How much RAM for a 20 player Minecraft server?

For a 20 player Minecraft server, plan on roughly 4 to 6 GB of RAM for Paper or vanilla, and more for modpacks. These are rules of thumb, not guarantees, because world size, plugins and view distance all change the need.

Rough guide

• Small vanilla or Paper, 1 to 5 friends: about 2 to 3 GB.
• 10 to 20 players with a few plugins: about 4 to 6 GB.
• Heavily modded: often 6 to 10 GB or more, depending on the pack. Check the pack's recommendation.

What increases RAM use

• Many loaded chunks from a high view distance.
• Large plugins such as map renderers.
• Many entities, such as big farms and mob grinders.
• Modpacks with hundreds of mods.

More RAM is not always better

Too much allocated RAM can cause long garbage collection pauses. CPU speed matters as much as memory for tick rate, because the main game loop is mostly single-threaded.

How to check

1. Install a profiler such as spark on a Paper server.
2. Run it during peak hours.
3. See what memory is in use after garbage collection, not the total.

Lower the need

• Reduce view-distance and simulation-distance in server.properties.
• Pregenerate the world.
• Remove unused plugins.

Tabi Cloud tip

If you are not sure, start at a mid size and upgrade when the profiler shows pressure. See our plan guide for how to compare RAM, CPU and storage.

Common mistakes

• Allocating all of the machine's memory to Java.
• Buying by player count alone.
• Ignoring CPU.
• Not testing with real players.