How Much RAM for a Minecraft Server? Players, Mods and spark

How much RAM for a Minecraft server? For a fresh vanilla world, the Minecraft Wiki gives 1 GB for 1 to 4 players, 2 GB for 5 to 10 and 4 GB beyond that. Plugins, mods, a large view distance and an old, busy world all push it up, so measure with spark before you buy more.

Everything below applies to any Java server. If you host with us, the RAM settings live in the panel of your Minecraft Java server, and if you have not made one yet, start with our free Minecraft server guide.

• 1 to 4 friends, vanilla or Paper without plugins: 1 GB of heap is the wiki's minimum; 2 GB of server RAM covers it with room for Java itself.
• 5 to 10 players: 2 GB of heap, about 3 GB of server RAM.
• 10 or more, or a large old world: 4 GB of heap and up. The wiki warns a big world with farms and redstone can more than double the figures.
• Modpacks: use the figure the pack's authors publish; the Enigmatica packs, for example, ask 3 to 7 GB before players.
• Lag with free memory left: lower view distance or simulation distance first, then profile with spark.

1. Start from your player count

The Minecraft Wiki's server requirements page is the closest thing to an official table. It asks for "at least 1 GB of RAM allocated for the server to run" and gives this table for a LAN-party style server:

Three details in that page matter more than the numbers:

• The figures are for the server only: "You need to allocate more resources to the OS!"
• They assume a new world and a view distance of 10 or less. The wiki adds that "a major world with several camps, redstone machinery, grinders" can "easily more than double the requirements".
• A player object needs about 50 to 100 MB, but "the server often has to allocate much more memory per player", because each player loads chunks around them, as the wiki's dedicated server page explains for players flying or riding through the world.

Heap is not the same as server RAM

The wiki's numbers are Java heap, the -Xmx value. Java needs memory outside the heap too. PaperMC's Aikar's flags page says to "reduce your Xmx and Xms by about 1000-1500MB" from the machine's memory, and the documentation of the itzg image we run calls an extra 25 % on top of the heap "a general best practice" for containers.

That is how 1up sizes it. The heap is 75 % of your server's Allocated RAM (never below 512 MB), and the image sets -Xms and -Xmx to the same value, which is what Paper's page recommends. The remaining 25 % covers Java's own memory. On our plans that gives:

The heap figures assume one server gets all of the plan's RAM; Pro and Studio can split it across several servers. Compared with the wiki: Free's heap covers 1 to 4 players, Starter's 3 GB covers 5 to 10 with room to spare, and Pro's 6 GB covers 10+. Casual's 6 slots sit just above the wiki's 1-to-4 row with the same 1.5 GB heap as Free, so a full Casual server on an explored world is the first case worth watching. See pricing for what else each plan includes.

To change it, open Server → Performance → Allocated RAM and press Apply. The panel warns that changing the RAM restarts the server if it is running.

2. Paper vs mods

The server software changes the answer more than the player count.

Vanilla and Paper without plugins. Use the wiki table. Paper's own recommendation is higher: the Aikar's flags page says "We recommend using at least 6-10GB, no matter how few players!" That advice goes with a tuned set of JVM flags for public servers. For a small group of friends on a new world, the wiki's figures are a starting point, and spark (step 4) tells you whether you need Paper's target.

Paper with plugins. There is no official per-plugin figure. Add plugins one at a time and check memory after each with spark. On 1up, plugins install from the Plugins page from Starter up; on Free and Casual the page shows "Plugins come with Starter."

Fabric and Forge mods. Our guide to installing mods on a Minecraft server covers the setup. Mod loaders publish no RAM table either, so the best source is each modpack's authors. For example, the Enigmatica team's memory guide recommends 4 GB for Enigmatica 4, 6.5 GB for Enigmatica 10 and 3 GB for Create Together, and warns that "Assigning more than shown here is never recommend, as you may actually get worse performance." Treat a pack's figure as the floor for the server, then add for players.

