Minehut puts "free" in the title of its home page, and you want the catch before your friends start building: what a free server gets, what costs credits, and whether the world survives a week in which nobody plays. Minehut rewrote its free plan in July 2026, and an earlier version of this page still described the old one with two server slots. Every fact below comes from Minehut's own plan page, store or help centre, read on 31 October 2026, with a link.
Quick answer: Yes, Minehut is free, and you do not need a credit card. One account can own up to 5 free servers, each with 1 GB of RAM, 10 player slots and 10 GB of storage, and 1 of them can be online at a time. There is no daily time limit any more. The costs start when you want more: the cheapest paid plan, Standard, gives 2 GB and no player limit for 600 credits a month, credits start at 800 for $6.00, and only Ultimate, at 6,000 credits a month, is listed as online 24/7. A free server sleeps when it is empty and starts again when a player joins. It is not deleted for being empty: Minehut only schedules free servers beyond your fifth for deletion, with one email 30 days before.
What a Free Minehut Server Includes in 2026
Minehut calls its free plan Starter. This is what its pages list for it:
| What | Free Starter plan | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Servers | Up to 5 per account, 1 online at a time | Deletion plan |
| RAM | 1 GB | Plans page, plans article |
| Players | 10 player slots | Plans page |
| Storage | 10 GB | Plans page |
| CPU | "Basic", up to 2 vCPU in Minehut's 2024 guide | Plans page, 2024 guide |
| Daily time limit | None | Plans page |
| When nobody is online | Sleeps, starts again when a player joins | Home page FAQ |
| Sub users | None | Plans page |
| Plugins | Add-Ons page or file upload; no count in the help centre, but the home page says "Higher plans allow more plugins" | What is Minehut?, Plugins, Home page FAQ |
| Server types | Paper, Velocity (a proxy) and Fabric | Server types |
| Who can join | Java and Bedrock players | Home page FAQ |
| Address | yourname.minehut.gg, or /join yourname in the lobby | Getting started |
Two old rules are gone. Server slots used to decide how many servers you could run online at the same time, and free servers used to get 4 hours of playtime a day. Minehut's deletion plan article, written on 22 July and edited on 3 August 2026, sets out the new rules: "Free servers: You can own up to 5, with 1 online at a time", and "The 4-hour daily time limit is gone entirely". Slots are no longer for sale, and slots bought earlier are not refunded.
The free plan also brings things a bare server lacks: Minehut says more than 250,000 monthly users pass through its lobby, where they can find your server, and its home page lists Java and Bedrock crossplay and DDoS protection for every server. For a few friends who play in the evening, that can be all you need.
The Limits You Run Into First
1 GB of RAM. Minehut names no safe number of plugins for a free server, because version, world size, player count and each plugin's needs all count. Its advice in How many plugins can I safely install on my free server? is to add the plugins that matter most first, check how the server runs, make a manual backup and only then add more. The same article says Vanilla "is not optimized or recommended for free servers", so pick Paper.
Mods. Fabric is one of Minehut's server types, so Fabric mods can run within the RAM you have. The server types article lists Paper, Velocity and Fabric but not Forge or NeoForge, so a Forge or NeoForge modpack needs another host, paid plan or not.
10 players and 10 GB. The 11th player cannot join until someone leaves. Storage is 10 GB on free plans and 20 GB on paid ones, and the plans page warns that going over the limit "may result in data loss or file corruption". The Stats tab of your dashboard shows how much space the server uses.
Features behind a paid plan. A free server gets no SFTP: "To use SFTP you must be on a paid server plan" (SFTP article), so files go through the web File Manager. It gets no custom ports either, which rules out the UDP port that Simple Voice Chat needs: Minehut "does not offer custom ports to free servers" (voice chat article, 25 September 2026). A custom icon in the server list needs a paid plan (custom icon), and on a free plan you cannot turn off Minehut's cosmetics on your server (cosmetics). A custom domain does work on free servers (custom domain).
