Not Playing 24/7? Cheap Modded Minecraft Server Hosting With More RAM
A monthly plan bills every hour of the month. Billed only while it is awake, a 16 GB modpack server played a few nights a week costs about a fifth as much.
A 16 GB Pixly server awake 40 hours a month costs $10.23 in the US. BisectHosting's 16 GB plan is $47.99 a month on monthly billing, checked September 2026, for all 730 hours of it.1 Billing by the hour is how cheap modded Minecraft server hosting keeps the memory a modpack asks for.
Why 40 hours on 16 GB cost a fifth of a monthly plan
A monthly plan charges the same for two evenings of play a week as for a server that never switches off.
A Pixly server sleeps 5 minutes after the last player leaves, which stops the hourly charge, and the next player to join wakes it.
| Memory | 40 hours | 120 hours | Monthly plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 GB | $5.64 | $15.33 | $23.99 |
| 16 GB | $10.23 | $28.18 | $47.99 |
| 32 GB | $13.47 | $37.27 | $95.99 |
Forty hours awake is about three 3-hour evenings a week; 120 is four hours every night. At 40 hours, 16 GB costs about a fifth of the monthly plan and 32 GB less than a seventh. Pixly prices are for Oregon and N. Virginia and include storage while the server sleeps. The last column is BisectHosting's BisectOne plan with the same memory on monthly billing, checked September 2026.1 It matches memory only: processor, storage and support differ.
Modpack authors ask for 4 to 16 GB of server RAM
Modpack teams publish their own server figures. Four of them:
- All the Mods — "at least 6GB+ allocated RAM", which the team says most of its packs require.2
- Prominence II — "at least 8 GB of RAM for a small group of 3 to 4 players", then 1 GB per extra player.3
- Vault Hunters — 8 GB plus 2 GB per player recommended, so 16 GB for four players.4
- Feed The Beast (FTB) packs — "at least 4GB-6GB of RAM, but some may require more".5
For four players, that is 4 GB to 16 GB. A Pixly size is the whole machine's memory and it is yours alone: most of it runs the server, and the rest stays with the operating system. When a pack's figure matches a size exactly and your group is at the top of its player range, take the next size up.
Real August bills: 32 GB for 90 hours was $26.50
The busiest server on Pixly in August 2026 was awake about 125 hours, one hour in six. A 32 GB server awake about 90 hours was billed about $26.50, roughly a quarter of the 32 GB monthly plan in the table. Three more from Pixly's billing records, rounded:6
Paper, 16 GB
About 115 hours awake, billed about $25.50, around half the 16 GB monthly plan.
Fabric, 10 mods
About 125 hours, half of them on 8 GB, billed about $12.50.
Fabric, 50+ mods
Moved between 4, 8 and 16 GB, about 25 hours in all, billed about $3.50.
None of them was awake for even a fifth of the month.
Resizing takes one restart and keeps your world
Size is a setting, not a plan. A restart applies a change on an awake server, and a sleeping one picks it up at the next wake. The address and the world stay the same, and the new hourly rate starts from that point.
Size a modpack server by the hour
- Start at the pack author's figure. Pick that size or the next one up.
- Play a normal evening with everyone on. An empty server loads far less of the world, so its memory use tells you little.
- Measure real use with spark. Get the free profiler from spark's download page, then run the two commands in how much RAM a Minecraft server needs.
- Size up or down, then restart. Run 16 GB for a heavy weekend and 8 GB for a quiet week.
When a monthly plan costs less: over 6 hours a day
Against the monthly plans in the table, billing by the hour costs more once a server is awake for over about 6 to 7 hours a day, every day, at 8 GB and 16 GB in Oregon and N. Virginia, and about 10 hours at 32 GB.7 In Frankfurt, where prices are higher, it comes an hour or two sooner.
Four hours every night sits well under that line; a server kept awake around the clock for farms is past it.
Below about 6 hours a day, a big modded server billed by the hour costs less than a typical monthly plan with the same memory.
Modpack installs, loaders and version choices are on the modded Minecraft server hosting page.
Common questions: waking, modpacks and players
Four questions that come up once the size is picked.
Yes, the owner does not need to be online. The first friend to connect wakes the server, sees a waking message and joins on a retry; everyone after that connects straight through. The owner can turn this auto-start off.
About 15 to 30 seconds for a server played recently, and a few minutes after a day or more asleep. The very first start of a new modpack server also takes a few minutes.
Paste the pack's CurseForge or Modrinth link when you first set up the server, choose one from the popular list, or upload a Modrinth .mrpack file. The pack sets the loader and the Minecraft version for you.
No. The bill follows the hours the server is awake, not how many people are online. A bigger group may need a bigger size, and a bigger size has a higher hourly rate.
Footnotes
BisectHosting, BisectOne pricing — 8 GB $23.99, 16 GB $47.99 and 32 GB $95.99 a month on monthly billing, checked September 2026. Pixly prices are from its live price list in September 2026. ↩ ↩
All the Mods, server setup guide. ↩
Cinderstone Studios, Prominence II server guide. ↩
Vault Hunters wiki, server install. ↩
Feed The Beast, server guide. ↩
Pixly billing records for August 2026. Hours and dollars are rounded, and every bill includes the server's storage. ↩
Worked out from Pixly's 40-hour and 120-hour prices against BisectHosting's monthly prices checked September 2026, for a server that exists all month. Pixly's price per hour falls as hours rise, so the real crossover comes slightly later. ↩