This page contains affiliate links — see our affiliate disclosure. If you buy through one of these links we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

The MCA Selector workflow on each option

Realms: download, edit, re-upload

Realms is Mojang’s own subscription server service, and it does not give you access to the server’s files — there is no file manager, no FTP, and no way to point MCA Selector at the live world. The real workflow is a round trip: download the world from your Realms settings to your computer, close everything, edit the local copy in MCA Selector, then upload the edited world back into a Realms slot from the same settings. It works, and for an occasional prune before a big update it is perfectly serviceable — but every edit is a download-edit-upload cycle, expect upload size limits, and Java Realms does not run mods or server plugins: your world must stay within what vanilla Realms supports.

Dedicated hosting: your files, on their machine

A rented game server gives you the world folder through a panel file manager or FTP, so the workflow is exactly the one in our upload guide: stop the server, download the world, edit locally, upload it back. You also choose the server software — vanilla, Paper, Spigot, Forge or Fabric — and the exact version, which is what makes plugin and modpack servers possible at all. The provider runs the hardware, the network and the DDoS protection; you run the world.

Self-hosting: total control, total responsibility

Running the server on your own hardware or a VPS you administer is the maximum-control option: the world files are simply there, MCA Selector edits them in place, and there is no plan limit on world size or player count beyond your own machine. The costs are real but non-monetary at first — your hardware and electricity, port forwarding, your own backups and updates, and your home connection as the front door. Many long-term owners end up here, often via the VPS middle ground covered in the hosting comparison.

Side by side

How to decide

• Choose Realms if the group is small, the world is vanilla, and nobody wants to think about servers at all. Accept the edit round trip as the price of that simplicity.
• Choose dedicated hosting if you want plugins or a modpack, expect the group to grow, or edit the world often enough that Realms’ round trip would drive you mad. Size the plan with the RAM guide, then compare Apex Hosting and BisectHosting for panel hosting.
• Choose self-hosting if you already have suitable hardware, enjoy running it, and want no limits but your own. Be honest about backups and uptime — they are now your job (backup workflow).

One thing every option shares: each player needs their own copy of the game. If someone in the group does not own it yet, the Java & Bedrock bundle from the official Minecraft store is the copy that works with everything on this page.

Download MCA Selector 2.9

Every server-side job in this guide starts with a local edit. Get the current release from the MCA Selector download page — the Windows installer, the cross-platform .jar, the macOS .dmg and the Linux .deb/.rpm, every button pointing at the official GitHub release files with the SHA-256 checksum listed, plus a clearly labelled site mirror as a fallback. It is free and open source under the MIT licence.

Related guides

• Best Minecraft server hosting, compared
• How to upload a Minecraft world to a server
• How much RAM a Minecraft server needs
• Does MCA Selector work with Bedrock?

This page contains affiliate links — see our affiliate disclosure. If you buy through one of these links we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

Rules of thumb by play style

Read the table with its warning label on: these are experience-based ranges, not guarantees. A quiet 10-player vanilla server can run happily at the low end; five players flying in five directions on elytras can stress a server more than twenty players standing in one town.

What actually drives RAM use

• Loaded chunks. Every player loads the chunks around them, set by the server’s view-distance and simulation-distance. Ten players in one place share most of their chunks; ten players exploring separately load roughly ten areas at once.
• Entities. Farms, villager trading halls, item piles and mob grinders all hold entities in memory. Entity count is the most common hidden cause of “we have enough RAM but it still lags”.
• Plugins and mods. Each one adds its own memory footprint and its own loaded data; a modpack’s RAM appetite is set by the pack, not by Minecraft.
• World size on disk is not RAM — a 20 GB world does not need 20 GB of RAM, because only loaded chunks sit in memory. But big explored worlds correlate with more loaded areas, more entities and longer backups, which is why pruning dead chunks (server pruning guide) still helps.

RAM is not the whole story

Minecraft’s main world logic runs largely on a single thread, so CPU single-core performance is the other half of the equation — a smaller plan on a fast modern core can feel better than a bigger plan on slow shared cores. Fast NVMe storage helps chunk loading and generation. This is why the cheapest per-GB plan is not always the best-performing one, a point we weigh host by host in the hosting comparison.

