Minecraft can get lonely. Why not play with your friends? You can collaborate, fight, join teams, and more!
Let’s go through 6 ways for you to play on a Minecraft Server with your friends!
I’ll go roughly in order of my concept of “convenience” each of these will be more or less convenient to you where you are trading a combination of time vs money vs control vs performance. These things have different values to you than me.
This is not in order of my own recommendation, which I’ll summarize at the end.
Table of contents
Video Version of this Post
Want a quick summary before you go through one of these steps? Check out the video.
1. Minecraft Realms
Minecraft Realms are an easy way to create your own Minecraft server and make it available to your friends to play on. Realms do cost money, and they are generally Vanilla only, though you can apply maps and other resource pack like things. No modding is possible though. This is a very convenient way to start a server if you just want to get going and play vanilla minecraft. You give up lots of control with this option!
From right inside Minecraft, click the realms button from the main menu
- time: low
- cost: medium
- control: low
- performance: medium
2. Public Minecraft Servers
Want to jump on a server quickly with your friends? Try a public server. There are many places to find servers, like the /r/mcservers Reddit sub, and places like the Minecraft Server List. The thing about public server is that they’re public. You never know who is going to be on there and do annoying or even bad things. (though I have some friends who do that too!) And a public server can be subject to bad performance (you get what you pay for) and might just go away at any time. Search there for vanilla, modded, mini-games, and more. It’s a pretty cool way to just jump into a world and run around! If you play mod packs, many times mod pack developers host their own public servers. A good example of this is the Prominence II mod pack.
- time: low (though it can take a while to find a good server)
- cost: low (most are free, though some do accept/encourage donations)
- control: low
- performance: varies
3. Minecraft Hosting Providers
A Minecraft Hosting provider is the way to go if you value your playtime and flexibility over everything else. Minecraft hosts do everything for you. You just click a few buttons and your server is up and running in just minutes. And you have full control over your server. Install plugins, mods, mod packs, anything you want! And if you ever have problems, there’s always someone to help you out. You may never now how valuable that is until your world becomes corrupted!
Here’s how to do that.
1. First, sign up with a hosting provider. I’m using Apex for this, which is who I use and recommend. They have great performance, support, and very reasonable prices for what you get. you can get a 25% discount off the first month with the code APEX. (And at the time of publishing this, you can get 30% off the first payment with the code TRICKYTRIALS!) Check the top of the screen for your discount. Click Get Started.
2. On the next page, choose a plan. You can pay quarterly for an even bigger discount. I’m going to choose 6GB because I generally play with about 6 people who love to explore and constantly cause world generation! I like to have one GB per person, and more if we’re playing a bigger modpack.
Click Order Now to make your purchase. I’m ordering a new Minecraft 1.21 Server to play the brand new version, but you can choose anything. Also, don’t worry too much about this as you can change your server’s software at any time in the control panel. Generally you won’t need a dedicated IP address, so leave that unchecked.
The next page should have your discount already applied. If not, enter it in and Check Out. After you go through the checkout process, you’ll get some emails (check spam folders or anywhere your email may go if you don’t see them.)
I’ll see you on the other side. But that’s pretty much it. Your server will be running within a few minutes.
With most hosting providers there are two portals. One for the general account management and billing, and then the panel for managing your actual server. Here’s my control panel on Apex. There is a subdomain with some numbers in it to share with your friends. You can change this to something more memorable. Like I may make mine jangro.apexmc.co you may choose thefunbunch.apexmc.co, or something like that. No judgement. As long as someone else hasn’t used it.
That’s it. Your server is already running. What are you waiting for?
- time: low
- cost: medium to high (depends on how big of a server you need and how much help you might need)
- control: high
- performance: high
Play with Friends! Start a Minecraft Server Now!
Simple Server Setup on Apex.com
Live Chat and Ticket Support
All Mod Packs, Mods & Plugins Supported
7 Day Money Back Guarantee
Get 20% off First Invoice with code: APEX25
Start NOW
Note: I may get a small commission at no additional cost to you. It supports my content creation. thank you!
4. Self Hosted Minecraft Servers
Self-hosting a server can be either awful or rewarding depending on how technical and motivated you are. There are several options that I group into the “Self-Hosted” category, which I’ll cover separately.
Open to Lan
If your friends are on the same network as you, all you need to do is open your world and click the “Open to LAN” button. Then anyone else on your network should see your game in their Multiplayer menu. If you don’t, then you may need to turn off your or their computer’s firewalls, but that’s it. Super easy. However, you have to actually be in the game for this to work and each time you go in, you need to open it up again. Not great for any sort of serious play with friends as they may want to get onto the world without you! This also puts some demand on your own computer because you’re hosting the world for others.
