Recommended RAM for Vanilla & Light Plugin Servers

• Small Vanilla (1–4 players): 2–4 GB

• Friends / Small SMP (5–10 players): 4–6 GB

• Community Vanilla (10–20 players: 6–8 GB

Notes: Higher view distance or lots of redstone increase RAM and CPU usage! You should add about 1–2 GB if multiple worlds/dimensions stay loaded (if you use plugins like Multiverse Core, etc.).

Recommended RAM — Modded & Heavier Plugins

• Small modpack / light plugins (1–8 players): 6–10 GB

• Medium modpack server (6–12 players): 10–16 GB

• Large modpack server / heavy automation (or 12–20+ players): 12-16 GB

Notes: “Heavy” = tech/automation heavy modpacks, chunk-loading or generally big bases. If you're playing a large modpack with lot's of late-game automation, plan +25–50% over your initial choice (You can always upgrade your server later if needed on HypeServ).

What Drives RAM Usage

Since we've now got the really important details done, you might be wondering why we chose some of the numbers the way we did. We obviously can't give a number that will be perfect for all modpacks or scenarios, but there are a number of things that drive the majority of RAM use on your minecraft server.

Some of the big drivers of RAM usage are:

• Players & concurrency: more players = more loaded chunks/entities

• Mods/plugins & automation: tech/automation modpacks are often quite memory-hungry

• Server View- & Simulation-distance: higher distance means the server loads more chunks

• World size & dimensions: multiple loaded dimensions/worlds automatically means higher memory usage

• Entity counts: mob farms or other instances where lots of entities are loaded

Estimate RAM Without Tools (Fast)

If you're feeling like your scenario might not be fully covered by our examples above, you can try and approximate the immediate memory usage of your server with this easy formula:

• Start from the recommendations above

• Add +1–2 GB if you expect >10 players or big redstone builds/farms

• Add +25–50% if you're playing a modpack that is tech/automation-heavy or has more than 200 Mods (ATM, GT:NH, BetterMC, etc.)

• Play 30–60 minutes under typical load. If you see messages like “Can’t keep up!”, consider adding some more RAM and definitely look at the current CPU usage as well!

Keep in Mind: RAM is not all!

Even with enough RAM you might still experience lags or stuttering if your modpack is very CPU-heavy or a lot of players are generating chunks on your server. This is a common issue and can be resolved either by pre-generating chunks using tools like Chunky, or by adding more CPU cores to your server. Beware, we're already using the best CPUs available on the market, so if this you've got sufficient CPU cores assigned to your server and this is still an issue, there is not much you can do about this.

Ten years ago Minecraft made terrain with a few simple rules. Now it combines biomes, caves, water levels, and structures in many steps, so chunks look better but take a lot more work to generate. And the world got bigger too: since 1.18 Minecraft made the world taller and deeper, so there’s more space to generate. By 1.21 you’ve got more vertical terrain, larger cave systems, and extra features to fill that space, which adds even more work to chunk generation.

Next Steps

Explore our Premium Minecraft Server Hosting offers and pick the plan that fits your players and modpack. You can upgrade anytime as your world grows.