7 Days to Die Server Hosting Requirements, Sized Honestly
7 Days to Die server hosting requirements sized for blood moon night: what RAM and CPU a 7DTD server needs, and what world size and mods add.
7 Days to Die server hosting requirements are a horde night question, not an average one. Six evenings out of seven the server is quiet enough to run on almost anything. On the seventh, the game throws a scheduled wave of zombies at whatever your group built, and every plan decision you made gets settled in about twenty minutes. Size for that night and the rest of the week looks after itself.
The short answer to 7 Days to Die server hosting requirements#
Start from three things: how many people play, how big a world you generated, and whether you run mods. Player count matters less here than in most games, because the world itself is the expensive part.
| What you are running | Plan tier | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A handful of friends, a default world, vanilla | Normal (8P) | One or two bases being defended, and the map mostly untouched. |
| A regular group of a dozen or so, a larger generated map, light server-side mods | Horde Hero (20P) | More players means more bases held at once, and a bigger map means more of it is loaded and dug up. |
| A public or community server, an overhaul modpack, raised spawn caps | Radiated Legend (30+P) | Overhauls add entities and recipes on top of a map that is already busy on horde night. |
Those are starting points, not ceilings to sit at. A server already near the top of its memory on a quiet Tuesday has nothing left for the seventh night, and that shortfall arrives as rubber-banding, delayed block damage, and zombies coming through a wall you were sure you repaired.
The world is the load, not the player list#
Most survival games track players and the things players place. 7 Days to Die tracks the ground too. Every block is destructible, every hole dug and every wall shot is a change the server keeps, and knocking out a support recalculates whether everything above it should fall. The world is a growing, permanent cost. In rough order:
- World size.
WorldGenSizeinserverconfig.xmldecides how much map exists. A random generated world (setGameWorldtoRWG) is built on first start, and larger sizes take real time to generate. A bigger map is not free afterwards either: more terrain, more points of interest, and players spread further apart. - Block damage and structural integrity. The blocks your group breaks, reinforces, and upgrades are all state the server owns. Long-running worlds accumulate it in a way a fresh map does not.
- Spawned entities.
MaxSpawnedZombiesandMaxSpawnedAnimalsset your ceiling more directly than any other property, and raising them because horde night felt easy is the most common self-inflicted performance problem we see. - Save growth. World and player data live under
Saves/<GameWorld>/<GameName>/and only grow. Scheduled backups need somewhere to write, so the storage figure on a plan is working space rather than spare room. See game server backups and schedules.
Blood moon is the number you size for#
The horde arrives on a schedule, so the worst moment on your server is one you can predict. What makes it expensive is that three costs land together: a large group of zombies spawns at once, they path toward player bases rather than wandering, and they start destroying blocks on arrival. Pathfinding, physics, and structural checks all spike in the same minute.
That work concentrates rather than spreading evenly across every core, so per-core speed does more for a horde night than a bigger core count does. Our game nodes run AMD EPYC 4000 or Intel Xeon 6300 series processors with NVMe storage doing over 1 GB/s, and we cap every node at 60% average CPU load so the spike has somewhere to go. That cap is a sizing decision rather than a slogan, and we explain the reasoning behind it in how our stock control works.
Before buying a bigger plan, check your spawn caps and your ServerMaxPlayerCount. Both live in serverconfig.xml, and several properties are mirrored on the panel's startup tab, so pick one place and stay there or the two will disagree. Our 7 Days to Die server quickstart walks through that file and the admin list in serveradmin.xml.
Mods change the sizing, and two kinds cost differently#
Mods go in the Mods/ folder. Server-side XML mods that adjust loot, recipes, or spawns need nothing on the client and are cheap. Mods that ship new assets have to be installed by every player at matching versions, and overhauls like Darkness Falls add entities, blocks, and recipes on top of everything the base game already tracked. An overhaul server usually wants the tier above the one its headcount suggests, so decide the mod list before you pick a plan. The startup variables and Docker images guide covers changing what the server runs.
What our 7 Days to Die plans give you#
Our 7 Days to Die server hosting plans are sold by resources rather than by player slots, so nobody pays more for inviting a friend. These figures are read live from the same data the order pages use:
| Plan | Memory | vCPU | Storage | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal (8P) | 5 GB | 2 | 50 GB NVMe | $12.99 |
| Horde Hero (20P) | 6 GB | 3 | 50 GB NVMe | $18.99 |
| Radiated Legend (30+P) | 8 GB | 4 | 50 GB NVMe | $24.99 |
The player figures in the plan names are guidance for how far each tier stretches, not a limit enforced in billing; your own ServerMaxPlayerCount is the number that applies. vCPU is the slice of a physical core reserved for you, and it stays reserved when the node gets busy.
When to size up, and when to move to a VPS#
Watch the panel graphs on a horde night, not a quiet one. Memory still sitting high the morning after a restart is a sizing problem, and moving between our tiers is a prorated upgrade you can do mid-cycle without losing the world. CPU that pins for the length of the horde and then drops back wants either the next tier up or lower spawn caps; more memory will not touch it.
Once the server shares a home with a Discord bot, a mod repository, and a map renderer, a machine with root access makes more sense than a panel. We worked through that trade in game server hosting versus a VPS, and the same sizing logic applied to a game with a very different load shape runs through Rust server hosting requirements.
FAQ#
How much RAM does a 7 Days to Die dedicated server need?
More than the game's own listed minimum once other people join, and more again with mods. A handful of friends on a default world fit the entry tier. A community server on an overhaul modpack belongs on the top tier. Size from world size and mod list, not from headcount alone.
Why does my server only lag on blood moon night?
Because that is when spawning, pathfinding, and block destruction all peak at once. Check your spawn caps first, then the panel graphs for whether CPU pinned or memory ran out. The two problems look identical in game and have different fixes.
Does a bigger world need a bigger plan?
Yes. A larger WorldGenSize means more terrain, more points of interest, and players spread further apart, so more of the map is loaded at any moment. It also takes longer to generate on first start.
Do mods need more resources?
Server-side XML mods are close to free. Asset mods and overhauls are not, and they have to match on the server and every client. Overhauls are the reason to go one tier up.
Can I run 7 Days to Die on a VPS instead?
You can, and it is the right answer once you want several things on one machine. You take on the operating system, updates, and the restart schedule in exchange for root access. Our post on what a game server costs sets the trade out in money terms.