How to Choose the Right Game Server Plan

Hola. Picking the wrong plan is the #1 mistake new customers make. Servers that feel slow on day one rarely improve — they're just undersized. Here's the practical guide to get it right.

RAM

RAM is almost always the bottleneck. The numbers below reflect real-world usage in 2026 — not the bare minimums listed by developers, but what you actually need to run without lag.

Minecraft

FiveM (GTA V Roleplay)

Important: FiveM at XeroHost runs on Windows Server VPS, which consumes ~4 GB of RAM just for the OS. Factor that in when choosing your plan — the numbers below already account for it.

Windows Server overhead means a plan that looks "enough on paper" will often fall short. For a stable public server with ESX or QBCore, the 16 GB plan is the practical starting point. Anything below 8 GB is only suitable for private testing.

Hytale

Hytale is one of the most resource-intensive games available. Its engine is significantly heavier than Minecraft — even a small private server requires a serious plan.

Don't cheap out on Hytale. The engine loads substantially more world data than Minecraft even at low player counts. A 6 GB plan is the absolute floor — for anything public, start at 12 GB.

Survival / Open World

Shooter / PvP

Multiplayer / Other

Rule of thumb: always pick the plan one tier above what you think you need. RAM is cheap, lag is not. A server that runs out of memory mid-session will crash or become unplayable — no amount of tuning fixes that.

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CPU

Most games are single-threaded at their core — more cores doesn't always mean more performance. What matters is clock speed (GHz) for the main game loop.

• Minecraft — heavily single-threaded. Higher clock speed > more cores.
• FiveM — benefits from multiple cores if running many Lua scripts simultaneously.
• Rust — uses multiple threads for world generation and player processing; more cores help.
• Modded games — generally CPU-hungry. Prioritize plans with dedicated vCPUs over shared.

For most cases: 2–4 vCPUs is the sweet spot. Beyond that, you're better off spending the budget on RAM.

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Storage

Storage is the most overlooked resource until it's full.

• Minecraft worlds grow ~1–3 MB per active player per day (chunks explored)
• FiveM with full ESX/QBCore resources can use 10–30 GB
• Rust map files alone are 1–3 GB, plus saves
• Modpacks often need 10–25 GB just for the server files
• ARK / Palworld world saves can exceed 5 GB quickly with many players

Always leave at least 20% headroom — full disks cause corrupted saves.

Storage recommendations by type

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When to upgrade

Don't wait until the server dies. Upgrade when you see:

• Minecraft TPS drops below 18 (use /tps or Spark profiler)
• FiveM script execution time above 5ms consistently
• Any game — players report lag spikes with low player count
• RAM usage above 80% at peak hours
• Disk usage above 80%
• CPU consistently above 90% for more than 10 minutes

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Quick decision guide

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Not sure which plan fits your server? Chat with us on Discord — we'll look at your setup and tell you exactly what you need.