Which Plan to Choose?
General Information
Choosing a server plan depends primarily on the Minecraft version, game mode, player count, and the number and type of plugins. For example:
- For version 1.8.8 with about 15 plugins, 4 GB of RAM is usually enough with a small buffer.
- For the latest version, 26.2, with the same number of plugins, at least 8 GB to 10 GB of RAM is recommended due to the constantly growing optimization requirements of new releases and the advanced world generation structure.
The Choice of Server Engine Also Matters
- Vanilla - A clean, unmodified version of the Minecraft server without plugin support, offering original gameplay and minimal optimization.
Plugin-Supporting Engines
- PaperMC - A popular, optimized engine based on Spigot/Bukkit, providing high performance, wide compatibility with plugins, and extensive configuration options.
- Purpur - An enhanced fork of PaperMC with even more configuration options, additional features, and optimizations, allowing for deep gameplay customization.
- Pufferfish - An enhanced version of PaperMC optimized for large servers, offering advanced performance features such as partial multi-threading, faster entity processing, and full compatibility with Paper plugins.
- Leaves - An enhanced version of PaperMC focusing on maximum performance and stability regarding standard game features (Experimental).
- Leaf - An enhanced version of PaperMC that draws solutions from many available engines, emphasizing high performance and stability while maintaining all standard game features (Experimental).
- Advanced Slime Paper - A continuation of Paper focused on implementing the Slime Region format created by Hypixel, aimed at efficient world loading and saving disk space.
Multi-Threaded Engines (Experimental)
- CanvasMC - An alternative to Folia, introducing multi-threading while maintaining the highest possible compatibility with Paper plugins, although some plugins may not work properly, it performs better than the engines below.
- Folia - An engine utilizing multi-threading where different regions of the world are processed in parallel on multiple threads, significantly increasing performance at the cost of compatibility with most Paper plugins.
- Luminol - An enhanced version of Folia. Highly experimental.
- DivineMC - An engine based simultaneously on Paper and Folia, offering additional fixes and optimizations aimed at increasing stability and performance in multi-threaded environments, though with limited plugin compatibility.
Proxy Engines Supporting Plugins
- Bungeecord - A popular proxy engine for connecting multiple Minecraft servers into a single network, allowing players to move between worlds and game modes.
- Waterfall - An enhanced, more stable, and efficient version of Bungeecord, providing better handling for large server networks (No longer supported).
- Velocity - A modern, lightweight, and highly efficient proxy designed for scalability and security; recommended for new setups (Best choice).
Limbo Engines
- LoopHP Limbo - A transition server that holds players in a queue, for example, when they are AFK for more than X minutes.
- NanoLimbo - A transition server that holds players in a queue, for example, when they are AFK for more than X minutes.
Mod-Supporting Engines
- Forge - The most popular modding engine, enabling advanced gameplay modification on both the server and client sides.
- NeoForge - An enhanced version of Forge, introducing better compatibility and modern solutions for mods.
- Fabric - A lightweight and fast modding engine, valued for its performance and quick updates to new Minecraft versions.
- Quilt - An extension of Fabric, offering additional features and greater flexibility for mod developers.
- Legacy Fabric - A project enabling Fabric mods to run on older Minecraft versions that are not officially supported by Fabric.
Engines Supporting Mods and Plugins (Experimental)
- MagmaMC - Bukkit + NeoForge (No longer supported).
- Arclight - Bukkit + Forge/NeoForge/Fabric.
- Sponge - SpongeAPI + Forge/NeoForge.
- MohistMC - Bukkit, Spigot + Forge/NeoForge.
Actual resource requirements may vary depending on the quality of plugins/mods, the number of online players, used scripts, startup flags, and the degree of optimization of the entire setup.
Which Plan to Choose?
At IceHost.PL, we offer 2 plan options: dedicated and shared.
What is the difference between dedicated and shared plans?
- Dedicated resources - only you use them, which ensures the highest possible stability and performance of the server.
- Shared resources - powerful next-generation processor resources are flexibly shared among users. The power distribution system ensures gameplay remains smooth.
Which Location to Choose?
If your community comes mainly from Poland, choose a location in Poland. The server location only affects latency (ping).
| Server Location | Latency (Ping) |
|---|---|
| Poland (Wrocław/Warszawa) | 5-10 ms |
| Europe (Netherlands, Eygelshoven) | 30-40 ms |
Below you will find our suggested safe values (the amount of RAM should be adjusted to the scale and complexity of your project).
| Minecraft Server Version | Minimum RAM | Recommended RAM |
|---|---|---|
| 1.8+ | 1.5 GB | 3 GB |
| 1.12+ | 2 GB | 4 GB |
| 1.16+ | 3 GB | 5 GB |
| 1.18+ | 4 GB | 6 GB |
| 1.21+ | 5 GB | 7 GB |
| 26.1+ | 7 GB | 10 GB |
These are suggested values that guarantee no Java out-of-memory issues during standard gameplay.
For example, if you want to play with a group of friends (~5-10 people) on a clean engine in version 26.2, a 6GB plan will be perfectly sufficient. However, if you are creating a public project with a developed economy and plugins, a minimum of 10GB of RAM will be recommended to give the virtual machine enough overhead for stable garbage collection.
Memory Consumption by Plugins/Players
The number of plugins and their optimization is crucial. To maintain perfect smoothness (stable 20 TPS), we recommend allocating an additional 1.5 GB of RAM for every 10 advanced plugins and about 512MB of RAM for every additional 10 slots for active players.
We advise against using scripts (Skript) on a Minecraft server due to their poor optimization and limited performance resulting from utilizing only a single processor thread.
The table below shows realistic, safe thresholds for the latest version of the game, which help avoid sudden performance drops (lags caused by the Garbage Collector):
| Amount of RAM | Player Count (Lag-free value) | Number of Plugins/Mods |
|---|---|---|
| 1.5 GB (DEV) | Proxy servers only (Velocity/Bungee) or Limbo | New version not supported |
| 3 GB (SAND) | up to 2 | up to 5 |
| 5 GB (DIRT) | up to 10 (Playing with friends) | up to 15 |
| 8 GB (WOOL) | up to 25 | up to 35 |
| 10 GB (STONE) | up to 45 | up to 50 |
| 14 GB (DIORYT) | up to 65 | up to 70 |
| 17+ GB (IRON) | over 80 | over 90 |
All values provided above are estimated for the latest version of Minecraft (26.2) assuming that the server uses modern and optimized engines.
The recommended world size can vary depending on the number of generated chunks. The approximate world size can be estimated using the website: onlinemo.de/world.
It is important to pre-generate chunks using a mod or the Chunky plugin before starting the game. This makes gameplay much smoother, as the processor won't have to generate structures on the fly while players move. Keep in mind, however, that a pre-generated world takes up additional disk space.