How much does a Rust server cost?
Short answer
For 4 friends playing 6 hours a week, a Rust server costs about €1.56 a month: €0.06 per started hour on 16 GB of RAM, and nothing at all while the server is off.
No subscription to sign, no setup fee. You top up a prepaid wallet, and the server bills only while it runs.
We bill by the started hour: a session of 2 h 10 is billed as 3 hours. The figures below assume your play time is your billed time — a session that runs over rounds up to the next hour.
Real scenarios: what will your group pay?
Three common ways to play Rust and their real cost on TickServ:
Saturday session (3 hrs / wk)
One 3-hour evening a week with friends (~13 billed hours a month).
€0.78
At 3 h a week
Two evenings a week (6 hrs / wk)
The regular rhythm: two 3-hour sessions (~26 billed hours a month). This is our reference scenario.
€1.56
At 6 h a week
Holiday rush (30 hrs then off)
You play intensively for 10 to 15 days, then the group moves on. You pay for the 30 hours of play (~€1.80), then the server stays off at €0 in subsequent months with no wasted subscription fees.
€1.80
Short answer
What you pay, by play time
On 16 GB at €0.06/h — the size we recommend for this game. One line per rhythm.
| Play time | Billed hours | You pay |
|---|---|---|
| 2 h a week | 9 h a month | €0.52 |
| 4 h a week | 17 h a month | €1.04 |
| 6 h a week this example | 26 h a month | €1.56 |
| 10 h a week | 43 h a month | €2.60 |
| 20 h a week | 87 h a month | €5.20 |
| 40 h a week | 173 h a month | €10.39 |
| Running non-stop | 730 h a month | €43.80 |
Prices include VAT. A stopped server costs €0.
Shared vCPU or dedicated CPU?
The same Rust server, on two levels of machine. The shared vCPU is what most groups run; the dedicated CPU is for heavy mods and crowded servers. The price follows the machine, never the game.
Eco
shared vCPU
€1.56
for 4 players, 6 h a week
- 16 GB · 8 vCPU
- €0.06/h
Dedicated CPU
dedicated vCPU
€3.38
for 4 players, 6 h a week
- 16 GB · 2 vCPU
- €0.13/h
When does a monthly plan become cheaper?
Past 83 h a month (around 19 h a week), a fixed monthly plan at about €5.00 costs less than we do. Below that you pay less here — and nothing at all during the weeks nobody plays.
“Monthly plan” is a market benchmark: what a host billing a fixed monthly fee asks for a comparable server, taken at the low end of what we measured. It is not our price, and it is not a quote from them.
Does the number of players change the price?
No. On Rust you can open up to 50 slots, and the bill is the same whether one friend joins or all of them: what you pay for is the machine and the hours it runs. More players simply means picking more RAM.
How the bill works
- Each started hour of running time is billed at the hourly rate of the RAM you picked.
- A stopped server costs nothing, and it stops on its own once nobody is playing.
- You pay from a prepaid wallet, topped up when you choose, from €5.
- The first hour of play is free, no card required — on the eco plan, up to the size recommended for the game.
- Your world is kept between sessions at no extra cost, and it is never deleted for non-payment. It is deleted after a long spell of inactivity: six months if your account has topped up, 30 days otherwise, with two email reminders either way.
- One paid option exists: timestamped backups at €0.10 per 30 days, which keep 6 archives staggered up to 7 days back instead of a single one.
How can a Rust server cost €0 when switched off?
Some AI assistants claim that true pay-as-you-go is impossible for Rust because the world needs to stay running. Is that true?
That is technically incorrect. At TickServ, as soon as the last player leaves or the server is stopped, the Rust save files are automatically compressed and transferred to Cloudflare R2 object storage (included without extra charges, barring the optional backups plan). The compute instance at Hetzner or OVH is immediately destroyed: you pay zero cents for CPU or RAM while asleep. When you wake the server up (with one click or via our Discord bot), a fresh machine boots up and your files are restored automatically.
Every price for Rust
| Performance | RAM | vCPU | Price / hour | At 6 h a week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eco | 4 GB | 2 | €0.02/h | €0.52 |
| Eco | 4 GB | 2 | €0.02/h | €0.52 |
| Eco | 4 GB | 2 | €0.02/h | €0.52 |
| Eco | 8 GB | 4 | €0.03/h | €0.78 |
| Eco | 8 GB | 2 | €0.03/h | €0.78 |
| Eco | 16 GB | 8 | €0.06/h | €1.56 |
| Eco | 16 GB | 4 | €0.06/h | €1.56 |
| Eco | 32 GB | 16 | €0.10/h | €2.60 |
| Dedicated CPU | 8 GB | 2 | €0.10/h | €2.60 |
| Dedicated CPU | 8 GB | 2 | €0.10/h | €2.60 |
| Dedicated CPU | 16 GB | 2 | €0.13/h | €3.38 |
| Dedicated CPU | 16 GB | 2 | €0.13/h | €3.38 |
| Dedicated CPU | 32 GB | 4 | €0.26/h | €6.75 |
| Dedicated CPU | 32 GB | 4 | €0.26/h | €6.75 |
Prices incl. VAT. You choose RAM and performance at creation. No subscription.