Best Minecraft Server Hosting

Looking for good Minecraft server hosting that would finally just work and not drop players left and right? You’re in the right place!

In this comparison, we look at 8 of the best Minecraft server hosting options out there. We tell you all about them, list their features, and tell you what they’re going to cost you (there are free options as well).

But first:

What to Look for in Best Minecraft Server Hosting

Before you buy any Minecraft hosting, you should understand what makes some providers better than others. After all, you don’t want to get disappointed after realizing that your host can’t do something that’s important for how you like to play the game.

Here’s what to look out for:

• Good connection parameters – high performance, with low latency/ping, and good uptime. When your connection drops, it’s the most annoying thing ever. To avoid that, you need to get a server that has sufficient RAM and processing power. It’s simple – the more players you want to welcome at the same time, the more powerful the server needs to be.
• Multiple players allowed at the same time – Don’t get any hosting setup that can handle less than 10 players.
• Game servers in the right locations – When signing up for Minecraft server hosting, you want to go with the company that has servers that are close to your geographical location – ideally in your country. This will make the connection faster.
• Mods allowed and included –Minecraft loves mods! Your server needs to not only allow them but possibly also come with some of the most popular mods already included.
• Easy or instant setup – Servers can be complicated, and dealing with them can sometimes require specialized knowledge. This is not always the case, though. Work with a hosting company that makes getting started as simple as possible. Preferably, you want to just be able to sign up and begin your game right away.
• Contract length – This is something that you might not realize at first, but it is really important. Some hosts will want you to pay for four years upfront. This is not bad if you are indeed planning to stay with the host long-term. But for shorter-term projects, look for hosts with monthly payments.
• DDoS protection – DDoS is the most common type of attack on web servers. It happens when a malicious party starts making a huge number of connection attempts to your server in a very short period of time. If there are too many such connections, the server crashes. Why would anyone do that? Beats us. But it does happen, especially in gaming. A good server will protect you against DDoS attacks.

The following hosting companies all deliver on the features listed above. Let’s get the list going:

1. Hostinger

• Price: from $6.95/month
• Free trial: No
• Players: 70
• Control panel: Multicraft
• DDoS protection: Yes
• RAM: 2 GB
• Mods allowed: Yes
• Instant setup: Yes

Hostinger is one of the leaders in the hosting industry overall. You can give them a shot not only if you need a Minecraft server, but also website hosting, email, cloud hosting, dedicated servers, or WordPress hosting.

Their Minecraft plans deliver on all the must-have features like instant setup, DDoS protection, and good server hardware (running Intel Xeon processors and SSD drives with 2 GB of RAM and up).

Hostinger also lets you install any modpack you like, and they support custom JAR files as well. Ultimately, this allows you to play the game as you want it.

On top of that, you can pick from four server locations when signing up: US, UK, the Netherlands, and Singapore.

Pricing

Hostinger offers their Minecraft server hosting from $6.95 a month, but you do need to agree to a four-year contract and pay for the whole thing upfront. If you want to pay monthly, that’s $8.95.

For that price, you get everything mentioned above, 2 GB of RAM, and up to 70 players on the server. There are higher-tier plans available if you need more power.

Visit Hostinger to learn more

2. Nodecraft

• Price: from $9.98/month
• Free trial: Yes
• Players: Unlimited
• Control panel: NodePanel 2
• DDoS protection: Yes
• RAM: 2 GB
• Mods allowed: Yes
• Instant setup: Yes

Nodecraft is a platform purpose-built for online gaming. You won’t find standard web hosting with them, no email hosting, no cloud hosting, or anything like that. This is a hosting provider for gamers. Period.

This laser focus of theirs allows for highly-optimized machines that are ready to handle the unique requirements of online gaming. Speaking of which, Nodecraft offers setups for many of the popular titles – Minecraft is one of them.

The platform gives you one-click installs for vanilla and modded Minecraft (Forge, Spigot, Sponge), good server parameters (from 2 GB of RAM up, solid-state drives) unlimited players, and also the ability to swap games if you ever feel like it.

