A BisectHosting alternative with no monthly plan, that sleeps when idle.
BisectHosting sells BisectOne plans at roughly $3 a gigabyte — $3.00 for 1 GB as of August 2026 and $23.99 for 8 GB as of September 2026 — with further discounts for prepaying a quarter, half-year or year. Pixly has no plan to rent at all, and Bedrock crossplay and proximity voice chat are one switch each on every plan.
~10 hours to try · no card · instant setup
A BisectOne plan bills the same whether the month was busy every night or empty for weeks; a Pixly server bills by the minute while it's awake and goes to sleep about five minutes after the last player leaves.
A month you rent, or minutes you meter
BisectHosting's BisectOne plans run about $3 per gigabyte — 1 GB at $3.00 as of August 2026 and 8 GB at $23.99 a month as of September 20261. Pixly changes the billing model: an hourly rate metered to the minute while your server is awake, and no hourly charge once it sleeps.
You are choosing between buying a month of uptime and buying the hours you use.
No hourly charge after the last player leaves
Once everyone logs off, a five-minute check confirms the server is empty and it goes to sleep. Nothing happens in a sleeping world, so no progress is lost, and the next player to join wakes it.
Nothing to forfeit when you resize
Plan changes here aren't billing events. There's no prepaid month to carve up, so moving down a size never leaves money locked behind.
Backups and crossplay built in
Daily backups with 7 days of history, DDoS protection and a pixly.gg address come with every plan, and Bedrock crossplay and proximity voice chat are one switch each.
Comparing more than one host? The Pixly vs Apex Hosting comparison tells the same meter-versus-month story at higher prices, Shockbyte's budget RAM tiers hold the low-price corner of the subscription market, Hostinger's 24-month prepaid plans front-load the commitment instead, and the pay-per-hour Minecraft server hosting page carries the live rate for every size and region. The Minecraft hosting comparison sets all ten hosts against each other in two dated tables.
Where a flat plan and a meter diverge
The BisectHosting column reflects its live BisectOne pricing1, help-center guidance23, and terms4 as they stood on August 4, 2026. Competitor names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only for comparison.
| Feature | Pixly | BisectHosting |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Your plan's hourly rate, metered minute by minute — no monthly plan to rent and no cycle to schedule around. | BisectOne monthly tiers at roughly $3 per GB — 1 GB $3.00 (August 2026), 8 GB $23.99 a month (September 2026); prepaying a quarter, half-year, or year lowers the effective rate. |
| Empty server | Five minutes after the last player leaves, the server sleeps: no hourly charge, just a small storage fee, and the world resumes exactly where it stopped. | The month costs the same full or empty — a continuously running server with no sleep or usage-based option. |
| Plan changes | Either direction, whenever you like; a quick restart brings the new size up and billing follows the hardware that's actually running. | Self-serve both ways; an upgrade bills the prorated difference and takes a server restart to apply — downgrades earn no credit or compensation. |
| Renewals & refunds | There's no renewal to refund — add funds when it suits you, and unspent balance just waits in your wallet. | 72-hour money-back for new customers; renewal refunds full within 1 day, half within 3 days, then none; account credit can't be withdrawn or transferred. |
| Mods & modpacks | In-panel CurseForge and Modrinth search, plus .mrpack and .jar uploads; Fabric, Forge, NeoForge, and Quilt supported. | 2,300+ one-click CurseForge modpacks through its automated installer; CurseForge's officially partnered host; two instance slots to swap packs. |
| Crossplay | One switch — Geyser and Floodgate are installed for you at the next start, with a Bedrock address of the server's own. | Java and Bedrock both hosted; Geyser on a Java server is a manual install of 14+ steps3 — download the jars, upload them to the plugins folder, allocate a port, edit the config. |
| Voice chat | One switch — Simple Voice Chat or Plasmo Voice, set up on the server for you. | Manual install, 17+ steps5. |
| Backups | Daily backups with 7 days of history, included on every server. | Two configurable backup slots in a 40 GB shared pool, plus daily backups with three days of history. |
| Hardware & locations | Dedicated CPU and RAM, nothing shared; NVMe storage that grows with your world; 4 regions, with the fastest flagged by a live ping. | Access to up to 8 shared vCores on largely Ryzen hardware, unlimited NVMe disk, 21 locations with free swaps. |
| Support | Straight to the people building it, in Discord or at support@pixly.gg; most changes are a switch, not a ticket. | Advertises support at all hours, an average ticket reply under 15 minutes, and 2,000+ help articles. |
About $3 a gigabyte, for every hour of the month
An 8 GB BisectOne plan is $23.99 every month whether that month held forty play sessions or two (September 2026 pricing, monthly billing)1. Prepaying a quarter, six months, or a year brings that rate down further, with more money committed up front. There's no sleep mode and no usage option: the product is a server that stays on.
Pixly starts from the opposite end. The plan's hourly rate is metered to the minute and runs only while the server is awake; after roughly five empty minutes it falls asleep, and your world sits on its storage fee until the next join — it wakes in a few minutes if it slept for days, and in 15 to 30 seconds when the world was played recently. Meadow, the smallest size, starts at $0.07.
The grid below carries the live hourly rate for every plan in your region. Set it against the evenings your group actually plays, rather than against a whole month.
