Dedicated servers give you full control over your gaming experience: custom settings, persistent worlds and no reliance on peer-to-peer connections. Here are the best games to host in 2026.
Top Tier (Largest Communities)
- Minecraft: The king of dedicated servers. Endless mods, plugins and modpacks. From 2 GB (Vanilla) to 12+ GB (modpacks).
- Rust: Hardcore survival with monthly wipes. CPU-intensive, needs 6-8 GB RAM.
- FiveM: GTA V roleplay and custom servers. Huge community, needs 4-8+ GB for RP servers.
- Palworld: Creature collection meets factory building. 8-16 GB RAM recommended.
Strong Picks
- Valheim: Co-op Viking survival for up to 10 players. 4-8 GB.
- ARK: Survival Ascended: Dinosaur taming in UE5. RAM-hungry: 8-16 GB.
- Enshrouded: Up to 16-player co-op survival crafting. 4-8 GB.
- Terraria: 2D sandbox with bosses and building. Very lightweight: 1-2 GB.
Rising Stars
- Satisfactory: Factory building co-op, now with dedicated servers.
- Eco: Environmental simulation with player government.
- Soulmask: Tribal survival that hit 1.0 in April 2026.
- RuneScape: Dragonwilds: RuneScape survival co-op, 1.0 launched September 2026.
