Free Minecraft Bedrock Dedicated Server: Setup Guide

A Bedrock dedicated server is Mojang's free server software for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, and you can run one at no cost on our Minecraft Bedrock server page. This guide compares it with Realms, covers the ports after the September 2026 change and sets up the allowlist. New to servers? Start with our free Minecraft server guide.

• The software: Bedrock Dedicated Server (BDS), free from minecraft.net for Windows and Ubuntu. The current release build is 1.26.52.3.
• On 1up: a free server with 2 GB of RAM, 4 player slots and 5 GB of disk, running BDS 1.26.51.1. No card, no port forwarding.
• Ports: 19132 by default. Since Bedrock 26.50 the default transport is NetherNet: a TCP handshake on 19132, then UDP for gameplay. At home, set transport=raknet for plain UDP 19132, or open TCP 19132 plus a UDP range. Servers on 1up use RakNet on one UDP port.
• Allowlist: allowlist add "Gamer Tag" from the BDS console. A fresh BDS download ships with the allowlist turned on.
• Operators: op <gamertag> promotes, deop <gamertag> demotes.

1. Bedrock dedicated server vs Realms

Realms is Mojang's own paid server for Minecraft. A dedicated server is the software you, or a host like us, run on a machine you control. We sell game server hosting, so we compete with Realms. The Realms figures below come from the official Realms page, checked on 4 October 2026; prices are Mojang's in US dollars.

Realms Plus adds the Marketplace Pass catalogue. The Realms page also notes that multiplayer on consoles needs each platform's own online subscription, sold separately.

Where Realms wins: a group that plays mostly on consoles, or that wants zero setup and backups handled for it. Mojang sells Realms with cross-play on Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. Its Bedrock server page also lists those consoles among the platforms that can join a dedicated server with the same address and port, but test it with one console friend before you move a console-heavy group. Our upcoming console guide will cover the details for each console.

Where a dedicated server wins: you control every setting in server.properties, you run commands from a real server console, you manage who may enter through the allowlist and permissions.json, and you can start for free. The wiki also lists what BDS lacks next to Realms: no invite system for in-game friends and no remote console (RCON).

2. Create your Bedrock dedicated server

On 1up

1. Create a free account with an email, Google or Discord. No card.
2. In the new server wizard, pick Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, then the region with the lowest measured ping.
3. Name the server. The name becomes the address: yourname.play.1up-servers.com.
4. In settings, the template is Vanilla and the version is 1.26.51.1. Choose the game mode (Survival, Creative or Adventure), the difficulty, the max players (up to 4 on Free) and whether the server is Invite only.
5. Accept the Minecraft End User License Agreement and create the server. It is usually online in under a minute, and the last screen shows the address and the port.

After creation, the Settings tab keeps five Bedrock options, each written into server.properties on the next start. What each key means comes from the bedrock_server_how_to.html file that ships with BDS:

Two details from the same file save confusion. The seed only matters for a new world. And with force-gamemode=false, the BDS default we leave untouched, a changed game mode does not override the mode saved in an existing world.

On the version: Mojang's download page lists BDS 1.26.52.3, the 26.52 hotfix from 25 September 2026, while our template runs 1.26.51.1 today, so we cannot promise the newest build on the day Mojang ships it. Microsoft's getting started guide warns that even patch versions can change the protocol, and Bedrock clients update themselves, so the server and the players' game must speak the same version. To check yours, read the first lines of the console after a start: BDS prints Version: 1.26.51.1. If players see «Could not connect: Outdated client!», they update the app; if they see «The host is using an older version of Minecraft», the server is the one behind.

The console has one-click buttons for say, op, deop, allowlist add, kick, gamemode, tp, give, day and night, clear weather, difficulty, gamerule and list, and a restart macro that warns players a minute before it stops the server.

On your own PC

Microsoft's getting started guide is short and accurate:

1. Download the zip for Windows or Ubuntu from the official page and unzip it into an empty folder.
2. Start it: bedrock_server.exe on Windows, LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./bedrock_server on Ubuntu.
3. Allow it through the firewall. Windows asks the first time; on Ubuntu the guide uses sudo ufw allow 19132, sudo ufw allow 19133 and sudo ufw reload.
4. Testing from Minecraft on the same Windows PC? Windows blocks that "loopback" connection by default, and the guide gives the CheckNetIsolation.exe LoopbackExempt command that allows it.

3. Port: what to open and what to type

Bedrock's networking changed recently, and most guides online still describe the old behaviour.