When you click that button, you may be prompted to open your Windows firewall to Java. Say Yes to that.
Then choose the game mode, whether you want cheats or not (allow commands is “cheats”), and leave the port number unless you know something about that. Click Start LAN World, and your world should be visible to your friends in the same network, as long as you are still in the game. If you leave and come back, you’ll need to open that again.
- time: low
- cost: medium to high (depends on how big of a server you need and how much help you might need)
- control: high, though this mode is not compatible with many mods. This is best for Vanilla.
- performance: high
Self-Hosted Server
You can also quite easily set up a server that’s always running on your own PC. This could be the one you’re playing on, or another one on your network. This is quite easy to do, and just requires a little bit of set up.
The downside is that your computer needs to stay on with the server running for anyone else to play. It could be demanding on your computer’s resources if you use it for other things. For people to play on your same network, you just need to tell them your internal IP address. or that’s just ‘localhost’ for you. People outside of your network can access your server if you set up port forwarding on your internet router. This is different depending on your ISP, but generally you can manage this yourself. In some cases you may need to contact the ISP’s support.
It is important to note that this does come with some risks. Opening any port on your router may allow bad people to hack their way in. Proceed with caution here as the risks can be high! If you don’t know what you’re doing, I can’t recommend this as you may open things up too much exposing every computer on your network to potentially bad things. For people to connect, you need to share your external IP address and the router will forward requests on the Minecraft port to your internal server. Unless you have a special arrangement with your ISP, it’s likely that your IP address may change more or less often, which can be inconvenient!
All that said, to run your own server, perform these steps:
1. Download the Minecraft Server Jar file. You can always get the latest one here: Download the Minecraft Server Edition. If you’re looking for other versions, I have links to them here on my site: Minecraft 1.21 Server Files
2. Make a new folder, your desktop is fine, and drag that file in there from your downloads folder.
3. On your desktop, right click on the folder you created and select “Open in Terminal…”. It should open a window like this. Type java --version on the command line to see if Java is installed. You should see something like this. If you don’t, you’ll need to install a recent version of Java. I like to use the Adoptium Java which you can install here. After you have it successfully installed, you should be able to replicate what we have here in this screenshot.
4. Now let’s run the server for the first time using this command
java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar server.jar nogui
Just copy/paste that in. Note that the file must match the filename you downloaded . If you used the link above, it should be server.jar. If you get an error when you run this, like something about libraries being compiled with a different version, you may have a version of java that’s too old. Even if you installed the recent Adoptium, you may have an older version installed as well. You should remove old versions in add/remove programs in the settings, and do allow Adoptium to set the PATH variables when installing it.
If it runs, you’ll see a lot of output, and it will end like this. We need to accept the End User License Agreement (EULA).
4. If you go back to the folder, you will see some new files. Edit the eula.txt file and change the word ‘false’ to true.
Edit the eula.txt file and change the word false to true (if you do agree to the terms) and save it.
5. Let’s make it a bit easier to start the server with the correct settings. Make a new file in that same folder called start.bat. Just right click and make a new text document.
name it start.bat. If you dn’t see the .txt, you may need to make extensions visible in the View settings. When you change the .txt to .bat, you’ll get a warning. Click yes.
6. Edit that file with notepad (rightclick and edit with notepad, don’t double-click). Put the following lines in that file.
java -Xmx2048M -Xms2048M -jar server.jarpause
Then save it.
This time we’re setting the memory to 2GB instead of 1GB. I’d recommend at least 2048 or even more. Use multiples of 1024 to allocate even Gigabytes. If you’re playing vanilla, you likely won’t need more than 4GB. I also removed nogui which will allow the server app interface to show, so you can see what it’s doing. You can put nogui on there to just have it run quietly in the terminal. Either is ok!
7. Run the start.bat file that we created by double clicking it, and you should see the server start up!
You can probably ignore any errors. As long as you can connect to it, you’re good!
At this point, people within your network should be able to enter your local IP address to connect to your server. If you want people to connect from outside of your network, you will need to set up port forwarding. The easiest way to do this is to go to the site Port Forward and follow the prompts to figure out how to set up your ISP’s router. You’ll want to forward the Port 25565, both TCP and UDP.
To keep your server always on, you need to keep this server app running, and of course your computer running. If you restart your computer, you’ll need to make sure you start the server again.
- time: medium – high
- cost: low
- control: high
- performance: medium
VPS Hosting a Minecraft Server
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server and is purchased from any number of hosting providers. You can get a server from various hosting providers for as low as a few dollars per month. You can even get a free server from Oracle Cloud. So if you are going this route, you should definitely check that out.
