Free Minecraft Server
UPDATED JULY 2026 · WE RE-CHECK THIS QUARTERLY
AxentHost vs Aternos vs Nitrado vs Minehut
AxentHost was built by players, for players. Below is every meaningful difference between the four hosts people compare us with - including the rows where a competitor genuinely wins. If you spot something out of date, tell us on Discord and we will fix it.
30+
games on one free account
0 €
to start, no card field
2-16 GB
of RAM, your credits decide
∞
player slots on every server
01 - THE FULL TABLE
Feature by feature, free tier against free tier.
✓ YES✗ NO≈ PARTLY
| Feature by feature, free tier against free tier. | AXENTHOSTTHIS SITE | Aternos | Nitrado | Minehut |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PRICE & ACCESS | ||||
| Free to useno card, no trial clock | YES | YES | NOpaid plans only | YES |
| Credit card requiredto create your first server | NOnever | NO | YES | NO |
| Queue before your server startswaiting for a free node | NOstart instantly | YESpeak hours | NO | PARTLYbusy periods |
| Ads or tasks to earn timehow the free tier is funded | PARTLYoptional, rewarded | PARTLYsite ads | NOyou pay instead | PARTLYsite ads |
| LIMITS & PERFORMANCE | ||||
| Player slot limithow many friends can join | None | None | Plan based | 10 on free |
| RAM on the free offerwhat you can actually run | 2-16 GB | Fixed | - | ~1 GB |
| Scale RAM & disk yourselfresize between sessions | YESin seconds | NO | PARTLYupgrade plan | PARTLYpaid only |
| Server keeps running when emptyno auto-sleep | YESwhile credits last | NOsleeps | YES | NOsleeps |
| Same hardware for free & paidno throttled free fleet | YES | PARTLYshared nodes | NO | PARTLY |
| PANEL & FEATURES | ||||
| Live consolecommands and logs | YES | YES | YES | YES |
| Full file accessevery config and jar | YES | NOrestricted | YES | PARTLYlimited |
| SFTP / FileZillabulk uploads | PARTLYwith Premium | NO | YES | PARTLYpaid |
| Automated backupskept by the host | YESon our storage | PARTLYyour Google Drive | YES | YES |
| Mods, plugins & loadersPaper, Forge, Fabric, Oxide… | YES | YESMinecraft mods only | YES | PARTLYplugin list |
| Shared team balance & rightshost together with friends | YESgranular per server | NO | NO | NO |
| Mobile app to manage & earnAndroid and iOS | YES+30 credits/h | NO | YESmanage only | NO |
| GAMES | ||||
| Number of games hostedon the free offer | 30+ | 2 | 100+ paid | 1 |
| Minecraft Java & Bedrockboth editions | YES | YES | YES | PARTLYJava only |
| Survival gamesRust, Valheim, Palworld, DayZ | YESfree | NO | YESpaid | NO |
| Sim & racingAssetto Corsa, BeamNG, Factorio | YESfree | NO | PARTLYsome paid | NO |
Compared on each host's free offering as advertised in July 2026. Paid plans change the picture for Nitrado and Minehut - we are only looking at what you get without a card.
02 - HEAD TO HEAD
Pick your matchup.
Each page goes deeper: real limits, migration steps, and an honest section on when the other host is the better choice.
AXENTHOST VS ATERNOS
The free Aternos alternative that doesn't fall asleep.
None of these are secrets - they are the three complaints in every "Aternos alternative" thread, plus the one nobody expects.
Create your free serverAXENTHOST VS NITRADO
Nitrado features, without the monthly invoice.
This is a paid host against a free one, so the honest framing is: what do you give up, and what do you stop paying for?
Create your free serverAXENTHOST VS MINEHUT
More than ten slots, and no sleeping worlds.
Minehut is a great place to publish a small server to a big audience. It is a harder place to run a private world for a large group of friends.
Create your free serverAXENTHOST VS FALIXNODES
Free hosting without the AFK page.
Both are free. The question is what you have to do to keep the lights on, and how far the free tier stretches once your group grows.
Create your free server03 - WHAT ONLY WE DO
Three things you will not find on the others.
45 / h
Credits instead of a crippled free plan
Fifteen credits an hour on the web, thirty more from the apps, plus a daily spin. Five credits buy a gigabyte of RAM for an hour, so a full claim routine funds a 9 GB server that never sleeps.
1 balance
Teams that actually pool resources
Nobody else lets four friends stack their credits into one balance and then hand out per-server rights - console, files, backups, restart - friend by friend.
30+
One account for every game night
Minecraft tonight, Palworld next week, an Assetto Corsa lobby on Sunday. Same login, same credits, no second host to learn.
04 - FAQ
About this comparison.
How do you keep this comparison fair?
We only compare free offerings, we re-check every row each quarter, and we keep the rows where we lose. If a competitor ships something that beats us, it goes in the table and we go build our answer.
Is AxentHost free because of ads?
Partly. Advertising and optional rewarded videos fund the free credits, and members who take Premium fund the rest. That is why we can give every account the same hardware instead of running a slow free node.
Do I get worse performance than a paying customer?
No. There is no separate free fleet. The same CPUs, NVMe disks and network serve everyone; credits only decide how much RAM you run and for how long.
Can I move an existing world from another host?
Yes, for every game we support. Download your world from the old panel, upload it in our file manager, point the config at it. The Aternos page has a five-step walkthrough that works almost identically for Minehut and Nitrado.
What is the catch, honestly?
You have to come back and claim credits, or watch the occasional rewarded ad if you want the bigger amounts. If never thinking about credits again is worth 4,99 € to you, Premium exists. That is the whole catch.
Stop reading tables. Go start a server.
It takes about forty seconds, costs nothing, and you can delete it just as fast if we are not better.
Create your free server