Free game server hosting: what free tiers and trials really allow

What do the free-forever Minecraft hosts allow?

Aternos, Minehut and ScalaCube's free plan all publish no time limit, and each attaches rules about idle servers, bots or resources. Everything below is the provider's own statement, not a verified fact.

The Aternos home page gives no RAM or CPU figure for a free server in the text read for this guide, and Aternos's terms say only that, "as a free service", it sets "certain limitations". Minehut's free plan is the only one of these that publishes both a player cap and a RAM figure: Aternos states unlimited slots and no RAM, and ScalaCube states 8 GB and no cap. Minehut's 1 GB is far below what large modpacks ask for; see ATM10 server RAM requirements for one pack's figures.

What do free trials allow?

Trials are time-limited tests of a paid plan, and they often need a payment card. They are not free hosting, so the cost of forgetting to cancel is yours.

• Sparked Host (free trial page). The page lists "24 Hour Trial" servers: Minecraft at 4 GB RAM with 2 or 3 vCores and 50 to 250 GB of NVMe by tier, and Palworld at 4 GB RAM and 3 vCores marked "About 1-4 Players *". The same page's FAQ says "All game server hosting free trials last for 48 hours" and that "we do require payment info at checkout. You can cancel anytime before the trial ends." The header says to cancel within 48 hours of claiming. The 24-hour labels and the 48-hour FAQ conflict, so confirm the length at checkout. The text read for this guide does not say what is charged when a trial ends without cancellation. For an upgrade, the FAQ says "full refunds for all game server hosting within 48 hours of purchase".
• Indifferent Broccoli (Minecraft page). "Try 2 days free. No credit card required." The page also states a "7-day refund policy" for paid plans.

A refund window is not a free trial either. Some hosts say they can refuse service where refund windows are used "to avoid payment obligations", as covered in cheapest game server hosting.

What does Oracle Cloud Always Free include, and is it 2 OCPUs and 12 GB or 4 and 24?

Oracle's documentation says 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of memory for the Arm Ampere A1 allowance on Always Free tenancies. This guide relies on Oracle's Always Free Resources page on 8 November 2026. It states: "All tenancies get the first 1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours per month for free for VM instances using the VM.Standard.A1.Flex shape ... For Always Free tenancies, this is equivalent to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of memory." Its specifications list "Processor: 2 OCPUs total" and "Memory: 12 GB total", which you can split into one instance or up to two. Checking the arithmetic: 1,500 OCPU hours over a 31-day month of 744 hours is about 2.0 OCPUs, and 9,000 GB hours over 744 is about 12.1 GB.

If you have seen 4 OCPUs and 24 GB elsewhere, this guide did not find those figures on this page or on Oracle's Free Tier page, which lists "Arm-based Ampere A1 Compute" as Always Free without OCPU or memory numbers in the text read for this guide. Neither page carried a visible "last updated" date. Confirm the current limits in your own Oracle Console before you plan around them.

The rest of what the Oracle page states:

• Up to two AMD VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro instances, each "1/8th of an OCPU", 1 GB of memory and up to 50 Mbps to the internet.
• 200 GB of combined boot and block volume storage, 10 TB a month of outbound data, and resources must be created in your home region.
• An "out of host capacity" error is possible when creating instances.
• Idle Always Free instances "may be reclaimed" if, over 7 days, CPU at the 95th percentile and network use are both under 20% (and memory under 20% for A1 shapes). A quiet game server could meet that definition.

Oracle's Free Tier page adds that sign-up asks for a credit or debit card for identity verification, permits one Free Trial or Always Free account per person, prohibits creating multiple free accounts, and says accounts idle for 30 days or more may be deemed abandoned. It also describes a US$300 credit for 30 days. This guide did not read Oracle's Cloud Services Agreement, and so cannot say what it allows for game servers.

This is a VM you build and run yourself, not a game host: you install the OS packages, game server and firewall rules. The A1 allowance is also Arm, and Pocketpair's requirements list "64bit" Windows and Linux without naming an architecture, so this guide makes no claim that a Palworld server runs on it.

Can I get a free Palworld server?

Probably not one you can rely on. ScalaCube's Palworld page includes "8 GB RAM, 24/7 - Free - Forever" in its plan list, but the page doesn't explain whether that is a real Palworld plan or a carry-over from its Minecraft offer, so confirm it before counting on it. Otherwise the options are trials or running it yourself.

• Hosted trials: Sparked Host's Palworld trial (4 GB, "About 1-4 Players") and Indifferent Broccoli's two-day trial, described above. See Palworld server RAM requirements for how a 4 GB trial compares with official guidance.
• Self-hosting: Pocketpair's deploy guide shows installing the server with SteamCMD using +login anonymous +app_update 2394010. Its requirements recommend 4 or more cores and 16 GB of memory, and say 8 GB "is also bootable, but increases the possibility of server crashes due to out of memory." You provide the machine, power and router setup. Palworld: rent or self-host covers that decision.
• Oracle Always Free: the stated 12 GB sits between Pocketpair's 8 GB bootable level and its 16 GB recommendation, subject to the architecture question above.

Aternos, Minehut and ScalaCube's separate free page describe Minecraft in the text read for this guide, and this guide did not find Palworld on them.

What are the common catches?

The catches in these sources are sleep or stop rules, small RAM or slot limits, bot and AFK bans, deletion after inactivity, advertising, no commercial use, and trials that need a card. Match them to your plan: a small vanilla world for friends fits a free-forever Minecraft host far better than a heavy modpack or a game that wants 16 GB. Hosts can change any of these terms, so read the linked documents before you rely on them, and see host testing terms for how this site reads such documents.

Next step: if a free option's limits do not fit, price the smallest paid plan with cheapest game server hosting, or return to the guides hub.