Minecraft hosting comparison: ten hosts, pricing and policies side by side.
Ten hosts at 4 GB and 8 GB, then ten more rows on features and hardware. Three meter by the hour, six sell the month whole, and one is free — the shape of the bill, not the sticker, is what separates them.
~10 hours to try · no card · instant setup
Cheapest depends on a figure no pricing page carries: how many hours a month your server is actually awake. Every number below is the host's own published one, at the same two sizes, so you can hold your own play hours against each way of charging for them.
Every competitor figure is the host's own
Every competitor number and policy comes from the host's own pages, cited in the footnotes and checked on August 5, 2026 — Campfire Hosting and MineKeep joined the tables on August 20, so those rows carry that date. Promos move often; follow each source for today's figure.
Six of these hosts have a deep-dive page: Pixly vs Apex Hosting, Pixly vs Shockbyte, Pixly vs BisectHosting, Pixly vs Hostinger, Pixly vs Minecraft Realms, and Pixly vs Aternos.
What ten hosts charge — and what costs extra
Both columns price the same server — 4 GB, then 8 GB. “Not published” means the host's own pages carry no figure, and “n/a” means the host sells no tier at that size.
Competitor prices are U.S. list, August 2026, except MineKeep, which publishes only euro prices with VAT included, and the Apex Hosting, BisectHosting and Shockbyte (Premium) 4 GB and 8 GB prices, which are regular renewal prices checked —; the three metered rows are estimated for the same ~10 hours of monthly play*.
| Host | 4 GB plan | 8 GB plan | Storage | Backups included | Domain & dedicated IP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pixly | ~$0.99/mo* · 10¢/hr — 1 vCPU, nothing shared; memory is the whole machine, not a shared slice. | ~$1.49/mo* · 15¢/hr — 2 vCPU, nothing shared; memory is the whole machine, not a shared slice. | NVMe; grows with your world automatically. | Daily, past week kept — on every server. | Own pixly.gg address included, or point a domain you own at the world — both on every plan, nothing extra to buy. |
| Apex Hosting2 | —/mo — vCPU not published; 1 GB starts at $3.99/mo. | —/mo | NVMe SSD; size not published. | 1 automatic slot, overwritten daily; world files only. | Free apexmc.co subdomain; dedicated IP $4/mo add-on, 2-day wait. |
| Aternos3 | Free — No size tiers; hardware specs not published. | n/a — Nothing is for sale. | Not published. | Saved to your own Google Drive. | Free aternos.me address; connecting your own domain is free. |
| BisectHosting4 | —/mo — BisectOne, up to 8 shared vCores on every plan; 1 GB is $3.00/mo. | —/mo | Unlimited disk, NVMe. | 2 slots in a 40 GB shared pool; daily, 3 days kept. | Free subdomain; dedicated IP price not published. |
| Campfire Hosting5 | ~$0.68/mo* — $0.05/hr while running · 1 vCPU; plus $0.18 per GB a month of storage. | ~$1.08/mo* — $0.09/hr while running · 2 vCPU. | Metered at $0.18 per GB a month; no size or cap published. | Not published — its own guide points you at FTP or a backup mod. | Free subdomain; dedicated IP not published. |
| exaroton6 | ~$0.47/mo* — 4 credits/hr while running · 2 shared cores; 100 credits = $1.17. | ~$0.94/mo* — 8 credits/hr while running · 4 shared cores. | 10 GB per server. | To your own Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox. | exaroton.me address included; own-domain connect free. |
| Hostinger7 | $6.99/mo — 1 vCPU — on a 24-month prepay; renews $11.99/mo. | $9.49/mo — 2 vCPU — prepaid; renews $14.99/mo. | 50 GB NVMe (4 GB plan); 100 GB (8 GB). | Weekly automatic + one manual snapshot. | Dedicated IP included; free .cloud domain for a year. |