Nodecraft has data centers all around the globe: the US, South Africa, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

Pricing

The prices at Nodecraft start from $9.98 a month. For that price, you get 2 GB of RAM, 10 GB of disk space, 2o GB of backups, and unlimited player slots.

However, this cheapest setup is not the recommended one if you want to be sure that your game sessions go smoothly. Specifically, Nodecraft wants you to pick their $19.98 Keelo plan for playing Minecraft.

The good news, though, is that the plans are billed monthly. Plus, if you’re lucky, you can stumble upon promos that often cut the price in half (like when we signed up for our server).

Visit Nodecraft to learn more

3. Apex Hosting

• Price: from $7.49/month
• Free trial: No
• Players: Unlimited
• Control panel: Multicraft 2.0
• DDoS protection: Yes
• RAM: 2 GB
• Mods allowed: Yes (not on the cheapest plan)
• Instant setup: Yes

Apex Hosting is one of the highest-rated Minecraft server hosting firms out there. Users appreciate the reliability and features that the platform brings to the table.

You’ll find all the “must-haves” in Apex’s offering, such as support for mods and plugins, one-click installers, low latency, good hardware (with FTP and MySQL database access). Plus, there are also some more unique features that you can take advantage of.

For instance, Apex comes with a built-in donation plugin, which helps you fund your server with your players’ help. Apex is also ready to host any version of the game you might want to enjoy, like Minecraft Bedrock or Java editions.

Pricing

The prices at Apex Hosting start from $7.49 a month (for the first month) and $9.99 after that. You’re billed monthly.

For that price, you get 2 GB of RAM, unlimited player slots, a 7-day money-back guarantee, automated backups, instant setup, DDoS protection, and you can pick from 19 server locations around the globe.

The higher-tier plans are well-balanced and offer gradual upgrades for reasonably higher fees.

Visit Apex Hosting to learn more

4. ScalaCube

• Price: from $2.50/month
• Free trial: No
• Players: 10
• Control panel: Custom
• DDoS protection: Yes
• RAM: 768 MB
• Mods allowed: Yes
• Instant setup: Yes

ScalaCube offers hosting services for a couple of games, but the core of their business revolves around Minecraft.

In addition to letting you host your favorite version of the game, you can also create your own custom Minecraft launcher. Such a launcher can, for instance, load your favorite mods on startup and invite players to join the server through the launcher.

ScalaCube supports more than 1000 mods (with a simple one-click install) and also gives you a pre-installed website and forum alongside your server.

There are four server locations available: in North America, Australia, and two in Europe.

Pricing

The prices at ScalaCube start from $2.50 for the first month and $5 after that. For that price, you get 768MB of RAM, 10GB of disk space, and 10 player slots. A pre-installed website and forum come included.

This makes it an interesting cheap solution for beginners, but scaling to 100 players or more gets expensive fast ($36 from the second month).

Visit ScalaCube to learn more

5. GGServers

• Price: from $3/month
• Free trial: No
• Players: 12
• Control panel: Multicraft
• DDoS protection: Yes
• RAM: 1 GB
• Mods allowed: Yes
• Instant setup: Yes

GGServers is another great company with a long tradition of reliable Minecraft server hosting. They’ve been in the market since 2013, and their 4+ Trustpilot score is proof that they can meet their users’ needs very well.

Their servers support both Java and Bedrock editions of Minecraft, you get to use a customized Multicraft control panel, and get one-click installs of modpacks and plugins. All popular modpacks and server types are supported. You can create worlds with set difficulty, level type, game mode, and other parameters when launching your game.

There are nine global server locations to choose from: in the US, Canada, Europe, Singapore, and Australia.

Pricing

GGServers hosting starts from $3 a month for what they call “standard” servers, and $6 a month for “premium” servers.

Standard plans give you slightly lower server hardware parameters compared to the premium plans. Both allow 12 player slots on the entry-level, and scale from there.

Overall, it’s not that clear what the benefit of the premium plans is in practice, so most users will probably go with the standard.