What Minehut Costs: Credits Every Month, Not One Payment
Paid plans are priced in credits. The plans page lists them per month, and its Annually switch shows a year for the credits of ten months:
| Plan | Credits a month | Credits a year | RAM | Players | When empty | Sub users |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Free | Free | 1 GB | 10 | Sleeps | None |
| Standard | 600 | 6,000 | 2 GB | No limit | Sleeps | 1 |
| Pro | 1,800 | 18,000 | 6 GB | No limit | Sleeps | 3 |
| Ultimate | 6,000 | 60,000 | 14 GB | No limit | Online 24/7 | 6 |
You buy the credits in Minehut's Ranks and Credits store. On 31 October 2026 it listed these packs, in US dollars:
| Credits | Bought once | As a subscription |
|---|---|---|
| 800 | $6.00 | $5.00 a month |
| 1,800 | $12.00 | $10.00 a month |
| 4,650 | $30.00 | $25.00 a month |
| 9,400 | $60.00 | $50.00 a month |
The packs do not match the plans, and that is where the hidden cost sits:
- Standard needs 600 credits a month, but the smallest pack is 800: $6.00 once, or $5.00 a month as a subscription.
- Pro matches the 1,800 pack: $12.00 once, or $10.00 a month.
- Ultimate needs 6,000 credits a month. Covering that with subscriptions costs at least $35.00 a month, for example the 4,650 and 1,800 packs together.
- A smaller server that never sleeps: Minehut's Custom Server Plans Guide, last updated in October 2024, prices 2 GB of RAM at 600 credits and an "Online 24/7" option at 400 credits per GB of RAM a month, so a 2 GB server that stays up comes to 1,400 credits a month by that guide.
The same store sells ranks, which are easy to mistake for an upgrade. Player ranks (MVP at 800 credits a month up to MVP Gold at 4,650) and server owner ranks (VIP at 800 up to PATRON at 16,000) are nametags with perks such as more chat ads, says the Ranks Guide; they add no RAM. Without a server rank you get 10 chat ads a month, and Server Ads in the lobby start at 25 credits a day and cannot be cancelled once started.
If a paid plan ends, the server becomes a free server again. If you already own 5 free servers at that moment, it is frozen instead: it cannot start until you upgrade it again or delete another free server, but it is not deleted.
Does My Minehut Server Get Deleted When No One Is Playing?
Not for being empty. When the last player leaves, a free server goes to sleep; Minehut's help articles call this hibernating. The home page FAQ says a sleeping server wakes when a player tries to join, "so your world is always there". None of the pages we read says how many minutes an empty server waits before it sleeps.
Deletion depends on how many free servers you own, according to the Free Server Limits and Deletion Plan:
- Five or fewer: "If you have 5 or fewer free servers, this update doesn't affect you at all." Servers on a paid plan do not count towards the five.
- More than five: the extra servers are scheduled for deletion, starting with the one that has gone longest without being started. A start counts when another player joins it in game, not only when you press start in the panel.
- The warning: one email, 30 days before deletion, and a Pending Deletion flag on the server in your dashboard. A flagged server cannot be started or upgraded.
- Your 30 days: download its files, upgrade another server, or delete a different free server. The next most recently started server then moves into the freed place instead.
- The catch: if you save a server that way and later delete it yourself, it goes through the standard 3-day deletion, not the 30-day window.
On timing, the 3 August 2026 version of the article said Minehut was "still finalizing the exact rollout timing", so look for the flag on your dashboard rather than waiting for a date. Minehut adds that the clean-up "also frees up server names that have been inactive for a long time".
Before a long break, download your world anyway: activate the server, open the File Manager, click your world folder, select the files and press Download, as How do I download my world? describes. If you delete a server yourself, you have 3 days to restore it (How do I delete my server?).
Is the Free Plan Enough for You?
