Palworld Server Hosting Requirements, Sized Honestly
Palworld server hosting requirements by guild size and base count: how much RAM a dedicated server really needs, and why it climbs while you play.
Palworld server hosting requirements are a memory question first. A dedicated server holds the whole world in RAM. That means every base camp, every Pal working in it, and every box your guild has filled. Buy short and the server slows down a week into the save. Two things decide the size you need, and your player count is not one of them.
The short answer to Palworld server hosting requirements#
Size from the number of base camps your guild will actually run and the Pals working in them, not from the peak player count you hope for. Palworld's own cap is 32 players, set by ServerPlayerMaxNum, and a full server of casual players is a lighter job than eight builders with sprawling automated bases.
| What you are running | Plan tier | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A guild of friends, a few base camps, moderate automation | Alpha (8P) | A settled group with a handful of bases fits inside the entry tier with headroom to spare. |
| A public server near the 32 player cap, many bases, heavy automation | Apex (32P) | Every extra base and every working Pal stays resident, and a long-running save only grows. |
Those are starting points with headroom, not ceilings to run at. A Palworld server living at the top of its memory allocation is one busy evening away from swapping, and swapping feels like every Pal in the world stuttering at once.
Bases and working Pals are the memory bill#
Palworld simulates a base camp whether or not anyone is standing in it. The Pals assigned to it keep mining, planting, and hauling, and the server tracks all of it. That is the whole appeal of a dedicated server, and it is also why the memory line on your panel graph climbs through a save rather than sitting flat.
The consumers, in rough order:
- Base camps and workers. The default settings file allows a lot of both:
BaseCampMaxNumof 128 andBaseCampWorkerMaxNumof 15 per camp. Those are per guild, so a server with several active guilds multiplies quickly. This is the single biggest lever you control. - Dropped items and containers.
DropItemMaxNumdefaults to 3000, and every one of those is an object the server owns until it despawns. Long PvP nights and messy bases both fill that budget. - Guild and player counts. Real, but smaller than people expect.
GuildPlayerMaxNumdefaults to 20 andServerPlayerMaxNumgoes up to 32. Each player costs simulation and network work rather than a large block of memory. - Save growth and backups. World and player saves live under
Pal/Saved/SaveGames/0/and grow for the life of the world, and a scheduled backup needs free disk to write into. The storage figure on a plan is working space, not spare capacity. See game server backups and schedules.
The settings that move the number#
All of it lives in one file, PalWorldSettings.ini, and the common values are also exposed on the panel Startup tab. Our Palworld server quickstart walks through editing it safely; the short version is that the whole OptionSettings line has to stay on one line, and a syntax error makes the server silently ignore your changes.
If a server is heavier than its plan, lower BaseCampMaxNum and BaseCampWorkerMaxNum before you buy more memory. Trimming worker counts costs your guild some throughput. Running out of RAM costs everyone the evening.
Memory climbs while you play, and that is normal#
Palworld's dedicated server has been known to leak memory over long sessions. This is well enough understood that we build for it: schedule a restart every 12 or 24 hours with a broadcast warning, run /Save first, and the graph resets instead of creeping toward the ceiling. Plan your sizing around what the server holds after a fresh restart, then keep enough headroom to survive a full day between them.
Two other things bite on a Palworld server. Clock speed decides how responsive a base feels, because the simulation leans on single-thread performance, which is why our game nodes run AMD EPYC 4000 or Intel Xeon 6300 series processors with NVMe I/O over 1 GB/s. And when Palworld updates, players on the new client cannot join an old server, so restart from the panel to pull the current build before your guild starts asking why they are locked out.
What our Palworld plans give you#
Our Palworld server hosting plans are sold by resources rather than by player slots, so a regular bringing a friend never costs you anything. These are live figures, read from the same data the order pages use:
| Plan | Memory | vCPU | Storage | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpha (8P) | 16 GB | 4 | 50 GB NVMe | $23.99 |
| Apex (32P) | 32 GB | 4 | 50 GB NVMe | $34.99 |
The player figures in those plan names are guidance for how far each tier stretches, not a cap enforced in billing. vCPU is the slice of a physical core the plan reserves for you, and it stays reserved when a neighbour gets busy. We cap every node at 60% average CPU load for the same reason.
When to size up, and when to move off a panel#
Watch the panel graphs across a few days of normal play before deciding. Memory that sits high right after a scheduled restart is a sizing problem, and moving between our tiers is a prorated upgrade you can do mid-cycle. Lag that only shows up during a raid, with memory nowhere near the ceiling, is a CPU and settings question instead.
There is a third case. Once you are running Palworld plus a Discord bot, a stats page, and a database, a machine with root access starts making more sense than a panel. We worked through that trade in game server hosting versus a VPS, and the same sizing logic runs through Rust server hosting requirements and Valheim server hosting requirements if you want to see it applied to other games.
FAQ#
How much RAM does a Palworld dedicated server need?
More than most survival games. A guild of friends with a few base camps fits comfortably in our entry tier. A public server near the 32 player cap, with many guilds running large automated bases, belongs on the top tier. Size for what the world holds, not for how many people are logged in.
Do more players mean more memory?
Less than you would think. Base camps and the Pals working in them are what stay resident. Eight builders with sprawling automation are a heavier server than thirty players wandering the map.
Why does my Palworld server slow down after a few days?
The dedicated server leaks memory over long sessions. A scheduled restart every 12 or 24 hours, with a broadcast warning and a save first, is the standard fix and takes about a minute to set up on the Schedules tab.
What is the maximum player count on a Palworld server?
32, set by ServerPlayerMaxNum. We do not sell slots, so that limit is the game's, not ours; your plan decides how comfortably the world runs underneath it.
Can I run a Palworld server on a VPS instead?
You can, and it makes sense once you want several services on one machine. You take on the operating system, the updates, and the restart schedule yourself, in exchange for root access. Our post on what a game server costs sets out the trade in money terms.