper/Purpur is generally a safe upgrade — Paper reads the same world files. Moving to or from a modded loader (Fabric/Forge) is riskier, since mods can add data to the world that isn't recognized once removed; back up your world first regardless of which direction you're going.

Why does my server say "Can't keep up"? That message means a tick took longer than its 50 ms budget — the world is falling behind real time. It's usually a CPU or plugin/mod problem, not a RAM problem; see what TPS and MSPT mean for how to diagnose it.