It fits a small group that plays together: up to 10 people online at once, a Paper or Fabric server with a handful of plugins, and nobody who needs the server while everyone is offline. These mistakes show up when it stops fitting:
- Running something that has to work while nobody plays, such as a Discord bridge or a web map, on a server that sleeps.
- Ignoring the 1 GB limit until a plugin or a growing world starts crashing the server, or adding several plugins at once so you cannot tell which one caused it.
- Owning more than five free servers without checking which one carries the Pending Deletion flag.
When it no longer fits, upgrading on Minehut keeps your address and your place in its lobby; moving means taking the world with you, and our guide to moving a Minecraft server lists the folders to copy. Still choosing a free host? Our Aternos vs Minehut comparison puts the two side by side.
If you move to Space-Node, our Minehut alternative page compares both, and our Minecraft servers keep running when the last player leaves, with no sleep mode. As of 30 October 2026, MC Coal on our Standard line in Europe costs €2.70 a month for 3 GB and runs Minecraft up to 1.20.4, and MC Iron costs €3.60 a month for 4 GB, the smallest Standard plan for 1.21 and newer. You can upload the world yourself in our panel, or add the €15 one-time migration at checkout and our team moves it.
FAQ
Does my Minehut server get deleted when no one is playing? No. An empty free server sleeps and starts again when a player joins, and Minehut says your world is always there. Deletion applies to free servers beyond your fifth: the one that has gone longest without a start is marked first, with one email 30 days before it goes.
Is Minehut one time pay? No. Paid plans cost credits every month: 600 for Standard, 1,800 for Pro and 6,000 for Ultimate, or ten times that for a year. You can buy credits once or as a monthly subscription, but a plan uses credits for as long as it runs, and when it ends the server becomes a free server again.
Is Minehut free 24/7? No. A free server has no time limit while players are on it, but it sleeps when it is empty. On the plans page only Ultimate, at 6,000 credits a month, is listed as online 24/7; Minehut's 2024 custom plan guide also offers it for smaller servers at 400 credits per GB of RAM a month. Our guide to free 24/7 Minecraft hosting compares what other free hosts allow.
Did Minehut remove the daily time limit? Yes. The deletion plan article says "The 4-hour daily time limit is gone entirely", and the plans page lists the time limit as "None" on every plan. Minehut's older article on server boosting, which added playtime to free servers, describes the old system.
Can I get more than 10 players on Minehut without paying? Not on Starter. You can earn credits instead of buying them: Minehut's voting article (last edited in August 2024) gives 10 credits per vote, once every 24 hours, so a month of Standard takes 60 days of votes. After an upgrade, raise the maximum in the Settings tab, under Game Settings.
What is the difference between Starter and Standard on Minehut? Starter is the free plan: 1 GB, 10 players and no sub users. Standard is the cheapest paid plan: 2 GB, no player limit and 1 sub user for 600 credits a month. Both sleep when empty. Minehut's help article on plans still calls the free plan "Standard (free)", so check the credit price before you press Subscribe.
Sources
All opened on 31 October 2026:
- Minehut: Server plans (credits per month and per year, RAM, players, CPU, time limit, when empty, sub users, storage), Ranks and Credits store, home page FAQ
- Minehut help centre: What Server Plans does Minehut offer? (updated 22 July 2026), Free Server Limits and Deletion Plan (22 July 2026, edited 3 August 2026), What is Minehut? (20 July 2026), What are the different server types? (23 February 2026), How do I install Plugins on my server?, How many plugins can I safely install on my free server?, How do I use SFTP on my server?, Setting up Simple Voice Chat (25 September 2026), How do I add a custom icon? (22 July 2026), How do I enable or disable Minehut Cosmetics on my server? (4 August 2025), How do I set up a custom domain? (10 February 2026), Getting Started on Minehut, How do I download my world?, How do I delete my server?, Minehut Custom Server Plans Guide (15 October 2024), Minehut Ranks Guide (10 June 2026), Minehut Server Ads, How does voting work? (29 August 2024), What is Server Boosting? (3 March 2025)