Signs you genuinely need more RAM

• The console repeats “Can’t keep up!” warnings while players are online.
• Tick rate (TPS) falls when players spread out or explore, and recovers when they gather.
• Lag spikes hit exactly when new chunks generate, in several directions at once.
• The server crashes with out-of-memory errors after adding a modpack or a wave of plugins.

Before paying for a bigger plan, run through the free fixes: lower view-distance a notch, prune dead chunks, pre-generate the area your players actually use, and check for one entity farm doing the damage. If the warnings survive all of that, then upgrade — the optimisation work still pays off on the bigger plan.

Two buying mistakes to avoid

• Over-buying. Unused RAM does not make a server faster. Buy the range your play style suggests and upgrade when the signs above appear; every host in our comparison lets you move up a tier.
• Allocating everything on a self-host. If you run the server on your own machine or VPS, leave memory for the operating system and Java’s own overhead — giving the server process every last gigabyte invites the OS to kill it under pressure.

Ready to match a plan to your number? Compare Apex Hosting and Shockbyte for panel hosting, or Hostinger’s Game Panel VPS plans if you want the RAM inside a machine you fully control.

Download MCA Selector 2.9

Every server-side job in this guide starts with a local edit. Get the current release from the MCA Selector download page — the Windows installer, the cross-platform .jar, the macOS .dmg and the Linux .deb/.rpm, every button pointing at the official GitHub release files with the SHA-256 checksum listed, plus a clearly labelled site mirror as a fallback. It is free and open source under the MIT licence.

Related guides

• Best Minecraft server hosting, compared
• How to prune a Minecraft server world
• Realms vs dedicated hosting vs self-hosting
• How to upload a Minecraft world to a server

This page contains affiliate links — see our affiliate disclosure. If you buy through one of these links we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

What to judge a Minecraft host by

• RAM — the headline number on every plan, and the one most people under-buy. Size it with our server RAM guide before comparing prices.
• CPU single-core performance — Minecraft’s main world thread does most of its work on one core, so a fast modern core usually beats a larger number of slow ones. This is the spec budget hosts advertise least and the one busy servers feel most.
• Storage — NVMe storage makes chunk loading and world generation noticeably snappier than older SSD tiers, and big edited worlds need real capacity, not just speed.
• Panel and file access — you need a file manager or FTP access that lets you replace the whole world folder (see the upload workflow). A host that only lets you pick from preset worlds is the wrong host for this audience.
• Built-in backups — automatic backups are a safety net, not a strategy; you still keep your own copies (backup guide). But a host with no backup feature at all is a red flag.
• Java Edition support and version switching — vanilla, Paper, Spigot and modded jars, and the freedom to run the exact version your world needs.

The four hosts, honestly

Shockbyte — the budget-first panel host

Shockbyte sells simple RAM-based tiers aimed squarely at price, with instant setup, DDoS protection and one-click installers for plugins and modpacks, and it supports both Java and Bedrock servers. For a small group of friends on a vanilla or lightly modded world, it is the natural first place to look when the budget is the deciding factor. The trade-off at this price level is that you are on shared game-host hardware with a game panel, not your own machine. See Shockbyte’s Minecraft plans.

Apex Hosting — the beginner-friendly panel host

Apex is built around making a first server painless: a polished panel, FTP and MySQL access, premade minigames, a free server transfer if you are moving from another host, and a 7-day money-back guarantee. Its EX series is the step up for heavy worlds — 16 GB of RAM with dedicated vCores and NVMe storage, listed at $71.99/month recurring ($53.99 for the first month) when checked in October 2026. If you would rather spend your time editing the world than administering the box, start here. See Apex Hosting plans.

BisectHosting — the modpack and multi-game host

BisectHosting’s own Starbase panel gives full console and file access, one-click installation from a library of over 2,300 modpacks, built-in backups and 20+ server locations, and its dedicated line lets you switch the same server between 110+ different games. That makes it a strong fit for modpack servers and for groups whose game changes every few months. See BisectHosting plans.

Hostinger — the VPS route, for owners who want the whole machine

Hostinger is the different animal in this list: its Game Panel plans are a game panel on top of a real VPS, with full root access, AMD EPYC CPUs and NVMe storage. Plans start at $6.99/month on a 24-month term (checked October 2026), include automatic backups and manual snapshots, and support 2,000+ modpacks. You get the most control and the most RAM per dollar at the long-term prices — in exchange for a longer commitment, higher renewal prices, and more of the administration being your job. It is the right answer for technical owners who also want to run other services next to the server. See Hostinger Game Panel plans.

