--- title: "Hosting a Minecraft server: what are your options?" description: "At home, on a VPS or with an hourly host: the real cost of all three (electricity and VPS prices included), and which one fits your rhythm." url: https://tickserv.com/en/guides/host-minecraft-server site: "TickServ (https://tickserv.com)" lang: en published: 2026-07-17 games: [minecraft] --- # Hosting a Minecraft server: what are your options? There are three ways to host a Minecraft server, and the right choice does not come down to budget. It comes down to two questions: **do you play in sessions or continuously**, and **does system administration scare you**. Here are the three options with verifiable numbers, including the cases where you should not choose us. ## Option 1: at home, on your own machine Free on paper, and this is where the reasoning usually slips. The server is only free if you forget the electricity. A PC left running to host draws, say, 120 W. At the French regulated rate of **€0.194 per kWh** (July 2026), that gives: | Usage | Consumption | Electricity cost | | --------------- | --------------------- | ------------------ | | 4 h a day | 14.4 kWh / month | **€2.79 / month** | | 24 h a day | 87.6 kWh / month | **€16.99 / month** | The number that surprises people: for the same playing time, **the electricity alone costs more than an hourly-hosted server**. Four hours a day is 120 hours of server, which is €2.40 with us at 4 GB, against €2.79 of electricity at home. And at 24/7, that €17 of electricity beats any monthly plan. This is an order of magnitude, not an invoice: real consumption depends on your machine, and you already own the PC. But it is enough to kill the idea of "free". The genuine annoyances have nothing to do with money: - Your PC has to stay on while the others play, so you cannot shut it down or reboot it. - You have to open a port on your router, and often deal with an IP that changes. - You expose your home connection to strangers, which is never trivial. - The game and the server share the same processor if you play on that machine. **When it is the right choice:** for testing, for LAN play with people in the room, or for tinkering. Not for playing remotely on a regular basis. ## Option 2: a VPS you administer yourself A VPS is a bare machine at a hosting provider. You install everything on it. It is the cheapest option if the server has to run continuously, and here are the real prices rather than ballpark figures: at Hetzner, a **4 GB VPS costs €5.49 a month**, an **8 GB one €8.49**, a **16 GB one €15.99**, plus about €0.50 for an IPv4 address. So roughly **€6 a month** for the equivalent of a small Minecraft server, permanently available. That is less than a classic game host, which charges more like €9 to €12 for the same RAM. What you save in money you pay in work. On a bare VPS, you take on: - installing Java and the server (vanilla, Paper, Fabric, Forge…), then keeping them updated; - configuring the service so it restarts on boot and survives a crash; - backups: there are none by default, and a lost world does not come back; - the firewall, system security patches, watching memory usage; - and the debugging when it breaks on a Friday night. **When it is the right choice:** your server needs to be reachable 24/7, you are comfortable on the command line, and the admin time costs you nothing because you enjoy it. In that case it is objectively the cheapest option, and we are not the right tool. ## Option 3: an hourly host This is our model. The server is ready in minutes with nothing to install, and billed **by the started hour**: switched off, it costs nothing. The world is saved on every shutdown and restored on the next start, the connection address stays the same from one session to the next, and the server shuts itself down when nobody is playing. In plain terms: €0.02 an hour at 4 GB, so €0.26 a month for three hours of play on a Saturday evening. And the limit, in figures: against a bare VPS at €6 a month, we become more expensive beyond roughly **300 hours of server per month**, which is ten hours a day every day. Against a classic game plan the threshold is higher still, between nine and fifteen hours a day depending on the RAM. The [cost guide](https://tickserv.com/en/guides/game-server-cost) works through that calculation. ## How to choose, in one line | Your situation | The right choice | | ------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | | A few hours a week with friends, zero maintenance | **Hourly host** | | Continuous server, you enjoy administering it | **Bare VPS** (cheapest) | | Continuous server, you want to administer nothing | **Monthly plan** at a game host | | Quick test, LAN, everyone in the same room | **At home** | Two of the four cases do not point to us, and that is normal: an hourly model is built for sessions, not for permanent availability. ## If you go hourly, what you don't have to do No Java to install, no configuration file to edit by hand, no backup schedule to set up. Choosing the engine (vanilla, Paper, Fabric, Forge) and the modpacks happens in a form, and the usual `server.properties` settings are exposed in an interface rather than a text file. And if you are coming from elsewhere, your existing world imports at creation time: a `.zip` or `.tar.gz` archive is enough, and you pick your game up where you left it. The guide on [migrating a world](https://tickserv.com/en/guides/move-minecraft-world) walks through it. > [Create your server](https://tickserv.com/app) — your first session is free, no card required.