Setting up a VPS host requires some server admin knowledge, probably Linux as well (though you can get Windows servers). The setup is very similar to a self-hosted server. You just do it on a remote server into which you connect via SSH, run the server startup scripts. You also need to set up the firewall and security settings to open up the Minecraft server port (25525 by default) to the public.
This is a great option if you’re technical and like doing this stuff. You can save money over a Minecraft Hosting provider, but you get zero support running your server. Backups, crashes, world corruption, installing and upgrading software is all on you.
The setup is very similar to the Self-Hosted server. I run through an entire setup here where you can get a Free Minecraft Server on Oracle Cloud. This is a great way to try this out for absolutely free. Which is amazing.
This server will be always on and outside of your personal network, which is much more secure. The worst that can happen here is that your Minecraft server gets compromised. Not your whole life!
- time: high
- cost: low – medium. The Oracle Cloud solution is free. Other VPS servers will cost something.
- control: high. You control everything (and have to do everything)
- performance: high (depending on your server configuration)
5. Essential Mod to Host a Minecraft Server
Essential is a mod that works on the Fabric or Forge mod loader that basically serves as an Open to Lan option to share with anyone, no matter where they are in the world. It uses Peer to Peer technology to get past the port forwarding and firewall issues described above in the Self-hosting section. It does require that you and everybody connecting are running modded minecraft. And it does have the “always on” limitations that the Open to Lan option has. This is why I’ll always choose a hosted server (either self-hosted, VPS, or a Hosting Provider).
You can install this yourself by installing Forge or Fabric over your Minecraft Launcher, but that’s way more work than necessary to put your friends through. Just go to the Essential Mod on Curseforge and click the Orange Install button.
If you don’t already have Curseforge, install that. There are so many better options than Curseforge where you can do this just as easily with a bit more setup, but I’m just focusing on easy for now. If you already have Curseforge installed , you may see this screen. Click the Open Curseforge button.
And then you’ll see this
If you already have a profile to install this in, you can chose that, but you’re probably going to want to Create a new profile. You can leave these default options. At the time I’m writing this, Essentials isn’t available on 1.21, but it should be eventually. If you’re wanting 1.21 and it’s not available yet, you’ll need to do something else.
Create the profile and you now have a Forge minecraft instance. Whoa! You can add more mods to this, but all of your friends will need to add the exact same mods. Click Play
You’ll get the launcher with a new instance in it. Make sure it’s the same name as you created and click Play again
In the Minecraft menu you’ll see a bunch of new buttons. Click Host World and choose an existing world, or choose a new one.
Once your game is running, that Host World button changes to Invite. There’s security stuff to worry about here. If you’re running a bank, you may not want to trust this.
Like Open to Lan, set your world settings
Now go into the Social Menu and invite some friends.
That’s it. Now if they have Essentials running, they should see your request and be able to accept and join your world. Pretty cool!
It still has the downside that you need to be in the game to share it. So if you want an always on world. Or you don’t want your computer exposed to the world, then this one’s probably not for you.
- time: low
- cost: low
- control: high (you fully control this setup, and since this is Forge, you can add mods)
- performance: medium (as much as your computer can handle)
6. Free Minecraft Hosting Providers
I’m putting this on bottom of the list because it loses out so much on convenience due to performance and time. The time here is potentially waiting in a queue to get your server started up, which at times like when there’s a new release, there will be many more people looking for servers. Performance is also low on these servers, and there are limitations to how many people can connect and world size. If you spend any time in a world with friends exploring, you’ll quickly outgrow a Free Minecraft Hosting service.
Click that Create button to create your server. Choose the version you want, here I’ve chosen 1.21.
Click start and it’ll go through the startup process
Once it starts up, you’ll see this, with a timer. If that ends before anybody connects, it’ll shut down.
Put that address in your multiplayer server settings and connect. I just did this and I was impressed about how easy it is. I do know that sometimes it can take quite a long time to get a server started up. It’s only a 2GB server, and I believe that it only supports a 1GB world, so there are limits to what you can do with this. But if you need a server in a pinch, this could be a great way to go for you.
Given all the factors at play here, I’ll always choose a Minecraft hosting provider. If I’m hosting a server, there are too many things that can go wrong and I don’t want to be on the hook to disappoint my friends with a crashed server, corrupted world with no backups. And I want to spend my time playing, not doing server admin!
Play with Friends! Start a Minecraft Server Now!
Simple Server Setup on Apex.com
Live Chat and Ticket Support
All Mod Packs, Mods & Plugins Supported
7 Day Money Back Guarantee
Get 20% off First Invoice with code: APEX25
Start NOW
Note: I may get a small commission at no additional cost to you. It supports my content creation. thank you!
