An Aternos alternative without queues or ads, paid by the hour.
Aternos is free and says it always will be, paid for with ads, shared hardware, and a startup queue at the busy hours. Pixly asks for cents per hour instead, and only while somebody is actually on: your own CPU and RAM, no ads, and nobody ahead of you in the line.
~10 hours to try · no card · instant setup
Both hosts pause an idle world instead of running it around the clock, so neither charges you for an empty server the way a monthly plan does. The difference shows up in the minutes you are actually playing — and in how long it takes to get in.
Free and shared, or paid and dedicated
Free hosting is real hosting, paid for a different way. Ads and a shared pool of machines cover the cost, and that pool is what you are borrowing from every time you press start. A per-hour rate buys the other arrangement: hardware that is only yours.
Aternos: free, paid for with ads and a start queue
Free, and it says it always will be. The trade is ads, shared machines, and a line for new starts at busy times.
Pixly: your own hardware, no ads, no queue
A small per-hour rate buys dedicated CPU and RAM, no ads, and instant setup with no startup queue. There's no subscription and nothing to renew.
You do not have to take either side on trust. New accounts get about 10 hours to try, no card, so you can feel the dedicated-resources difference before spending anything.
The sections below cover what the free tier trades away and what Pixly adds: dedicated hardware, wake-on-join instead of a waiting line, storage that grows with your world, and crossplay and proximity voice chat as switches.
Weighing paid hosts instead? The Pixly vs Apex Hosting comparison covers the subscription side, the Shockbyte alternative comparison looks at the budget end of monthly plans, the Pixly vs Minecraft Realms comparison covers Mojang's own subscription server, and the pay-per-hour Minecraft server hosting page shows live rates for every size and region. The Minecraft hosting comparison lines up every host here — free, flat, and metered — in one place.
Skip the startup line on game night
Free hosting works by rationing a shared pool of machines. That model is at its most crowded exactly when your friends are free: weekday evenings and weekends.
How free capacity is shared
A free server borrows hardware from a common pool. When the pool is crowded, new starts wait their turn1, and quiet ones get parked to make room for the next group2.
Hardware that answers to you
Your Pixly plan's processor and memory belong to your server alone, so the first join of the evening brings it up without anyone ahead of you. Sessions begin when you're ready, not when a slot opens.
What pays for it
Ads pay for Aternos; the cents-per-hour rate you can see before you start pays for Pixly. A couple of evening sessions a week adds up to a few dollars a month.
Both hosts put an empty world to sleep. Only one of them can make you queue to wake it up again.
Geyser crossplay on Aternos vs Pixly
Aternos offers Geyser as a one-click install from its panel.3 On Pixly the whole bridge is one switch in Settings, and so is proximity voice chat; the crossplay Minecraft server hosting page walks through the machinery underneath.
- The bridge installs itself — turn on Bedrock cross-play and the Geyser bridge, with Floodgate beside it, is set up for you on the next start: on Paper, Purpur, Pufferfish, Leaf, and Folia, where the pair install as plugins, and on Fabric, NeoForge, and Quilt, where they install as mods.
- Every device, one world — the Connection card shows a separate Bedrock address and port. Phone and Windows players add it once, console players join through a server-list app or DNS option, and everyone plays with the Java crew on one shared server.
- Java friends who auto-updated still join — Geyser's support for a brand-new Minecraft release can lag, so crossplay servers often sit one version back for a while. When yours does, ViaVersion is added automatically and Java players on the newest release still get in.
- Voice chat beside the bridge — proximity voice chat is one more switch and runs alongside crossplay. On Aternos a voice mod is a manual install that can't run together with Geyser.3
Mods and modpacks without the file juggling
Both hosts run modded Minecraft — what differs is how much of game night the installing eats. For the Pixly-side mechanics in full, see modded Minecraft server hosting.
- Mods straight from the dashboard — open the Mods tab, search CurseForge and Modrinth together or paste a link from either, and it installs on the next start. Pick a release channel or pin an exact build per mod, and remove it just as fast if the group changes its mind.
- Whole modpacks, one entry — paste a pack link from CurseForge or Modrinth, or upload a .mrpack, and it assembles itself on the next start with a matching Java runtime chosen for the pack's Minecraft version.
- Change direction without starting over — swap the server type or Minecraft version from Settings when the group wants something new. Your files and backups stay put while you experiment.
