> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How to make a Minecraft server in 2026 - URL: https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/how-to-make-a-minecraft-server/ - Published: 2026-10-30T13:43:22.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-30T13:43:23.000Z - Author: Mark E - Tags: Guide, Minecraft, Server Admin Making your own Minecraft server is the difference between playing on someone else's rules and running a world that is yours: your friends, your map, your mods, your uptime. It sounds daunting the first time, and there is a lot of half-accurate advice out there, so this guide walks the whole path from nothing to a server your friends can join. It is a beginner guide on purpose. Where a step deserves its own deep dive, we link to it rather than bury you in detail here, so you can get running first and tune later. Here is the shape of the whole thing before we start, so you know where you are going. You decide where the server runs, you pick the software, you install it and accept the licence, you make it reachable from outside your network, you set a few first-run options, and then you invite people. That is the entire path. Everything below is those steps in order, with the reasoning so you understand what you are doing rather than copying commands blindly. ## Decide where it runs The first decision caps every other one, so make it deliberately. You have two honest options: run the server on a machine you own at home, or rent one from a host. Both work, and the right answer depends on what you are building and how much of the plumbing you want to deal with yourself. Self-hosting on a spare PC costs nothing up front and teaches you a lot. It is a genuinely good way to learn how the pieces fit together. The catches are real, though, and worth knowing before you commit. Your server is only online when that machine is on, so if you switch the PC off or it reboots overnight, your friends are locked out. Your home upload speed is usually far slower than your download speed, and it is the upload that carries the game to your players, so a full SMP can strain a home connection. You will also be opening a path from the public internet to a machine on your home network, which means port-forwarding on your router, and that is the step most beginners get stuck on. None of this is a reason not to self-host. It is just the honest list of what you are taking on. Renting from a host removes most of that. The machine stays on, the connection is built for serving rather than browsing, the server is reachable without you touching your router, and you get a control panel instead of a command line. The trade is that it costs money and you are trusting someone else with the box. We will not pretend a host is always the answer, because for a two-person world on a spare PC it is genuinely overkill. But the moment you want the server up when you are asleep, or you have more than a handful of players, a host is the easier path by a wide margin. If you want the full comparison of the two models, [dedicated vs shared game hosting](https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/dedicated-vs-shared-game-hosting) lays it out properly. ## Pick the server software Once you know where it runs, you choose what actually runs the game. This is the part beginners find confusing, because "Minecraft server" is not one thing. There are several server programs, and they differ in speed and in what they let you add. The plain vanilla server from Mojang runs the game exactly as the single-player experience does. It is the simplest to start and it supports no plugins, so if you only want a faithful world with a few friends, it is a fine choice. Most people who run an ongoing server end up wanting more: performance headroom, permissions, grief protection, quality-of-life commands. For that you want a server built on the Paper family, because those accept plugins and run the game far more efficiently under load. Paper is the sensible default and has been for years, fast and widely compatible. Purpur builds on it with a much larger settings file for changing how the game behaves, and your plugins carry over either way. Which one to pick is what [Paper vs Purpur](https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/paper-vs-purpur) is about. For your first server, Paper is the safe, boring, correct choice, and you can swap to Purpur later once you know what you want to change. ## Install it and accept the eula The mechanics here are the same whether you self-host or rent, though a host wraps most of it in a panel so you may never see the raw steps. On your own machine, the path is short. Install a current Java runtime, because the server is a Java program and will not start without it. Put the server file in its own empty folder, because it creates a pile of files on first run and you want them contained. Start it once from that folder. It will do a little work and then stop, complaining that you have not agreed to the licence. That is expected, and it is the eula step everyone hits. The server writes a file called eula.txt containing a single line set to false. Open it, change false to true, save it, and start the server again. That line is you agreeing to Mojang's end-user licence agreement, which is a condition of running a server at all, so it is worth actually reading once. On a host, the panel usually surfaces this as a single toggle or handles it during setup, so you may only ever see a tick-box. Either way, the server will not run until it is accepted. ## Make it reachable A running server is not the same as a joinable one. By default it only accepts connections from the machine it runs on, so the next job is opening a way in for your friends. This is the step where self-hosting and renting diverge the most. On your own hardware, you port-forward. Every Minecraft server listens on a network port, and by default that is 25565\. Your router blocks incoming connections from the internet by default, which is a good thing for your home network, so you have to tell it to send traffic on that port through to the machine running the server. The exact screens differ by router, but the shape is always the same: find the port-forwarding section, forward the game port to your server machine's local address, and save. Then find your public address and give that to your friends. Port-forwarding is fiddly, varies by router, and does expose a path into your network, so take it slowly and only forward the one port you need. On a host, this is simply done for you. The server comes with a public address and port already reachable from the internet, so you copy the address out of the panel and share it. There is no router to configure and nothing on your home network to expose. This is one of the quieter reasons people move to a host: never having to think about port-forwarding again. ## First config and inviting friends With the server reachable, a few first-run settings shape how it feels. The main one is server.properties, a plain text file of options. Set the difficulty you actually want to play on, decide whether the world is survival or creative, and turn the whitelist on so only people you approve can join. A whitelist is the single best habit for a small server, because it means a stray address on the internet cannot wander in while you are still setting things up. Add your friends by their usernames, and you have an invite-only world. At this point you have a working server, and the temptation is to keep piling on plugins and settings before anyone has even joined. Resist it. Get one friend on, confirm they can join and play, and then build from there. The full opening-day sequence, done in the order that saves you redoing work, is in the [first day SMP checklist](https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/first-day-smp-checklist), and the complete picture of running a healthy server over time is in [running a Minecraft SMP](https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/running-a-minecraft-smp). Between those two you have the whole path from here. That is a Minecraft server, start to finish. It is genuinely satisfying to build one yourself, and if you have a spare machine and an evening, self-hosting is a great way to learn how it all fits together. When you want it online while you sleep, reachable without touching your router, and running on hardware built for the tick rather than for browsing, that is the point a host earns its place. Our [Minecraft hosting](https://dedicatedmc.io/minecraft-server-hosting?ref=dedicatedmc.io) handles the machine, the network and the reachability so you can spend your time on the world instead of the plumbing.