Servers run in United States — Portland, Oregon and Ashburn, Virginia; Asia Pacific — Singapore; Europe — Frankfurt, Germany.
The guide to what a Minecraft server costs sets the two billing models against each other at several real play patterns.
Resizing: schedule it, or just do it
At BisectHosting, upgrades and downgrades are self-serve at any time and take effect immediately; an upgrade bills the difference prorated for the days left in the cycle — then, per its guide, “restart the server to apply the plan change.”2
The money on the way down works differently. 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.”2
On a prepaid month — or a prepaid year — sizing down mid-cycle means the difference is simply gone.
On Pixly there is no cycle to schedule around, because resizing isn't a billing event. Choose a bigger plan for the event weekend and drop back after — larger sizes unlock after your first top-up. A short restart applies it (a couple of minutes, world untouched — on a sleeping server it happens silently at the next wake), and the meter switches to the new plan's rate once the new hardware is running. Whitelist, ops and bans apply without a restart at all. Nothing was prepaid, so nothing is forfeited.
Two pack libraries, and who does the crossplay work
Either host gets a modded server running; what separates them is which pack library is yours and who builds the bridge when Bedrock friends join. The modded Minecraft server hosting guide goes deep on Pixly's side, and crossplay Minecraft server hosting walks the Java-plus-Bedrock bridge end to end.
- Bisect's CurseForge partnership — BisectHosting is the official CurseForge partner host: 2,300+ CurseForge packs install in one click, FTB is a partner too, and the Instance Manager swaps between two installed packs.
- Search both catalogs in-panel — the Mods tab searches CurseForge and Modrinth together; pick a mod or plugin from either, or a whole modpack, and it installs on the server's next boot. A pasted link still works, your own .jar or .mrpack uploads work too, and the right Java is picked automatically.
- Bedrock friends, one switch — flip it and Geyser and Floodgate come up configured at the next launch, with a Bedrock address ready to share. Phones, consoles, and the desktop crowd land in the same world, and proximity voice chat is one more switch.
Which bill matches the way your group plays
A flat month
One price whether the server runs day and night or sits empty for weeks, with prepay discounts for committing a quarter, half-year or year up front.
Metered minutes
Evenings-and-weekends play, with the server sitting empty in between, is exactly what per-minute metering is for. Nothing is prepaid, so a quiet month simply costs less than a busy one.
Every plan's rate for your region sits in the live grid above, and the Minecraft hosting billed by the minute page explains metered billing front to back.
Bisect comparison questions
Answers below rest on the same August 2026 pricing and policy pages footnoted throughout.
As of August 2026, BisectHosting's BisectOne plans run about $3 a gigabyte on monthly billing — $3.00 for 1 GB, $23.99 for 8 GB — with quarterly, semiannual, and annual prepay lowering the effective rate. The price is fixed for the month however much anyone plays. Pixly has no monthly price to quote: your plan meters its hourly rate minute by minute while the server runs, and the hourly charge stops once it sleeps, about five minutes after the last player leaves.
BisectHosting lets you upgrade or downgrade self-serve at any time, but its own FAQ answers the money question directly: 'Downgrades do not qualify for credits or compensation. It is recommended to schedule the change near the end of the billing period' (checked August 2026). Upgrades bill the prorated difference, and you restart the server to apply the change. On Pixly a resize isn't a billing event: pick the size, one quick restart sets it live, and billing follows whatever hardware is actually running.
A BisectOne plan bills its full monthly price whether the month was busy every night or empty for weeks — there is no sleep mode or usage option. A Pixly server checks about five minutes after everyone leaves and goes to sleep if it's still empty; the hourly charge ends there, and a small storage fee covers your world. Nothing happens in a sleeping world, so no progress is lost, and the next join wakes it — within 15–30 seconds when the world was played recently.
Yes — the Mods tab searches CurseForge and Modrinth together, and mods, plugins and whole modpacks install from either catalog on the server's next start. BisectHosting is CurseForge's official partner host, with 2,300+ packs installable in one click. On Pixly pasted links, .mrpack and plain .jar uploads work too, so your server draws on both catalogs, not one host's curated library.
BisectHosting hosts both editions, and its guide for Geyser on a Java server is a manual procedure of 14+ steps: download the Geyser and Floodgate jars, upload them to the plugins folder, allocate a spare port, and edit the config. On Pixly crossplay is one switch — Geyser and Floodgate install on the next start and the server gets its own Bedrock address to hand out.
Reviews measure support; the bill measures empty hours. If your server sits empty most of the week, a BisectOne month bills for all of it, while Pixly bills by the minute only while the server is awake. Support comes straight from the people building Pixly, in Discord or at support@pixly.gg, daily backups come with every server, and crossplay and voice chat are on every plan.
Footnotes
BisectOne pricing page — checked August 4, 2026. ↩ ↩ ↩
BisectHosting upgrade & downgrade guide — checked August 4, 2026. ↩ ↩ ↩
BisectHosting Geyser install guide — checked August 4, 2026. ↩ ↩
BisectHosting terms of service — checked August 4, 2026. ↩
BisectHosting voice chat guide — checked August 5, 2026. ↩
Minutes, not months
If the server sits empty most of the week, stop renting the whole month. Start with a ~10-hour trial and see your region's real hourly rate.
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