How Much Does a Minecraft Server Cost in Australia?
A Minecraft server for you and a few friends costs less than a coffee a week. A big modded server for a community costs about as much as a streaming subscription. This guide explains what sets that price, and what to watch for on the way through.
A quick note before we start. MCHosts is our service, so we are obviously biased. We have tried to keep everything below factual and let you draw your own conclusions. Market prices were checked at the time of writing and may have changed since.
What you are actually paying for
Almost every Minecraft host prices on one thing, which is RAM. Everything else follows from it.
RAM decides how much world your server can hold in memory at once, how many players can be loaded in different places, and how many mods or plugins it can run before it starts stuttering. A vanilla world with four friends needs very little. A big modpack needs a lot. That is the whole pricing model in one sentence.
Because of that, the honest way to compare two hosts is price per gigabyte, not the headline monthly figure. A plan advertised at $5 a month tells you nothing until you know whether that is 1GB or 3GB.
The going rate in Australia
Australian Minecraft hosting mostly sits between about A$3.75 and A$6.50 per gigabyte a month on premium plans. Budget ranges go lower, sometimes around half that, and the difference is almost always shared CPU. More on that below.
Here is what a flat A$3.75 per gigabyte looks like across the sizes people actually buy. This is our own ladder, GST included.
| RAM | Monthly | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| 2GB | A$7.50 | Vanilla or Paper with a few friends |
| 4GB | A$15.00 | A plugin stack, or a light mod list |
| 6GB | A$22.50 | A small modpack, or a busier survival world |
| 8GB | A$30.00 | Most popular modpacks |
| 12GB | A$45.00 | Expert packs and heavy automation |
| 16GB | A$60.00 | The largest packs and big groups |
If you are not sure which row you belong in, our how much RAM do I need guide sizes it by player count and server type, and the RAM calculator does the same thing in a few clicks.
The costs that are easy to miss
The monthly number is rarely the whole number. These are the ones that catch Australians out.
GST. Australian hosts quote prices with GST included, so the number you see is the number you pay. Overseas hosts often quote excluding tax. Check before you compare.
Billing in US dollars. A plan priced in USD moves with the exchange rate, and most Australian cards add an international transaction fee of around 3% on every renewal. A price that looked competitive in January can be noticeably worse by June, and you never quite know what the next charge will be.
A dedicated IP. This is the standard paid upsell across the industry, commonly A$3 to A$4 a month on top. It gives your server an address without a port number on the end. It is genuinely useful for some setups and completely unnecessary for most, so do not let it be assumed into your total.
Backups. Some hosts include them, some sell them, and some include manual backups but charge for scheduled ones. Ask which kind you are getting before you need one.
Player slots. A few hosts still charge by player count. If yours does, growing your community costs money every time it grows.
Subdomains. Nobody in this market charges for a basic server address any more. If a host wants money for one, that tells you something about the rest of their pricing.
The one that is not a fee
Dedicated or shared CPU is the biggest hidden difference between a cheap plan and a premium one, and it never appears as a line item.
Many budget plans put a lot of customers on the same processor and let them compete for it. Your server runs fine at 3pm on a Tuesday and lags badly at 8pm on a Friday when everyone else's server is busy too. Minecraft feels this more than most games because most of its work runs on a single CPU thread.
This is usually what you are paying the difference for when a host offers both a budget range and a premium range at very different per gigabyte prices. Neither is wrong. Just know which one you bought.
What MCHosts costs
Flat A$3.75 per gigabyte, GST included, from A$7.50 a month for 2GB up to A$60.00 a month for 16GB. One range, so there is no budget tier quietly sharing a processor with thirty other servers.
Every plan includes unlimited player slots with no per-player charge, your own domain at no extra cost, free Bedrock Edition crossplay so console and phone players can join, SFTP, one-click installs for over 10,000 modpacks, and local backups. Each server can use up to 4 vCores, shared between servers rather than reserved, and your RAM is dedicated and never oversold.
The first month is 20% off, and paying quarterly saves at least 10% on top of the monthly rate. Every new server comes with a 7 day money back guarantee, which is long enough to test real performance from your own connection rather than trusting anyone's marketing.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest a real Minecraft server gets? Around A$7.50 a month for 2GB, which comfortably runs a vanilla or Paper world for a handful of friends. Below that you are into free hosts, which come with their own trade-offs. See choosing a Minecraft server host in Australia.
Is a more expensive host actually faster? Sometimes, and not in the way people expect. Past a certain point you are paying for dedicated CPU, local hardware and support quality rather than raw speed. A cheap plan on Australian hardware will beat an expensive one in Europe for an Australian player every time, because distance is the thing you cannot buy your way out of.
Do I pay more as my server grows? Only if you need more memory. Player slots are unlimited here, so more friends joining costs nothing. More mods usually does.
Can I change size later? Yes. You can move up a tier at any time and your world, settings and plugins come with you.
Ready to see the full ladder? Head to mchosts.com.au/plans/minecraft and remember, every new server comes with a 7 day money back guarantee.