Side by side

Figures and feature lists summarise each host’s official pages as checked in October 2026; line-ups and prices change, and entry prices at several hosts depend on the billing term — always confirm the renewal price, not just the first-term one.

Pick by situation

• First server, small group, no patience for sysadmin: Apex Hosting.
• Cheapest reasonable start for a few friends: Shockbyte.
• Modpack server, or the group keeps switching games: BisectHosting.
• You want root access, other services on the same box, and the best long-term RAM-per-dollar: Hostinger.
• Still not sure whether you even need a host? Compare against Realms and your own machine in Realms vs dedicated hosting vs self-hosting.

Whichever host you pick, the exit test matters: can you download your complete world, edit it locally and upload it back, any time you like? All four above pass that test — and any host that fails it is the wrong home for a world you care about.

Download MCA Selector 2.9

Every server-side job in this guide starts with a local edit. Get the current release from the MCA Selector download page — the Windows installer, the cross-platform .jar, the macOS .dmg and the Linux .deb/.rpm, every button pointing at the official GitHub release files with the SHA-256 checksum listed, plus a clearly labelled site mirror as a fallback. It is free and open source under the MIT licence.

Related guides

• How much RAM a Minecraft server needs
• How to upload a Minecraft world to a server
• Realms vs dedicated hosting vs self-hosting
• How to back up a Minecraft world

This page contains affiliate links — see our affiliate disclosure. If you buy through one of these links we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

What pruning can and cannot do

Pruning removes chunks — typically terrain outside your world border or chunks where nobody has ever spent real time. It shrinks the world folder, which makes backups smaller and faster, server restarts and world loads lighter, and a future world upload much less painful. It does not fix a server that is slow because of entity farms, redstone or too many loaded chunks at peak hours; that is a performance problem, not a file-size problem. Be honest with yourself about which one you have before scheduling downtime.

Measure the world before and after

Do not prune on vibes. Before you touch anything, record the size of the world folder — the sum of its region, poi and entities folders — and the number of .mca region files in it. That pair of numbers is your baseline. After the prune, measure the same two numbers on the edited copy. The difference is the real result you can report to your players (“the world went from X to Y”), and it is also your sanity check: if the folder barely changed, your selection was not what you thought it was. Note that deleting chunks is not the only way to reclaim space — our guide to reducing world size also covers defragmenting region files, which rewrites them without the empty space left behind by earlier edits.

Choosing what is safe to delete

• Outside the keep area. Draw the line around spawn and your players’ bases — a world border makes this explicit. Everything outside it goes. The step-by-step selection workflow is in prune a world in MCA Selector.
• Chunks nobody lived in. The Chunk Filter can select by InhabitedTime — the time players have actually spent in a chunk. Fly-through terrain has an InhabitedTime of seconds; a mined, built or farmed area has much more. See MCA Selector filters for how to build the query.
• Old-version chunks before an update. Before a big Minecraft update, many servers delete unexplored old-DataVersion chunks so they regenerate with new terrain and structures — the same job as resetting chunks, done at server scale.

When in doubt, keep the chunk. Disk space is cheap; a deleted base is a community problem you cannot undo.

The player-notification checklist

Most pruning disasters are communication failures, not tool failures. Work through this list before the maintenance window:

1. Announce the date and the maintenance window in advance, in the places your players actually read.
2. Publish what will be deleted in plain language (“everything outside the world border”, “chunks nobody has built in”) — and a deadline for players to speak up about outlying builds.
3. Ask players to log out somewhere safe inside the keep area, and to tell you about any far-away bases, farms or nether hubs.
4. Stop the server and take a full backup of the untouched world (see our backup workflow) — and say how long you will keep it.
5. Do the edit on a local copy, measure before/after, upload, start the server and verify the key locations yourself before reopening.
6. Announce the result with the real numbers, and keep the pre-prune backup until at least one full play cycle has passed.

Safety rules that are not optional

MCA Selector writes deletions to the world files immediately — there is no save button and no undo, as explained in why MCA Selector changes are already saved. So: never edit the live server copy, never edit while the server is running, and never prune without the full backup from the checklist. Work on a downloaded copy, verify it, then upload it back during the window.