What our panel does with templates:

• Vanilla, Paper and Fabric can be picked on every plan; the wizard suggests 2 GB, plus 0.5 GB for Fabric.
• Forge gets 4 GB of RAM in our catalogue, exactly what Starter has, so it stays online 24/7 from Starter; on Free it runs with the hourglass, which makes your free time drain faster.
• Modpacks get 6 GB, more than Starter's 4 GB; the panel says "Modpacks come with Pro", which has 8 GB.
• Installing plugins or mods needs Starter or higher, because Free and Casual do not include mods.

3. Lower view distance before buying RAM

Two settings in server.properties decide how much of the world stays loaded around every player. The server.properties reference defines them:

• view-distance (3 to 32, default 10) is "the amount of world data the server sends the client, measured in chunks in each direction of the player".
• simulation-distance (3 to 32, default 10) is the distance within which entities "may be located in order to be updated by the server".

For both, the wiki says: "If the player has major lag, this value is recommended to be reduced." Both are radii, so the loaded area grows with the square: 10 chunks each way is a 21 × 21 square of 441 chunks per player, while 8 is 17 × 17, or 289. Players spread across the map multiply that.

On 1up:

Both apply on restart. Lower simulation distance first: farms and mobs stop ticking further out, but players still see as far.

4. Measure with spark

spark is a profiler that, in its own words, can "produce full heap dumps, present a summary of what's using the most memory, and monitor GC activity". Paper bundles it: the Paper profiling page says "Starting with 1.21, Paper bundles the spark profiler", so a Paper 26.x server already has it. On Fabric or Forge you add the spark mod; on 1up it is in the Plugins catalogue from Starter up. Vanilla cannot load it.

spark needs the spark permission or operator status, according to its installation page. On 1up, the panel console accepts spark health, spark heapsummary, spark gc and spark profiler (start, info, stop, open, cancel) without extra flags, and runs them as the server, so you need no operator. For the flagged forms below (--memory, --timeout, --alloc), make yourself an operator from the Players page and type them in game chat.

The commands from the command reference:

How to read it:

1. Run /spark health show --memory with everyone online. If the heap stays close to its maximum and garbage collection runs constantly, the server needs more RAM.
2. If the heap has room but players feel lag, look at MSPT. spark's TPS and MSPT guide puts the target at "50 or fewer milliseconds per tick". Over that with spare heap, the cost is tick time, not memory: run the profiler and look for the plugin, mod or farm at the top.
3. If heapsummary shows one plugin's or mod's classes at the top, that is your first suspect.

Without spark, the panel still helps. The overview shows TPS ("20 is perfect; below 15 you will feel lag"), Statistics keeps the peak RAM, and when the log shows java.lang.OutOfMemoryError the console flags Low memory. Our can't connect guide covers what to check when a crash keeps players out.

Leave the JVM arguments empty

Server → Startup → JVM arguments accepts only -Xms, -Xmx and -XX flags. Leave it empty unless you know why you need it: an -Xmx there replaces the heap we set, and a heap as large as the Allocated RAM leaves Java no room outside it, which is exactly what Paper's page warns against.

5. Bedrock is different

Bedrock Dedicated Server is not a Java program, so there is no heap to size: the whole allocation goes to the server process. Microsoft's Bedrock server docs list supported systems but no RAM figure. Its properties reference points at the same levers as Java:

• view-distance, default 32, "Higher values have a performance impact."
• tick-distance, default 4, range 4 to 12, with the same warning.
• max-players, default 10: "higher values have a performance impact."

On 1up, Bedrock runs on every plan with a 2 GB minimum, and its View distance setting goes from 4 to 16, default 10. Our free Bedrock server guide covers the rest.

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

Tested on Minecraft: Java Edition 26.3, the default version in our wizard, and Bedrock Dedicated Server 1.26.51.1, 2026-10-05. The heap rule comes from our provisioning code; the RAM figures come from the sources linked above, not from our own benchmarks.

Change log

• 2026-10-26: Starter 4 GB, Pro 8 GB and 30 slots, Studio 16 GB and 50 slots in the heap table; Forge stays online 24/7 from Starter.
• 2026-10-20: Forge runs on Free with the hourglass.
• 2026-10-05: first version.
• 2026-10-05: the panel console now runs spark commands; link to the mods guide.
• 2026-10-08: panel names updated: the Game and Server tabs replace the old Settings tab.