| Minecraft Realms8 | n/a — $7.99/mo Java; Bedrock $3.99/mo for two players or $7.99/mo. | n/a — No hardware tiers. | No figure published. | Automatic backups included; 3 world slots. | n/a — Java joins from the Realms menu, Bedrock by invite or the Friends tab. |
| MineKeep9 | n/a — No 4 GB tier: 2 GB is €4.99/mo, 5 GB €8.99/mo, and a 1 GB tier is free. VAT included. | €14.99/mo — Nation, 8 GB — the hibernating tier; staying always on costs more. | 60 GB on the 8 GB plan; 10 GB on the free tier. | Daily on every tier; each month's first backup kept 75 days. | Free minekeep.gg address; own domain from the 5 GB tier up. Dedicated IP not published. |
| Shockbyte10 | —/mo — Premium — the Budget line skips 4 GB; its 3 GB is $5.99, 6 GB $11.99. | $15.99/mo — Budget; Premium is —/mo. | NVMe SSD; no size figure. | Up to 3 stored; automatic backups must be scheduled by you. | Free subdomain; dedicated IP is a paid add-on — price shown in cart. |
exaroton's line is lower because a credit buys a slice of a shared machine — 0.5 shared cores per GB by its own docs — with storage capped at 10 GB per server. Pixly's rate runs a machine that's yours alone, and its storage grows with the world.
Promos and fees, host by host:
- Apex takes 25% off the first invoice.
- Shockbyte takes 30% off the first month.
- Hostinger's card prices are a 24-month term paid upfront — $167.76 for 4 GB, $227.76 for 8 GB — and renew higher.
- exaroton's storage fee is 10 credits a month, minus every runtime credit.
* Estimated for ~10 hours of play a month: Pixly at your region's current hourly rate (the size grid below), exaroton at its published 1 credit per GB-hour with 100 credits at $1.17 — runtime that also covers its monthly storage fee — and Campfire Hosting at its published hourly rate plus $0.18 for one gigabyte of stored world. A larger world moves the Campfire figure; a 5 GB modpack world adds about $0.90 a month to it.
On a fixed plan, money only flows one way
Every fixed-plan host here lets you change plan size; the terms show the direction of the money.
Going up costs cash now; coming down returns credit at best, never cash.
What each host's own documentation says:
BisectHosting
Its own FAQ answers “Will I get credits if I downgrade?” with “Downgrades do not qualify for credits or compensation. It is recommended to schedule the change near the end of the billing period.”
Hostinger
Documents upgrading, and nothing about downgrading a game server.
MineKeep
Documents the upgrade tab and states in its terms that payments are non-refundable (August 2026).
Metered hosting removes the event: nothing is prepaid to a size, so resizing isn't a billing transaction — the same holds at Campfire Hosting, where a size change simply applies at the next start. On Pixly the plan is a setting: pick the new size, a short restart applies it (a sleeping server picks it up at the next wake), and the meter follows the hardware actually running. Bigger for Friday, back down Monday, with nothing prepaid to forfeit.
That is the move a fixed plan can't make: it sizes you for the busiest night of the month, then idles that hardware the other twenty-nine days. The guide to what a Minecraft server costs runs both models against real play patterns.
Which host does what, at a glance
“Yes” means built in as a switch; “manual” means you upload and configure it yourself; “not documented” means the host's help center has no guide — all checked August 2026. Competitor names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only for comparison. Pixly's side goes deeper on the modded Minecraft server hosting and crossplay Minecraft server hosting pages.