When pruning is not enough

If the world is still huge after an honest prune — or the real problem is a growing player count rather than dead chunks — the next step is usually the plan, not the world. A bigger RAM allocation and faster storage do more for a busy server than another prune. Compare the options in our Minecraft server hosting guide and size the RAM with the server RAM guide; if you are ready to look at plans, start with Apex Hosting for a beginner-friendly panel or Hostinger’s Game Panel plans if you want a full VPS under the panel.

Download MCA Selector 2.9

Every server-side job in this guide starts with a local edit. Get the current release from the MCA Selector download page — the Windows installer, the cross-platform .jar, the macOS .dmg and the Linux .deb/.rpm, every button pointing at the official GitHub release files with the SHA-256 checksum listed, plus a clearly labelled site mirror as a fallback. It is free and open source under the MIT licence.

Related guides

• Prune a world before an update in MCA Selector
• How to reduce a Minecraft world’s size
• How to back up a Minecraft world
• How to upload a Minecraft world to a server

Before you start

• The local edit is finished and verified. Load the edited copy in single-player once and look at the areas you changed — it is much easier to spot a mistake now than after players log in.
• You have a backup of the edited world on your own machine, separate from the working copy. Our world backup guide covers a workflow that survives bad edits.
• You know which Minecraft version the server runs and that the world matches it (see the DataVersion check below).
• Players know the server will be down. Give the maintenance window a start and an end, not just a surprise disconnect.

Step 1 — Stop the server

Never replace world files on a running server. The server keeps chunks loaded in memory and writes them back as it goes, so files you upload can be silently overwritten — or worse, half-overwritten, which produces corrupt chunks that only show up days later. Use the panel stop button or the stop console command and wait until the process has fully exited before touching any files. The same rule applies to MCA Selector itself: it is an external tool and the world must not be open in the game or on a server while you edit it.

Step 2 — Back up the world that is on the server now

Whatever happens next, the current server world is the version your players last played. Download the complete world folder from the server — through the file manager in your hosting panel or an FTP client — and keep it untouched. If the upload goes wrong, this copy is your way back. Do not skip this because “the new world is better”: player inventories, ender chests and the world itself are all in that folder.

Step 3 — Do the MCA Selector edit locally

Work on a copy of the server world on your own computer. The typical server jobs are pruning chunks outside your world border before a version update, resetting chunks so new terrain generation can appear, or filter-based cleanup of chunks nobody has ever spent time in. Server-specific guidance is in our server world pruning guide. Remember that deletions in MCA Selector are written to the files immediately and cannot be undone — which is exactly why steps 1 and 2 come first.

Step 4 — Upload all three data folders, not just region

A Java Edition world folder holds its terrain data in three sibling folders, and a complete upload needs all three:

• region — the block and chunk data itself (the .mca files).
• poi — points of interest: villagers’ workstations, beds, portals and similar bookkeeping.
• entities — entities, split out of the region files since Minecraft 1.17.

Uploading only region is the classic mistake: the terrain looks right, but villagers lose their jobs and mobs and items behave as if they were never there. Keep the matching level.dat as well — it carries the world name, seed, spawn point and game rules. If you also edited the Nether or the End, their data lives in DIM-1 and DIM1 subfolders with the same three-folder structure inside.

Step 5 — Panel file manager or FTP?

Both routes work; the right choice is mostly about world size. A hosting panel’s built-in file manager is fine for small worlds and quick fixes, and many panels let you upload a single zip archive and extract it on the server, which is far faster than thousands of small files. For a multi-gigabyte world, an FTP client is the better tool: transfers can resume after a dropped connection and you can queue the three folders and let it run. Whichever route you take, upload to a fresh, empty world folder — do not merge the new files into the old folder, because leftover .mca files from the old world will quietly resurrect chunks you just deleted.

Step 6 — Match the server version to the world’s DataVersion

Every world carries a DataVersion number, and a server can only open worlds its own Minecraft version understands. If the world was last saved by a newer Minecraft version than the server runs, the server will refuse it or damage it — worlds are not backwards-compatible. Check the numbers in our Minecraft DataVersion table before you upload, and if you are moving the world to a newer server version, that upgrade happens once, on first start — another reason the step 2 backup matters.

Step 7 — Start the server and verify in game

1. Start the server and watch the console for errors while the world loads.
2. Log in and go to the areas you edited: a reset chunk should show freshly generated terrain, a pruned area should end cleanly at your keep boundary.
3. Check spawn, a farm or two, and anything entity-heavy (a village is a good test of the poi and entities data).
4. Only then announce that the server is back — and keep the pre-upload backup for at least a few days of play.

