Rent or self-host a game server: what makes sense?
Published on 5 October 2026
Self-hosting makes sense if you play now and then with a few friends, have a computer that can handle it and enjoy tinkering. Renting is smarter if the server has to stay online, if you don’t want to share your home address or if you’d rather skip the ports, updates and backups. Below we put everything side by side, including an honest sum for the electricity.
| Topic | Self-hosting | Renting |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Electricity and your own time | A fixed amount per month |
| Online | Only while your PC is on | Also while you sleep |
| IP address | Players see your home address | Players see the server’s address |
| Ports | Open them in your router yourself | Already set up |
| Backups and updates | Your job | Through the game panel |
What do you need to host a game server at home?
A game server is a separate program that runs the world. Your friends connect to it, even when you’re not playing yourself. To run one at home, you need four things:
- A computer that can stay on. The server runs for as long as that computer is on. An older PC will do, as long as it has enough memory.
- Enough memory and processing power. If you play on the same PC that runs the server, your game and the server share the memory and the processor.
- The server software. Many games come with a free dedicated server, often through Steam. Check the operating system, though: according to Keen Games, the Enshrouded server only runs on Windows, while the Palworld server also runs on Linux.
- Enough upload speed. Keen recommends 2 Mbit/s of upload per player for Enshrouded. With eight players that’s 16 Mbit/s, on top of everything else going over your line.
What a server needs varies a lot per game. A few examples, in the developers’ own words:
| Game | Memory | Port |
|---|---|---|
| Enshrouded | The server itself about 4.4 GB, plus up to 100 MB per player | 15637, plus the ports Steam uses |
| Palworld | 16 GB, ideally 32 GB or more | 8211 (UDP) |
| Minecraft Java | Depends on players, plugins and mods | 25565 (TCP) |
For a group of four to six players, Keen recommends a computer with 6 cores (12 threads) at 3.2 GHz, 16 GB of RAM and an SSD with 30 GB free. Pocketpair says the Palworld server will start with 8 GB, but is then more likely to crash from running out of memory. What a Minecraft server needs is explained in How much RAM does a Minecraft server need?
What does self-hosting cost in electricity?
A server that runs day and night uses power every month, even when nobody is playing. According to Eurostat, households in the EU paid an average of about 29 cents per kWh in the second half of 2025, taxes included. That gives you this:
| Draw | Per month | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 50 watts on average | 36 kWh | About €10.40 |
| 100 watts on average | 72 kWh | About €20.85 |
| 200 watts on average | 144 kWh | About €41.70 |
Prices differ a lot between countries and contracts, so check the price per kWh on your own bill. What your computer really uses, you measure with a plug-in energy meter between the plug and the socket. For comparison: at CakeHosting you rent a Minecraft server from €4.95 a month and an Enshrouded server from €4.95. Your own PC can then simply be switched off.
Internet, ports and security
Your router blocks traffic from outside by default. To let in friends from outside your home, you open the port your game uses and forward it to the computer running the server. That’s called port forwarding, and there are a few catches:
- No public IPv4 address of your own. Some providers share one public IPv4 address between many customers (carrier-grade NAT). Port forwarding then usually doesn’t work. That’s a problem for Enshrouded, because according to Keen its server only works over IPv4.
- Your home address is visible. Anyone who connects directly to your server sees your home IP address.
- Every open port is a door. Only open what the game needs, keep the server software up to date and use a password or whitelist.
A tunnelling service such as playit.gg can replace port forwarding, although your PC still has to be on. How that works for Minecraft is explained in How to make a Minecraft server.
Uptime and backups: who keeps an eye on them?
When you self-host, you’re the admin. You notice that mostly at three moments:
- When the PC goes off. A Windows update with a restart, a power cut or a housemate who needs the PC: the server is down and your friends are locked out.
- After a game update. Players often get the new version automatically, the server doesn’t always. If server and game run different versions, your friends can’t get in. Keen already wrote in the very first Enshrouded patches that the server has to run the same version as the game.
- When something goes wrong with your world. Backups are up to you. According to Keen, Enshrouded keeps ten rolling copies of each world, but they sit on the same drive. If that drive dies, everything is gone. So put a copy somewhere else every now and then.
Rather play than manage? At CakeHosting your game server runs in a data centre and you handle everything in the game panel: start and stop, the console, files, backups and scheduled tasks. See all game servers.
Rent or self-host: the sum
Self-hosting suits you if:
- you mostly play when you’re there yourself;
- you have a computer that’s on anyway, or an older PC with enough memory;
- you enjoy finding out how a server works;
- your provider allows port forwarding.
Renting is the better fit if:
- friends also want to play when you’re offline;
- you’d rather not share your home address;
- you don’t feel like dealing with ports, updates and backups;
- the electricity for a PC running day and night costs more than a rented server.
If you rent, look at the hardware and the location too. With us, every game server comes as Standard and Premium; the difference is explained in Standard or Premium: which game server is right for you? The processors and locations per line are listed on Specifications.
You don’t have to decide right away, by the way. Start at home and move later, just like baking a cake in your own kitchen before taking it to the party. A Minecraft world moves over with How to move your Minecraft world to your own server; for Enshrouded, Keen says the world sits in the server’s savegame folder.