| Feature | Pixly | Apex Hosting11 | Aternos12 | BisectHosting13 | Campfire Hosting14 | exaroton15 | Hostinger16 | Minecraft Realms17 | MineKeep18 | Shockbyte19 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sleeps when empty, wakes on join | Yes — automatic, both ways | No sleep option | stops when empty; manual start, queue | No sleep option | Yes — stops 5 min after the last player | Yes — AutoStop + AutoStart | No sleep option | No — always-on subscription | Yes — hibernates; a join restarts it | No sleep option |
| Plan size moves both ways | Yes — a setting, not an invoice | credit locked on downgrade | n/a — no plans | no credit on downgrade | Yes — applies at the next start | Yes — 2-16 GB | upgrade only is documented | one size | upgrades documented; payments non-refundable | credit back by ticket |
| The machine underneath | own machine — dedicated CPU and RAM | shared vCores — count not published | not published | up to 8 shared vCores | 1-2 vCPU by package; sharing not published | shared — 0.5 cores per GB | own KVM VPS — 1-8 vCPU | not published | CPU tier named, never quantified | not published |
| Locations | 4 — Portland, Ashburn, Frankfurt, Singapore | worldwide — count not published | not published | 21 locations, free swaps | 1 — Oregon, USA | North America and Europe | 4 continents; no count published | no location choice | not published | US, Europe, Asia, Australia — no count |
| Bedrock crossplay on one server | Yes — one toggle | one-click panel installer | one-click panel install | manual, 14+ steps | separate Bedrock product; one server, both editions not documented | one-click panel install | not documented | not possible — same edition only | Yes — bridged at the proxy, every tier | manual jar install |
| Proximity voice chat | Yes — one switch | manual mod install | manual; can't run with Geyser | manual, 17+ steps | No feature or guide published | manual; can't run with Geyser | No feature or guide published | Not available — no mods | No feature or guide published | manual mod install |
| Mods & modpacks | CurseForge + Modrinth mod and modpack search; .jar and .mrpack uploads | CurseForge modpack library | built-in library | CurseForge — 2,300+ packs | one-click CurseForge + Modrinth packs; single mods by upload | built-in library | manual, over SFTP | No mod support | CurseForge + Modrinth browser — Fabric mods only | CurseForge, FTB, Technic, ATLauncher |
| MOTD editing | visual editor | config field + restart | styled editor | panel field | not documented | not documented | panel field | n/a | not documented | server.properties file |
| Getting a server | type a name — no order form | web checkout; 'Instant Setup' | signup, then a start queue | 10-step order flow | signup; 2 hours to try, no card | signup; no card for the trial | prepaid term, then Create Instance | in-game | signup; a free tier to start on | web checkout; 'Instant Setup' |
| Commitment | none — no subscription; a wallet you top up | monthly or quarterly | none — free | monthly; prepay discounts | none — a prepaid balance | none — credits | 24 months upfront | monthly subscription | monthly or yearly subscription | monthly, quarterly, or annual |
Voice chat is the clean sweep: none of the nine other hosts documents a built-in proximity voice feature, and on Aternos and exaroton a voice mod and the Geyser bridge can't share each server's single spare port — crossplay and voice are an either/or there. On Pixly both switches run together.
Most fixed-plan hosts publish no per-plan vCPU figure, while every Pixly plan is its own machine with dedicated CPU and RAM, 99.99% uptime, and DDoS protection included on every plan. Pixly runs 4 regions across the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific; the create screen pings them and picks the fastest.
An order form vs a name box
BisectHosting's own beginner's guide walks ten ordering steps before the panel login arrives by email; Hostinger adds a prepaid term, a Create Instance screen, and a Minecraft EULA pop-up. Apex Hosting and Shockbyte advertise instant setup through a web checkout; Aternos asks a signup, then a start queue at busy times.
Pixly's flow is a name box: type a name and the server exists — asleep, with its own address, the fastest region already picked, no billing-cycle dropdown.
Four optional guided steps
- Whitelist your account.
- Choose who can join. The Bedrock crossplay switch lives there.
- Pick vanilla or a modpack.
- Copy the address.
The first start builds the server in a few minutes; after that, any player joining wakes it, and nobody has to press start.