If something looks wrong

The two usual symptoms are a world that will not load at all (almost always a partial upload or a version mismatch — compare the file counts and sizes against your local copy, and re-check step 6) and a world that loads but “lost” its entities or villager trades (the poi/entities problem from step 4). In both cases the fix is the same: stop the server, restore or re-upload completely, and start again. Do not try to patch a live, half-uploaded world.

No server yet? If you are setting one up so friends can play on the world you just edited, our Minecraft server hosting guide compares the panel hosts and the VPS route, and the server RAM guide helps you size the plan.

Download MCA Selector 2.9

Every server-side job in this guide starts with a local edit. Get the current release from the MCA Selector download page — the Windows installer, the cross-platform .jar, the macOS .dmg and the Linux .deb/.rpm, every button pointing at the official GitHub release files with the SHA-256 checksum listed, plus a clearly labelled site mirror as a fallback. It is free and open source under the MIT licence.

Related guides

• How to back up a Minecraft world
• How to prune a Minecraft server world
• Prune a world before an update in MCA Selector
• Minecraft DataVersion table

This page contains affiliate links — see our affiliate disclosure. If you buy through one of these links we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

What counts as a backup

A backup is a copy of the entire world folder, made while the world is closed: the level.dat file, the region, poi and entities folders, and the player data. Copying only the region folder is the classic partial backup — the terrain comes back but the entities and points of interest do not. Copying while the game or server is running is the other classic: the copy catches files mid-write and may restore a world that is subtly corrupt. Stop the server, close the game, then copy.

The 3-2-1 rule, in plain words

Backup professionals use a rule called 3-2-1. Translated for a Minecraft world it is simply this:

• 3 copies of the world — the live one you play on, plus two backups.
• 2 different kinds of storage — for example your PC’s drive and an external drive, so one hardware failure cannot take both.
• 1 copy somewhere else — a cloud copy, so theft, fire or a dead PC at home cannot take every copy at once.

You do not need all of this for a throwaway test world. For a world with months of building in it, you need exactly this.

The workflow, step by step

1. Stop and copy. With the game closed (or the server stopped), copy the whole world folder to your backup location on the same machine or an external drive.
2. Compress and name it properly. Zip the copy and name the archive with the date and the reason: myworld-2026-10-21-before-prune.zip beats world-backup-final2.zip six months from now.
3. Send one copy to the cloud. Upload the same archive to cloud storage so an off-site copy exists. We use pCloud for this in our own workflow — set up a “Minecraft Backups” folder once and drop each new archive in.
4. Rotate, do not hoard randomly. Keep the last few editing backups plus one monthly milestone. Delete the in-between ones on a schedule, not in a panic when the disk fills.
5. Note what you did. A one-line text file next to the archives — date, what was edited, which backup is the last known-good — saves real time on the bad day.

Test the restore before you need it

A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a backup. Once, before it matters: copy a backup into a spare world slot (or a test server), load it, and fly around your main builds. Check that chests have their contents, villagers are where they should be, and nothing looks torn. If the test restore works, the same steps will work under pressure; if it does not, you have found out while it is still free to fix.

Server owners: your host’s backup is not your backup

Most hosts take automatic backups, and they are genuinely useful for small accidents. But they live on the provider’s system, under the provider’s retention window, and they vanish if the account does. Download your own full copy on a schedule — the same download as step 2 of the upload guide, run in reverse — and keep it in the 3-2-1 rotation above. The world your community built should never exist in only one company’s hands.

Make the backup a habit with a trigger: every time you open MCA Selector, a backup happens first — before a server prune, before a chunk reset, before any NBT change. The edit takes minutes; rebuilding a lost world takes forever.

Download MCA Selector 2.9

Every server-side job in this guide starts with a local edit. Get the current release from the MCA Selector download page — the Windows installer, the cross-platform .jar, the macOS .dmg and the Linux .deb/.rpm, every button pointing at the official GitHub release files with the SHA-256 checksum listed, plus a clearly labelled site mirror as a fallback. It is free and open source under the MIT licence.

Related guides

• Why MCA Selector changes are already saved
• Deleted a whole region by mistake? What to do
• How to prune a Minecraft server world
• How to upload a Minecraft world to a server