How much RAM does your game server actually need? A no-bullshit guide.

The single most-asked question we get on Discord is "how much RAM do I need". The honest answer is "it depends on which game and which mods", but most hosts respond to that question with a sales pitch instead of numbers. Here are the real numbers — what we see customers actually run, not what an Amazon affiliate page wants you to buy.

TL;DR table

Game	Vanilla, small group (≤ 10)	Modded / large pop (≤ 20)	Big modpack / 50+
Minecraft Java (vanilla)	2 GB	4 GB	6–8 GB
Minecraft Java (modded — Forge / Fabric)	4 GB	6 GB	8–12 GB
Minecraft Java (heavy modpack — RLCraft, ATM, GTNH)	—	8 GB	10–16 GB
Minecraft Bedrock	1 GB	2 GB	4 GB
Rust (procgen, default map)	—	8 GB	10–14 GB
Palworld	6 GB	8 GB	12 GB
ARK: Survival Evolved	—	8 GB	12–16 GB
ARK: Survival Ascended	—	12 GB	16–20 GB
Valheim (dedicated)	2 GB	4 GB	6 GB
Terraria (TShock)	1 GB	2 GB	3 GB
CS2 / TF2 / SourceMod	1 GB	2 GB	3 GB
Discord bot (Node.js / Python)	0.5 GB	1 GB	2 GB

If you only read the table, you've got 80% of what you need. The rest of this post explains the why and the situations where these numbers are wrong.

What "RAM" actually does on a game server

There's a common misconception that more RAM = more performance. That's only true up to a point. RAM is a budget, not a turbo button. Most game servers reach a state where:

• Below the budget, they crash or stutter (garbage collector thrashes, world chunks unload constantly, save files corrupt).
• At the budget, they run fine.
• Above the budget, the extra RAM does nothing — it just sits unused.

The trick is finding the lower edge. That's what the table is.

Minecraft is the most-asked, so let's break it down properly

Minecraft Java is the case where the wrong RAM number ruins the experience.

• Vanilla, ≤ 10 players, render distance 8: 2 GB is plenty. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't run it. The Java garbage collector for a server this small doesn't use more than ~1.5 GB.
• Vanilla, 10–20 players: 3–4 GB. Players exploring fresh terrain triggers chunk generation, and chunk generation eats RAM in bursts.
• Modded with ~50 mods (Fabric): 4–6 GB. Mods load classes into memory; each mod is ~10–50 MB.
• Heavy modpacks (RLCraft, All The Mods, GregTech New Horizons): 8–12 GB. These packs pre-load thousands of recipes and items at startup.
• Beyond 12 GB on Java: counterproductive. Java's garbage collector pauses get worse with very large heaps. If you think you need 24 GB for Minecraft Java, you probably need a different garbage collector flag or a smaller modpack — not more RAM.

For modded specifically, Aikar's flags matter more than total heap size. Search "Aikar's Minecraft flags" — they tune the G1 collector for game-server workloads. We apply them by default on our Minecraft eggs.

Rust is the most underestimated

People look at Rust's "minimum requirements" page (4 GB) and order a 4 GB server. Then they wonder why their map populates with players and the FPS dies.

Rust's procedurally generated map at default size is huge. The server loads world data lazily, but with a 200-slot Rust server you'll routinely see 8–10 GB resident just from world state. Plugins (Oxide, Carbon) add another 1–3 GB.

Real numbers:

• 50-slot, vanilla, default map: 8 GB minimum, 10 GB safe.
• 100-slot, modded (Carbon + 30 plugins): 12–14 GB.
• 200-slot, modded: 16 GB+. At this scale you usually want a dedicated machine, not shared hosting.

Palworld is RAM-hungry early

Palworld's dedicated server has had memory leaks at various points (some patched, some still around as of 2026). Sizing for the long-running case (server up for 2+ weeks without restart) is more important than sizing for the initial-load case.

• 4-player co-op: 6 GB at start, drifts to 8 GB after a week.
• 16+ players: 10–12 GB at start, can hit 16 GB after sustained play.

Set up a scheduled restart every 24h and you can run on the lower end of these numbers safely.

ARK is the worst offender

ARK servers are notoriously inefficient. ASE (Survival Evolved, the original) wants 8 GB minimum and chews more if you add mods. ASA (Survival Ascended, the UE5 version) wants 12 GB minimum and is happier with 16+.

If you're running ARK, double whatever you think you need.

Discord bots are the easiest

This is the one place where vendors over-spec aggressively. A typical Discord.js bot — even one in 200 servers, handling thousands of slash commands per day — runs comfortably in 256 MB. The 0.5–1 GB tier we sell is generous; we offer it because Node.js is bad at returning RAM to the OS, not because the bot needs it. (And Discord bots benefit a lot more from a dedicated IP for outbound API rate-limit reasons than they do from extra RAM, but see our other post on dedicated IPs before you tick that box.)

How to test if your server is actually RAM-bound

In any panel that exposes process metrics (ours does, Pterodactyl in general does):

1. Watch the resident memory number, not the heap allocation. Allocation can be inflated by JVM flags.
2. If resident memory plateaus well below the limit, you have too much RAM. Drop a tier.
3. If resident memory regularly hits 90%+ of the limit and you see GC pause spikes, you need more.
4. If resident memory hits 100% and the process crashes, you definitely need more.

The whole point: pick the minimum RAM that keeps you off the crash edge with comfortable headroom. Buying double "to be safe" is wasted money.

Our take

We sell server RAM in 1 GB steps because that's the granularity that actually matters. We don't penalise you for picking the right small number — there's no "premium tier" you have to climb to in order to get reliable hosting. Reliability comes from the host's infrastructure, not from how much RAM you bought.

If you're sizing a server and you're not in the table above, ping us on Discord with the game + player count + mod list and we'll give you a real number based on what we see other customers running.