What the first player sees
A sleeping Pixly server stays on the multiplayer list with your own MOTD, icon, and version — whatever you paint in the MOTD editor. Never set one? It reads ☁︎ Server sleeping, join to wake up!
Clicking Join is the wake switch. The joining player gets a real answer, not a timeout — the disconnect screen reads ⚡︎ Server is waking up! Please try again in a few minutes. — and the tile flips to a waking-up status while the machine boots; no queue, nothing for the owner to do. Bedrock wakes the same way.
Then one retry: refresh the list, click Join again, and you're in. A world asleep a day or more restores its storage first, the few minutes the kick message means; a recently played world resumes from a saved memory image in 15–30 seconds, exactly where play stopped.
Which host fits which group
Pixly: by the hour, no subscription
Built for groups that play in sessions. A prepaid wallet pays an hourly rate counted by the minute, and five minutes after the last player leaves the world sleeps, with no hourly charge until someone joins. Bedrock crossplay and proximity voice chat are each one switch, mods and modpacks come from CurseForge and Modrinth search, a pasted link or an upload, and plan size moves both ways whenever you like.
Aternos: free
Nothing is for sale and there are no size tiers. Servers start from a queue at busy times and stop on a countdown once empty; backups save to your own Google Drive.
exaroton: prepaid credits by the hour
One credit per GB of RAM an hour on shared cores, from 2 to 16 GB, with auto-stop and auto-start. Storage is capped at 10 GB per server and carries a monthly fee, and a lapsed fee ends in deletion.
Campfire Hosting: prepaid, by the minute
From $0.04 an hour out of a balance that never expires, plus $0.18 per GB a month for the stored world. One-click CurseForge and Modrinth packs and two hours to try without a card; one data center, in Oregon, and no managed backup published.
MineKeep: a free tier, then a monthly subscription
The 1 GB tier is free with no playtime limit, and paid tiers run €4.99 to €29.99 a month, VAT included. Servers hibernate five minutes after the last player leaves and restart on join, Bedrock players are bridged on every tier, mods are Fabric only, and no server locations are published.
Minecraft Realms: one monthly subscription
Mojang's own plan, $7.99/mo for Java, covers you plus 10 players, with no mod support and no larger tier.
Apex Hosting: monthly or quarterly plans
The same bill whether or not anyone joins, with a one-click CurseForge modpack library.
Shockbyte: monthly, quarterly or annual plans
Fixed prices from $1.99/mo on the Budget line, and a pack installer covering CurseForge, FTB, Technic and ATLauncher.
BisectHosting: monthly plans with prepay discounts
The official CurseForge partner host, with 2,300+ packs that install in a click.
Hostinger: prepaid terms
A KVM virtual server with dedicated RAM, full root access and large NVMe disks, administered by you.
Live rates for every plan and region are in the grid below; the pay-per-hour Minecraft server hosting page explains the metered model end to end.
Servers run in United States — Portland, Oregon and Ashburn, Virginia; Asia Pacific — Singapore; Europe — Frankfurt, Germany.
Ten-host comparison questions
The questions people ask after reading a table like this one: the money, when a server sleeps, what a gigabyte buys, and where each figure came from.
It depends on how much you play. Zero budget: Aternos is free, with a queue to start and a stop when empty, and MineKeep's free tier skips the queue and sets no playtime limit, with Fabric-only mod support. Running all month: Shockbyte's Budget line at $1.99/mo for 1 GB is the lowest fixed price here (August 2026). Empty most of the week: pay-by-the-hour billing, where Pixly, exaroton and Campfire Hosting charge the hourly rate only while the server runs — and on Pixly that rate buys dedicated CPU and RAM.
No fixed-plan host here returns cash. Apex Hosting turns the unused balance into non-refundable account credit; Shockbyte returns a prorated credit only after a billing ticket; BisectHosting's FAQ says downgrades 'do not qualify for credits or compensation'; Hostinger publishes no downgrade procedure for its game servers (August 2026). MineKeep documents the upgrade path and states that payments are non-refundable. Nothing is prepaid to a plan on Pixly, exaroton or Campfire Hosting. On Pixly a quick restart applies the new size, and from then on a smaller plan bills a lower hourly rate.
