Hosting your Minecraft server on your computer requires you opening ports and letting your PC run 24/7, which is a hassle.
The vast majority of free Minecraft server hostings come with limitations in performance, uptime, and customization. So, I researched all of them and picked the best 3 free Minecraft server hostings where you can host your server without paying anything.
While I do recommend using a paid host for any serious Minecraft server, you can use these free alternatives for testing or showcasing your plugins, playing with friends for a limited time or other short-term purposes.
One of them will even keep your server up 24/7 – it’s actually quite surprising that it works!
So let’s begin.
#3 Aternos
Aternos is a completely free Minecraft hosting offering basic functionality with severe limitations. We generally do not recommend it due to core functionality lacking.
Pros:
- 100% free
- No credit card required
- It does not explode…
Biggest limitations:
- Popups – There is a full page “disable adblock” warning each time you load a page in their admin portal. I was greeted with this red popup despite having adblocker is disabled and ads being displayed.
- Stop countdown – If you don’t have players on your server for more than 5 minutes, the server will stop.
- No custom plugins – If the two above limitations won’t discourage you, note that you cannot upload anything to the server. Yes, that means no custom plugins at all. You are limited to their webstore which offers a limited selection of free and outdated plugins.
Thankfully, there are way better free alternatives out there. So let’s move on…
#2 Gaming4Free
Gaming4Free is better than Aternos in that it lets you use your own plugins and claim to run on more modern Intel i9 CPUs.
However, this is only applied to their paid plans and nobody really knows what computers the free servers use as I was getting close to 99% resource usage despite the server being completely empty.
Biggest limitations:
- Weak hardware – Free servers are placed on significantly weaker hardware
- 90-minute renewal – You have to renew your server by clicking a button in the admin area for 90 minutes at a time. You have to wait 5 minutes between each renewal and you can extend a server’s lifespan for a maximum for 12 hours.
- 2GB RAM and 5GB of disk space
While Gaming4Free might look appealing compared to Aternos, it’s renewal policies are annoying at best. So let’s move on as well…
#1 MagmaNode
MagmaNode is the most robust free Minecraft server hosting. It lets you make a server for Minecraft Java, PocketMineMP, BungeeCord, GeyserMC, Mohist, Nukkit and Bedrock.
It is unclear for how long you can run a server before taking some sort of action, but you need to have online players on your server every day.
Biggest pros:
- Auto installer for Pixelmon and other popular mods
- Free MySQL database
- Free server backup
Biggest limitations:
- Poorly designed admin user interface with 2x admin panels
- 2GB RAM and 5GB disk space
- 1.5 core CPU
MagmaCube appears to be one of the top free Minecraft server hostings, that is if for whatever reason you must use a free host.
Once again, every free Minecraft hosting will come at a hidden cost, because running servers requires money and unless you are paying them they will have to get them from other sources. You will be dealing with severe limitations, ads or other annoyances.
I strongly recommend getting a paid host such as Apex or ShockByte, they are extremely affordable starting at $2.50/mo. And if you take our training to learn Minecraft plugin development and sell your premium plugins, your server will easily pay for itself and make you money.
Bonus: Get $5,000 In Azure Credits To Run A High-Performance Server For Free For 12 Months
We’ve partnered with FounderPass which helps startups and small business owners (read networks) get perks from Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other major companies.
It works very simple – all of these major companies offer computers in the cloud and are happy to give you some initial credits as an invitation to try them out.
You can use up these credits for 1-2 years during that time run a high-performance network on first-class enterprise hardware completely for free.
The choice of hardware is completely up to you and when you apply for the $5,000/year Microsoft for Startups offer, it’s basically like you’re paying $400/mo for a hosting. And you can get an extremely high quality and scalable hosting for that price!
FounderPass isn’t 100% free, that is why we’re listing it as last. It’s $100 per year but with our invite link you’ll get a 25% off so it’s only $75. However, paying $75 in exchange for $5,000 is practically a no-brainer.
Customize Your Server By Learning To Create Your Own Minecraft Plugins
The only way to have a truly unique Minecraft server is by customizing its behavior through plugins. If you have not yet learned Bukkit, Spigot or Paper API, check out Project Orion training.
Project Orion is a full-fledged step-by-step Minecraft plugin development training. It requires zero previous coding experience and comes with pre-recorded lessons and 2x/week Zoom coaching calls with experts coaching you on Java and Minecraft development.
