Free has a price, just not in money
Free Minecraft servers are real and they work — it is not a scam. But somebody has to pay for the electricity, the hardware and the bandwidth, and if you are not paying, the price comes out of somewhere else: your time, and your server's continuity.
This article explains exactly what happens behind the scenes, when free is enough, and when it starts to cost you.
Why does the server shut down when you all leave?
Aternos is financed by ads, and its hardware is shared between an enormous number of users. For those numbers to work, the server stops automatically the moment the last player leaves — that is stated policy, not a bug.
What that means in practice:
- Automatic farms produce nothing while you are away.
- Redstone clocks and timers stop with them.
- In-game time and weather freeze at the last moment somebody was online.
- Anything you built on the idea of "leave it running" will not run.
The server only exists during the seconds you are inside it. If your whole idea is a long-lived world with an economy and farms, that alone rules it out.
And why is there a start queue?
Same reason: shared hardware. When you press start, your request joins a queue with everyone else who wants their server up at that same moment. At peak times — weekends especially, which is exactly when you and your friends are free — the queue grows.
The result is the one everybody has lived through: you gather on Discord, and then you sit there waiting for the server to start.
A third model in between
Some hosts bill by usage instead of a monthly subscription. exaroton, for example, charges one credit per 1 GB of RAM per hour, so you only pay for the hours the server is actually running.
That is an excellent deal if you play two hours a week, and an expensive one if your server is meant to stay up. And note what it does not solve: it fixes the bill, not the "start the server before I can play" problem.
When should you pay?
The maths is simple. Ask yourself three questions:
- Do you want a world you will live in for months? If yes, you need a server that does not shut down.
- Have you built anything that depends on time — farms, a shop, an economy, timers? If yes, you need a server that does not shut down.
- Does waiting before every session ruin the mood? If yes, you need a server that does not shut down.
If every answer is no, play free and enjoy it. Free is great for trying a modpack for one night, or a session once a month.
What does paid hosting give you instead?
- A server running 24 hours a day that never waits for someone to wake it up.
- No ads and no queue before you start.
- A fixed address you hand your friends once and they keep.
- Resources you share with nobody, which means more players and steady performance.
On Serverk the server is ready in about a minute, prices are final with no VAT on top, and every 1 GB of RAM comes with 5 GB of disk. If you want to see how we compare with other hosts in Saudi Arabia, all the numbers are on the comparison page.
Before you decide
- Check how much RAM you actually need with the server planner — most people are surprised the number, and the price, are lower than they expected.
- Compare prices and specs on the comparison page.
- Convinced? Create your server.
Ready to make your server?
Pick your game and your plan, and your server is ready in about a minute.
Help improve this article
The articles are open source — if you have a correction or an addition, open a Pull Request on github.com/serverkgg/platform