On a fixed plan, yes — Apex Hosting, BisectHosting, Shockbyte, and Hostinger bill the same whether anyone joins or not, and Realms' subscription recurs regardless. MineKeep hibernates an empty server but still charges its monthly rate. Aternos stops empty servers; an off exaroton server owes a monthly storage fee and is deleted if it lapses, and an off Campfire server owes $0.18 per GB a month for the stored world. A sleeping Pixly server has no hourly charge, only a small storage fee, until a join wakes it — a few minutes after a day or more asleep, 15 to 30 seconds for a recently played world. A trial server that never topped up is reclaimed after 14 days without a join. At zero balance a Pixly server stops and a 7-day countdown starts, which topping back above zero cancels. Once an account has topped up, its world is never deleted for sitting idle.
Three of the ten: Pixly, exaroton and Campfire Hosting. exaroton runs on prepaid credits at 1 credit per GB-hour, caps storage at 10 GB per server, and sizes RAM from 2 to 16 GB. Campfire bills per minute of uptime at $0.04 to $0.12 an hour by size, from a prepaid balance that never expires, and meters stored worlds at $0.18 per GB a month — the only charge while a server is off. Pixly meters an hourly rate to the minute from a prepaid wallet, across sizes from 2 to 64 GB — the two smallest from the first sign-in, and every size once you top up. MineKeep is the near miss: its servers hibernate five minutes after the last player leaves and restart when someone joins, but the bill is a monthly subscription either way.
Not necessarily, so check what the number counts before you size from it. A Pixly plan's GB is the whole machine's memory, and it is yours alone: most of it runs the Minecraft server and the rest is reserved for the operating system, so a busy night can't run the machine out of memory and drop everyone mid-session. Where a plan is a slice of a shared machine, the advertised GB is usually the slice the game itself gets; Hostinger, like Pixly, sells the whole machine. So if a modpack asks for 8 GB allocated, compare that to the allocation rather than to the plan name.
On a server you rent or run yourself, yes. Mojang's Usage Guidelines say it directly: 'You may host a server for Minecraft. You may even charge for access to the server as long as you follow the guidelines in this section.' Four conditions come with it — the cost is 'the same for everyone', 'everyone who pays to access the server has access to all the mods you chose to enable', you 'own or control the server and continue to do so for the whole time that you charge for access to it', and access goes only to players with 'a genuine paid-for version of Minecraft'. A Realm is the exception: Mojang's EULA says you cannot 'receive financial, commercial or other benefits for letting other people play on your Realm.' So this is a real difference between renting a server at any host in this table and subscribing to a Realm.
Realms Java is one $7.99/mo plan, undercutting most fixed 4 GB tiers here — but it's a different product: you plus 10 players, no mod support, no hardware sizes, a fee that recurs whether anyone plays or not (August 2026). Fair for a small vanilla crew; not built for mods, more players, or billing that follows play.
Subdomains are free across this comparison — every Pixly server gets its own pixly.gg address, and pointing a domain you own at a world is included on every Pixly plan too. Hostinger adds a .cloud domain for a year, while MineKeep charges for a custom domain from its 5 GB tier up. Dedicated IPs grow invoices: $4/mo at Apex with a two-day wait, priced in the cart at Shockbyte, no published price at BisectHosting, included on Hostinger's plans, and nothing published at Campfire Hosting or MineKeep. Backups vary: one daily-overwritten slot at Apex, your own Google Drive on Aternos and exaroton, daily on every MineKeep tier with each month's first kept 75 days, no managed backup published at Campfire Hosting at all, and daily backups keeping the past week on every Pixly server. Checked August 2026.