Pixly vs Aternos at a glance
Aternos figures below are taken from its own homepage and support articles as of August 2026. Competitor names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only for comparison.
| Feature | Pixly | Aternos |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Pay per active hour, no subscription; no hourly charge while it sleeps. About 10 hours to try, no card. | Free, ad-supported.4 |
| Resources | Dedicated CPU and RAM per plan, on NVMe SSD storage that grows with your world. | Shared pooled capacity. |
| Startup | Wakes automatically on join — 15–30 seconds for a recently played world, and never a queue. | May queue at busy times before the server starts; leaving the queue loses your place in line.1 |
| Idle behavior | Checks for players five minutes after the last one leaves and sleeps if it's empty; wakes on join, exactly where it stopped. | A stop countdown runs whenever no player is online; empty servers are stopped.2 |
| Mods | CurseForge and Modrinth search, pasted links, .jar and .mrpack uploads; version switching. | Supports mods and modpacks. |
| Location | Four regions — Oregon, N. Virginia, Frankfurt, Singapore — with the fastest picked by a live ping. | Server locations not published. |
| Crossplay | Java + Bedrock crossplay as one switch — Geyser and Floodgate installed for you. | One-click Geyser install from the panel.3 |
| Voice chat | Proximity voice chat as one switch, alongside crossplay. | Manual mod install; can't run alongside Geyser.3 |
| Backups | Daily automatic backups with 7-day history, on every plan. | Saved to your own Google Drive.3 |
| Security | DDoS protection included on every plan. | DDoS protection included. |
Startup and idle behavior are the two rows the sections above work through in detail.
Pixly vs Aternos questions
What people ask when they are deciding whether to leave free hosting behind.
Aternos is free and ad-supported. Pixly charges by the hour with no subscription, but new accounts get about 10 hours to try with no card, and a sleeping world carries no hourly charge, so a few evenings a week costs a few dollars a month. For that you get dedicated CPU and RAM, no ads, and no start queue.
Yes, once queues, shared hardware, or choosing between crossplay and voice chat start costing you evenings. Your plan's hardware is yours alone, any player joining wakes the world with nobody ahead of you, and hourly billing runs only while the world is awake.
No. Shared hosts often place you in a queue at busy times before your server can start. Here a recently played world wakes in 15–30 seconds when a friend joins, or a few minutes if it's been asleep for days. Either way nobody is ahead of you in line, because your plan's CPU and RAM belong to your server alone.
Both pause an idle world rather than keeping it up day and night. Aternos stops an empty server to free shared capacity, and starting it again can mean a queue. Pixly sleeps an empty world so there's no hourly charge, and any player joining wakes it — the owner doesn't need to be online. Nothing runs while it sleeps, so farms, crops and mobs pause and no progress is lost.
Both support modded Minecraft. Pixly is a Java server with Bedrock crossplay: you search CurseForge and Modrinth in the panel or upload a .jar or .mrpack, and one switch installs Geyser and Floodgate, so friends on phones, consoles and Windows play in the same world as the Java crew.
Aternos installs Geyser in one click from its panel. Pixly's switch also handles the upkeep: the pieces stay current, and when your pinned version falls behind the latest release it adds ViaVersion so freshly updated Java launchers keep connecting. Voice chat is the other difference — on Aternos a voice mod can't run alongside Geyser, while on Pixly both are switches that run together.
Yes. Download the world from your Aternos panel, create a Pixly server on the matching type and Minecraft version, then upload the save from the Backups tab. Whitelist your friends — it applies without a restart — share the new address, and the builds you made together are waiting where you left them.
exaroton is made by the Aternos team and also bills for usage — 1 credit per GB of RAM per hour, with auto-stop and auto-start included. The differences to weigh, from exaroton's own pricing page5: storage is capped at 10 GB per server with a monthly storage fee (offset against time you actually run), and RAM tops out at 16 GB. Pixly starts your world on a small disk that grows automatically, keeps daily backups for the past week on every server, and plans go up to 64 GB of RAM.
Footnotes
Aternos queue article — checked August 4, 2026. ↩ ↩
Aternos stop-countdown article — checked August 4, 2026. ↩ ↩
Aternos Geyser article, Aternos voice chat article, Aternos backups article — checked August 5, 2026. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Aternos homepage — checked August 4, 2026. ↩
exaroton pricing article — checked August 4, 2026. ↩
Try dedicated resources, no queue
Spin up a private server with dedicated CPU and RAM, no ads, and no waiting in line. Start with a ~10-hour trial, then pay for the time you play.
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