Visit GGServers to learn more

6. Server.pro

• Price: from $0/month
• Free trial: free plan
• Players: 10
• Control panel: n/a
• DDoS protection: Yes
• RAM: 1 GB
• Mods allowed: Not on the free plan
• Instant setup: Not on the free plan

Server.pro is the first Minecraft server hosting on this list that offers a free plan! But this doesn’t mean that it lacks in features compared to the competition.

Server.pro is capable of running Minecraft and Minecraft Bedrock, you get powerful hosting hardware (with NVMe drives, modern CPUs), backups, instant setup, file access, and firewalls (not all these features are available on the free plan though).

This Minecraft server hosting also supports mods, plugins, and custom JAR files. Depending on the plan you select, you get to welcome from 10 to an unlimited number of players.

Pricing

As mentioned, Server.pro offers a free plan. As part of it, you get 1 GB of RAM, standard DDoS protection, file access, 10 player slots, and 10 plugin installs. You cannot, however, use mods, custom JARs, you don’t get instant setup, daily backups, and you can’t remove Server.pro’s ads from your server.

The entry-level paid plan is $5 a month. For that price, you get 2 GB of RAM, instant setups, ad-free experience, backups, unlimited player slots, plugins installed, support for modpacks as well as custom JAR files.

Visit Server.pro to learn more

7. BisectHosting

• Price: from $2.99/month
• Free trial: No
• Players: 12
• Control panel: Multicraft
• DDoS protection: Yes
• RAM: 1 GB
• Mods allowed: Yes
• Instant setup: Yes

BisectHosting can be a great option, especially if you want to customize your Minecraft server hosting to fit your needs 100%.

This host has a signup wizard that takes you by the hand and helps pick and configure a plan that’s right for you. It first asks about the version of the game that you want to run (supports Java and Bedrock), then about the number of players that the server needs to be able to handle at the same time. Lastly, it lists some premium upgrades that you might want. In the end, you’ll get a specific setup suggested. You can either take it or pick something off the shelf.

Feature-wise, BisectHosting has everything you’d expect from a good Minecraft server hosting. There’s instant setup, DDoS protection, mods and custom JARs, and so on. Also, there are 16 server locations to choose from. However, some of them are not going to be available for certain versions of the game.

Pricing

The prices at BisectHosting start from $2.99 a month (paid monthly). Paying quarterly is 10% off, semi-annually is 12.5% off, and annually is 15% off.

For that price, you get 1 GB of RAM, NVMe drives, and 12 player slots.

Daily backups are from $0.99 a month, and dedicated IPs are from $2.99 a month.

BisectHosting offers many hosting tiers, which allow you to grow your server without having to change hosts.

Visit BisectHosting to learn more

8. Shockbyte

• Price: from $2.50/month
• Free trial: No
• Players: 8+
• Control panel: Multicraft
• DDoS protection: Yes
• RAM: 1 GB
• Mods allowed: Yes
• Instant setup: Yes

Shockbyte is one of the better-known hosts in the Minecraft space, and not without reason. They’re very experienced with game hosting – been in the market since 2013 and offering setups for a number of games.

For Minecraft, they support Java and Bedrock game versions (with a version switcher), offer instant setup, all modpacks, custom JARs, DDoS protection, 24/7 support team, unlimited NVMe SSD storage and bandwidth, and even full FTP access if you need it.

There are multiple server locations to choose from: in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Pricing

Shockbyte offers its servers from $2.50 a month, which is a really affordable price!

You get a server either in North America or Europe. Servers in Asia start from $5 a month.

You also get 1 GB of RAM, DDoS protection, unlimited bandwidth, NVMe SSD disk space, and 8+ player slots.

Dedicated IPs are $5 a month, and there’s also a $15-a-month “server management” upgrade where Shockbyte installs and configures everything for you (plugins, mods, JARs).

Apart from the cheapest one, Shockbyte has a nice range of hosting tiers to choose from depending on the server power that you need. There are also plans with unlimited slots available.

Visit Shockbyte to learn more

Ready to Pick Your Ideal Minecraft Server Hosting Provider?

To make your choice a bit easier, we’ve compiled this quick comparison table, highlighting the key parameters of each host:

Do you have any questions on any of these Minecraft server hosting platforms? Let us know in the comments below.