Before September 2026, every guide was right: BDS listened on UDP 19132 for IPv4 and 19133 for IPv6, and you forwarded those. Since Bedrock 26.50, released on 15 September 2026, "NetherNet is now the default transport used by dedicated servers". The how-to file inside the download explains it: NetherNet is WebRTC-based, the server listens on one dual-stack TCP socket on server-port for an HTTP-based handshake, then negotiates a UDP connection with each player, by default on ports from the operating system's ephemeral range. The server.properties in the current download sets transport=nethernet.

If you self-host behind a router, you have two clean options:

• Keep it classic. Set transport=raknet in server.properties and forward UDP 19132. The server then listens directly on server-port and players connect there, as in every release before NetherNet.
• Stay on NetherNet. Forward TCP 19132 for the handshake, pin the UDP range with server-udp-ports (the how-to's example is server-udp-ports=49152-49200) and forward that UDP range too. When the address players use differs from the machine's own, the [ip:]external:internal form advertises the public address, for example server-udp-ports=203.0.113.10:19132-19232:32000-32100.

Two side effects of RakNet on the current builds. BDS 1.26.51.1 prints a TRANSPORT TYPE ERROR banner after Server started., saying NetherNet is the only supported transport; in our test the server still answered on UDP 19132 with RakNet. And its RakNet reply carries no server name or player count, so the Servers list may show your server without them until you join.

On 1up you skip all of this. Our Bedrock servers run transport=raknet, so players join on one UDP port: your server's own public port, which the panel shows next to the address. Type that port, not 19132.

To join, players select Play, open Servers, choose Add Server and fill in Server Name, Server Address and Port. They must be signed in with a Microsoft account: the how-to says players connecting from outside the LAN always need Xbox Live authentication. These are the messages the game uses for the usual failures:

Friends on Xbox, PlayStation or Switch have their own hurdles, which our upcoming console guide will cover step by step.

4. Allowlist and ops

The allowlist

With allow-list=true, only players listed in allowlist.json can connect. The BDS download ships with allow-list=true, so a fresh self-hosted server lets nobody in until you add people. On 1up the switch is Invite only, off unless you turn it on in the wizard or with the Whitelist on toggle in the Players tab, and the console warns you when the list is on and empty.

The commands, from the BDS how-to and Microsoft's guide:

Each entry in allowlist.json has a name, an optional xuid the server fills in the first time that player connects, and ignoresPlayerLimit. Microsoft notes a soft cap: even players who ignore the limit count against 30 or max-players + 1, whichever is higher.

On 1up you can add gamertags from the Players tab instead of typing commands, and the toggle also saves the setting, so it survives a restart. The Players tab and the panel console accept names of up to 16 letters, digits and underscores. For a gamertag with a space, open Files, add an entry such as {"name": "Steve Builder"} to allowlist.json and restart the server, which reads the file when it starts.

Operators and permissions

Bedrock has three permission levels: visitor, member and operator. New players get default-player-permission-level, which is member unless you change it.

• op Steve promotes a player to operator. The how-to says this is saved in permissions.json when the player is signed in to Xbox Live, and only lasts for the session otherwise.
• deop Steve demotes the player to member.
• permission list prints the current operators, and permission reload re-reads permissions.json after a manual edit. That file is keyed by XUID, so it needs online-mode=true, the default.

Two rules to remember. First, on Bedrock an operator still needs to be on the allowlist to join, unlike Java, according to the Minecraft Wiki. Second, in-game commands depend on allow-cheats, which the how-to describes as "If true then cheats like commands can be used" and which is false by default. Our servers keep it false, so run admin commands from the panel console, where they always work.

A password instead of a list

Minecraft has no join password. If you turn on Protect with a password in the wizard or in Settings, 1up turns the allowlist on, and each friend opens your server's page on 1up, types their gamertag and the password, and is added to the list automatically. That page takes the same names as the Players tab, so a gamertag with a space goes through allowlist.json instead.

Tested on Bedrock Dedicated Server 1.26.51.1 (1up image sha256:ba5bc55d), run locally with the production settings, and checked against the official 1.26.52.3 download, 2026-10-05.

NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT SERVICE. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT.

Change log

• 2026-10-04: first version.
• 2026-10-05: 1up Bedrock servers now run RakNet on one UDP port; RakNet side effects; how to check the server version; gamertags with spaces through allowlist.json; console advice rewritten.