fragmentsModded Minecraft with friends, without a server.
Somebody in the group has a pack everyone wants to play, and nobody wants to rent a box for it. This page is every route from there, including the ones that are not ours: what each is genuinely good at, what it quietly asks of one person, and the wall the whole set shares.
Open to LAN
Built into the game, works with any pack, and free in every sense: every machine in the room runs the same instance, and one of them opens its world to the rest. The boundary is the network itself. The world is reachable only from the router it was opened behind, so the evening ends when people go home.
The right choice when · Everyone is genuinely in the same building.The new friends list, in the 26.2 snapshots
In the Minecraft 26.2 snapshots, Mojang added a friends list and peer-to-peer invites to Java Edition, so a friend can join your world with no server, no mods and no setup. It is first-party, and for vanilla it is the right default. The world still lives on one machine: the inviter's carries every joiner, and it runs only while the inviter is playing.
The right choice when · Vanilla, a small group, and the world's owner online whenever anyone plays.A LAN stretched over a VPN
Radmin VPN, ZeroTier and Hamachi put distant machines on one virtual network, which makes Open to LAN reachable from other houses. Everything the LAN entry says still applies, plus a VPN client installed and trusted on every machine, and free tiers that cap the network — Hamachi allows five. The machine that opened the world still carries all of it.
The right choice when · A group that already trusts a VPN tool, and one machine that can hold the whole pack.The server jar on somebody's own PC
A port-forwarded machine at home is a real Minecraft server and costs nothing beyond the electricity. It asks the most of one person: router configuration, a home IP address handed to everyone who joins, a machine left on, and the entire pack simulated on one computer while its owner usually plays on the same one.
The right choice when · One person with a spare machine, a good line, and no objection to running infrastructure.Essential
Essential is a mod with free world hosting built in, and it is the closest neighbour to what we do. The model is host-carried: your machine runs the world, and your friends join through it while you are online. For a lightly modded world with one person happy to host, it is a good answer, funded by cosmetics rather than by your group's money.
The right choice when · Light modding, one steady host, no budget.Aternos and the free tiers
Aternos and the free tiers at several hosts are real rented servers that cost nothing, paid for with queues, adverts and modest memory. Nothing is wrong with that trade for vanilla or a small pack. Memory is the wall: a heavy pack wants more RAM than a free plan offers, and more RAM is precisely the thing the paid tiers exist to sell.
The right choice when · Vanilla or a light pack, and patience with a queue.Realms
Realms is Mojang's own subscription hosting, and for a vanilla world it is the most hands-off option on this page. On Java it does not run custom mods, which takes it out of this question entirely; it is here because it will be suggested to you anyway.
The right choice when · Vanilla, and you want somebody else to think about all of it.Renting a server
Sometimes the right answer is a rented box, and we keep that case on our own site: a public server that stays up with nobody on it, a plugin ecosystem, or a group past sixteen players are all reasons to rent, and the how-it-works page lists them next to the published prices of five named hosts.
The right choice when · A public server, plugins, or more than sixteen of you.Every route above puts the whole world on one machine.
Rented or volunteered, that machine is the constraint everything else follows from: the host who cannot log off without ending the evening, the pack too heavy for the one PC that carries it, the world that is unreachable because its machine is. The question was never really about servers. It is about whether one computer has to hold everything.
Fragments runs the world across the players’ machines.
Everyone installs one mod. The world is cut into 512-block regions, whoever stands nearest simulates each one, and when they walk away it passes to somebody who is still there — the transfer takes 47 ms, measured on our rig. No machine holds everything, so no single person’s computer has to be able to.
Every change is mirrored off-site as an ordinary Minecraft save. When the last player leaves, the world stops; when anyone comes back a fortnight later, it is still there, and nobody was billed for the fortnight. Joining is a link and a row in the server list, and the mods sync when a joiner accepts.
We run a 777-mod pack this way with no throttling. Sixteen players is a hard cap we enforce. It needs NeoForge on Minecraft 1.21.1, it is free while it is in closed beta, and the waitlist is the way in.
| Route | Where the world runs | Who must be online | What it costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open to LAN | The machine that opened it | That machine's owner | Nothing |
| The 26.2 friends list | The inviter's machine | The inviter | Nothing |
| LAN over a VPN | The machine that opened it | That machine's owner | Nothing on the capped free tiers |
| A port-forwarded PC | One machine, left on | Nobody, while the machine is on | Electricity and effort |
| Essential | The host's machine | The host | Nothing; cosmetics fund it |
| Aternos and free tiers | A rented box | Nobody | Queues, adverts, modest RAM |
| Realms (no mods on Java) | Mojang's hosting | Nobody | A subscription |
| A rented server | A box billed monthly | Nobody | Priced by the RAM the pack needs |
| Fragments | The players' machines, region by region | Somebody in the group | Nothing during the closed beta |