Crossplay comes in grades: on Pixly the Geyser bridge is a settings toggle and on MineKeep it runs at the proxy for every tier, free one included; Apex Hosting, Aternos, and exaroton offer one-click panel installers; Shockbyte and BisectHosting document manual installs; Hostinger publishes no guide; Campfire Hosting sells Bedrock as a separate server and documents no way to serve both editions from one; Minecraft Realms can't mix editions at all. Voice is starker: no other host here documents a built-in voice feature, while Pixly offers Simple Voice Chat or Plasmo Voice as one switch. Checked August 2026.
Every competitor price and policy was checked against the host's own published pages on August 5, 2026, except Campfire Hosting and MineKeep, which were added and checked on August 20, 2026. Each host's sources are footnoted beside its name. A script re-reads most of these figures at their source before the date on this page is ever moved, so a stale cell fails rather than passing quietly. Promos move often — Apex discounts the first invoice, Shockbyte the first month, and Hostinger's headline rate assumes a 24-month prepaid term — follow the linked source for today's number.
Footnotes
PaperMC tuning guide (memory to leave outside the game) — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Apex Hosting pricing page, Apex Hosting terms of service, Apex Hosting features page, Apex Hosting dedicated IP guide, Apex Hosting backup guide — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Aternos homepage, Aternos stop-countdown article, Aternos backups article, Aternos custom domains article — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
BisectOne pricing page, BisectHosting upgrade & downgrade guide — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Campfire Hosting pricing page, Campfire Hosting FAQs, Campfire Hosting backup guide — checked August 20, 2026. ↩
exaroton pricing article, exaroton homepage, exaroton hardware article, exaroton backups article, exaroton custom domains article — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Hostinger Minecraft hosting page, Hostinger Game Panel upgrade guide, Hostinger dedicated IP article — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Minecraft Realms product page — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
MineKeep plans and FAQ, MineKeep terms of service — checked August 20, 2026. ↩
Shockbyte premium plans page, Shockbyte budget plans page, Shockbyte plan-change article, Shockbyte terms of service, Shockbyte hardware page, Shockbyte dedicated IP article, Shockbyte automatic backups article, Shockbyte subdomain guide — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Apex Hosting service terms, Apex Hosting pricing page, Apex Hosting Geyser installer guide, Apex Hosting voice chat guide, Apex Hosting MOTD guide, Apex Hosting features page — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Aternos homepage, Aternos Geyser article, Aternos voice chat article, Aternos MOTD article, Aternos server-creation article, Aternos queue article, Aternos stop-countdown article — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
BisectOne pricing page, BisectHosting Geyser install guide, CurseForge server affiliation FAQ, BisectHosting voice chat guide, BisectHosting MOTD guide, BisectHosting beginner's guide, BisectHosting upgrade & downgrade guide — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Campfire Hosting FAQs, Campfire Hosting modded hosting page, Campfire Hosting Bedrock hosting page — checked August 20, 2026. ↩
exaroton homepage, exaroton pricing article, exaroton Geyser article, exaroton voice chat article, exaroton server options article, exaroton hardware article — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Hostinger Minecraft hosting page, Hostinger modpack install guide, Hostinger MOTD and icon guide, Hostinger Game Panel get-started guide, Hostinger Game Panel upgrade guide, Hostinger Game Panel help category, Hostinger VPS hosting page — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Minecraft Realms product page, Minecraft Usage Guidelines, Minecraft End User Licence Agreement — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
MineKeep plans and FAQ, MineKeep hibernation docs, MineKeep mod-install docs — checked August 20, 2026. ↩
Shockbyte premium plans page, Shockbyte Geyser article, Shockbyte voice chat article, Shockbyte MOTD article, Shockbyte plan-change article, Shockbyte hardware page — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Try the metered side
See what a meter does to your bill — about 10 hours to try, no card; the grid above shows your region's live rate.
No card to start