An Apex Hosting alternative billed by the hour, with no subscription.
Apex bills a flat month whether your group plays every evening or twice. Pixly meters by the minute and puts the world to sleep about five minutes after the last player leaves, which stops the hourly charge. Here's what each shape bills for the hours your group actually plays.
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Which one is cheaper is an arithmetic question, and it turns on a single number: how many hours a month your world is actually occupied. This page puts both billing models against that number, quotes Apex's own pricing and terms, and shows how many empty hours a flat month bills.
Hourly billing stops when you log off
What makes Pixly an alternative to Apex Hosting rather than another subscription is the billing model: usage pricing built for groups that play in sessions and don't want to pay for empty hours.
Apex Hosting's published plans run —/month for 4 GB and —/month for 8 GB (— prices)1; Pixly meters an hourly rate to the minute and stops charging compute while your server sleeps.
No hourly charge when idle
Your world sleeps about 5 minutes after the last player leaves, and the hourly charge stops there. Nothing happens in a sleeping world — farms, crops and mobs pause — so the next join picks up exactly where you stopped.
No subscription, no renewal jump
There's no monthly fee and nothing to cancel. Top up from $5, pause in one click, and skip the discounted-first-invoice-then-higher-renewal pattern entirely.
Nothing sold as an add-on
Daily backups with 7 days of history, Java + Bedrock crossplay, proximity voice chat and a custom subdomain come with every plan.
The empty hours are the whole difference. Every section below asks the same question of price, plan changes, mods and fit.
Coming from free hosting instead? The Pixly vs Aternos comparison covers queues and shared capacity, and the Pixly vs Minecraft Realms comparison covers Mojang's flat-fee subscription. The same hourly-vs-monthly math runs against Shockbyte's budget RAM plans and Hostinger's 24-month prepaid plans, and the pay-per-hour Minecraft server hosting page shows live rates by size and region.
Prefer one page over six? The Minecraft hosting comparison puts all ten hosts in two tables.
Pixly vs Apex Hosting at a glance
Apex Hosting figures below are its published U.S. prices and policies as of August 2026 (the 4 GB and 8 GB prices as of —), taken from its pricing page, billing and help guides, and terms of service. Competitor names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only for comparison.
| Feature | Pixly | Apex Hosting |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model | An hourly rate metered to the minute; no subscription. No hourly charge while asleep — just a small storage fee. | Monthly RAM tiers: 4 GB —, 6 GB $22.49, 8 GB — per month; 25% off the first invoice, then list price.1 |
| Empty server | Checks for players five minutes after the last one leaves and sleeps if it's empty; the hourly charge stops while it sleeps. | Runs and bills day and night whether or not anyone plays — the price is per plan, not per hour. |
| Plan changes | Move up or down a size any time in the dashboard; a brief restart applies it and billing switches to the new rate. | Upgrade: pay a prorated invoice, then restart the server yourself.2 Downgrade: the unused balance becomes non-refundable account credit.3 |
| Renewals & refunds | Nothing renews — top up when you choose; stop playing and the spending stops with you. | Recurring monthly invoices; refunds only within 7 days of server creation, by ticket.3 |
| Setup | Instant setup — sign in, name it, share. | Web checkout advertised as instant setup, then the control panel.4 |
| Mods | CurseForge and Modrinth search, pasted links, .jar and .mrpack uploads; version switching. | One-click modpack library; custom Modpack Creation and Plugin Installation are paid add-ons. |
| Crossplay | Java + Bedrock crossplay as one switch — Geyser and Floodgate installed for you. | Java and Bedrock sold as separate server types; one-click Geyser installer in the panel.4 |
| Voice chat | Proximity voice chat as one switch. | Manual mod install.4 |
| Server address | Own pixly.gg address, or point a subdomain you own at the world — every plan, no add-on. | Free apexmc.co subdomain; a dedicated IP is a $4/mo add-on with a 2-day wait.4 |
| Backups | Daily automatic backups with 7-day history, on every plan. | 1 automatic slot, overwritten daily; world files only.4 |
| Hardware | Dedicated CPU and RAM with NVMe SSD storage; four regions, with the fastest picked by a live ping. | RAM-tier plans on shared vCores, count not published; NVMe SSD storage.4 |
| Network protection | DDoS protection included on every plan. | DDoS protection included; tiers vary by plan. |
The billing-model and plan-change rows are the ones the rest of this page works through in detail.
A flat month, or billing by the hour
An Apex Hosting 4 GB plan is — every month whether your group plays every evening or twice (— pricing; as of August 2026 the first invoice is 25% off, then list price). That's the subscription model working as designed: you're renting the whole month.
Pixly bills for time used — your plan's rate is metered by the minute and runs only while the server is awake. Once it has sat empty for five minutes, an automatic check confirms nobody's on and puts it to sleep, and hourly billing ends there. From then on your world costs only storage, and when someone joins it wakes in 15–30 seconds if the world was played recently (a few minutes after days idle), with nobody needing to press start.
The plans below show the real hourly rate for your region — do the math against the evenings your group actually plays.
Servers run in United States — Portland, Oregon and Ashburn, Virginia; Asia Pacific — Singapore; Europe — Frankfurt, Germany.
For that arithmetic worked through at several play patterns, the guide to what a Minecraft server costs runs both billing models against each other in full.
Changing size: an invoice, or a setting
Apex Hosting lets you change plans mid-cycle from its billing panel. What each direction takes is set out in its own documents.
- An upgrade — its billing guide2: “you will be required to pay the price difference for the remainder of the current billing cycle. After payment has completed, you must restart your server to apply changes.”
- A downgrade — its terms of service3: “Any credit applied to the account from downgrading the server plan is also non-refundable.”
- What lands back — store credit: what's left of the month stays locked inside Apex.
On Pixly a size change is a setting, not a billing event. Pick a bigger plan for an event weekend and move back down on Monday — it applies after a short restart (a couple of minutes; your world isn't touched, and on a sleeping server it applies silently at the next wake).
Larger sizes unlock after your first top-up, and billing switches to the new plan's hourly rate the moment the new hardware is running. There's no invoice, no credit to claim back, and nothing prepaid to forfeit, because the wallet only ever pays for the hardware you actually ran, minute by minute.
Modpacks, plugins, and Bedrock friends
Both hosts will stand up a modded server; what differs is the catalog and how much of the extra work is yours. The modded Minecraft server hosting guide covers Pixly's side in depth, and crossplay Minecraft server hosting explains the Java-plus-Bedrock bridge.
- Search both catalogs, install in one click — search CurseForge and Modrinth from the Mods tab and the mod or plugin you pick is installed on the next start. Fabric, Forge, NeoForge, and Quilt are all supported, the matching Java runtime is picked for you, and a pasted link or your own .jar or .mrpack upload covers what the catalogs don't carry.
- Bedrock friends and voice, one switch each — flip on Bedrock cross-play and Geyser with Floodgate is set up on the next start, with the server's own Bedrock address to hand out, and proximity voice chat is one more switch. Phones, consoles, and the PC crew share one world.
- Apex's catalog and add-ons — Apex ships a one-click modpack library, and its terms list custom Modpack Creation and Plugin Installation as paid add-on services.3 It sells Java and Bedrock as separate server types with a one-click Geyser installer for bridging them, and voice chat is a manual mod install.4
Modpacks work the same way as single mods: pick one from either catalog, or paste its link, and the server builds it at the next start.
Which billing shape fits your group
Count the hours your server is actually occupied in a month, out of about 730.
Busy most of every day
A community hub or public network that's occupied around the clock uses most of those hours, and a flat monthly plan prices exactly that shape.
Evenings and weekends
Three two-hour evenings a week is about 25 hours. Hourly billing charges for those 25; the empty rest of the month carries no hourly charge, and there's no subscription to renew.
Every plan and region rate is in the live grid above, and the guide to hosting billed by the hour walks through metered billing end to end.
Pixly vs Apex Hosting questions
What people ask when they are weighing a flat Apex month against hourly billing.
Apex Hosting sells monthly plans priced by RAM — you pay the same fee every month whether or not anyone is online. Pixly has no subscription: you top up a Wallet and are charged by the minute only for active hours, so an empty world carries no hourly charge.
No. Pixly has no subscription, so there's no renewal price to jump. Monthly hosts often advertise a discounted first invoice that renews at the standard rate; with pay-as-you-play, the per-hour rate you see is simply what you pay.
If you truly keep a server online around the clock, Apex's flat monthly plan can be cheaper, because usage billing adds up when the server never sleeps. Pixly is the better fit when play comes in sessions and the server sits idle in between.
Everything is on every plan — daily backups with 7-day history, a friends-only whitelist that applies without a restart, live console, a custom address, version switching, one-click mods from CurseForge and Modrinth, and Java + Bedrock crossplay and proximity voice chat as switches. Nothing is paywalled behind a bigger plan.
Yes. Every Pixly plan gets dedicated CPU and RAM, nothing shared, on NVMe SSD storage, in one of four regions with the fastest picked by a live ping. The difference is billing, not hardware: instead of a flat monthly fee, you pay by the hour while the server is awake.
Yes. DDoS protection is included on every plan, with nothing extra to buy and no higher tier gating it.
Both let you change plans mid-cycle — the difference is what happens to your money. An Apex upgrade takes effect after you pay a prorated invoice and restart the server yourself, and per its terms a downgrade turns the unused balance into non-refundable Apex account credit (checked August 2026). On Pixly there is no billing cycle: pick a new size in the dashboard and it applies with one quick restart — minutes, not an invoice, and your world untouched — and billing follows the new size's hourly rate as soon as the new hardware is running.
Apex Hosting charges a fixed monthly price, so a month of idling costs the same as a month of daily play — that is how subscriptions work. A Pixly server waits five minutes once everyone has logged off, checks again, and goes to sleep if it's still empty; while it sleeps the hourly charge stops and you pay only a small storage fee for your world. Any player joining wakes it: in 15 to 30 seconds if the world was played recently, a few minutes after days idle. Nothing runs while it sleeps, so it picks up exactly where it stopped.
Footnotes
Apex Hosting pricing page — checked August 4, 2026. ↩ ↩
Apex Hosting billing account guide — checked August 4, 2026. ↩ ↩
Apex Hosting terms of service — checked August 4, 2026. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Apex Hosting features page, Apex Hosting Geyser installer guide, Apex Hosting voice chat guide, Apex Hosting backup guide, Apex Hosting dedicated IP guide — checked August 5, 2026. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Pay for time you play
If your group plays a couple of evenings a week, hourly billing that stops when you log off beats a monthly bill. Start with a ~10-hour trial and see your real per-hour rate.
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