How to Host a Minecraft Server on AWS Free Tier

AWS Free Tier for Minecraft

Amazon Web Services offers a 12-month Free Tier for new accounts that includes 750 hours per month of a t2.micro or t3.micro EC2 instance. A t3.micro provides 2 vCPUs (burstable) and 1 GB of RAM. Like GCP's e2-micro, this is minimal for Minecraft, but it works for 1 to 3 players with optimization. The aws free tier minecraft server is a useful learning exercise and a functional micro-server.

Unlike Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier, the AWS Free Tier expires after 12 months. After that, you pay standard EC2 pricing unless you stop the instance.

Account Setup

Create an AWS account at aws.amazon.com. You need an email address, a credit card, and a phone number for verification. AWS will place a temporary $1 hold on your card. Once your account is active, navigate to the EC2 dashboard.

Launching the EC2 Instance

Go to EC2 > Launch Instance and configure:

• Name: minecraft-server
• AMI: Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS (free tier eligible)
• Instance type: t3.micro (2 vCPUs, 1 GB RAM, free tier eligible)
• Key pair: Create a new key pair, download the .pem file, keep it safe
• Storage: 30 GB gp3 (free tier includes 30 GB)

Under Network Settings, create a security group that allows:

• SSH (TCP 22) from your IP
• Minecraft (TCP 25565) from 0.0.0.0/0
• Bedrock (UDP 19132) from 0.0.0.0/0 if needed

Elastic IP

By default, your EC2 instance gets a new public IP every time it stops and starts. Players would need to update their server address each time. Allocate an Elastic IP (free while associated with a running instance) and associate it with your instance. This gives you a static IP that persists across restarts. An Elastic IP that is not associated with a running instance costs $3.65/month, so always release it if you stop using the server.

Server Installation

SSH into your instance:

ssh -i ~/minecraft-key.pem ubuntu@YOUR_ELASTIC_IP

Install Java and set up the server:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y openjdk-21-jre-headless
mkdir minecraft && cd minecraft
wget https://api.papermc.io/v2/projects/paper/versions/1.21.4/builds/LATEST/downloads/paper-1.21.4-LATEST.jar -O paper.jar
echo "eula=true" > eula.txt

With only 1 GB of RAM, create a conservative start script:

java -Xms512M -Xmx700M -jar paper.jar nogui

Swap Space

Like the GCP e2-micro, you need swap to prevent OOM kills on a 1 GB instance:

sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

T3 Burstable CPU Credits

The t3.micro uses a burstable CPU model. You earn CPU credits when idle and spend them when active. A Minecraft server under constant load burns through credits quickly. Once credits are exhausted, the CPU throttles to baseline (10% of a core for t3.micro), making the server unplayable.

Monitor your CPU credit balance in CloudWatch. If credits hit zero regularly, your aws free tier minecraft server is undersized. You can enable "unlimited" burst mode, but this charges extra per vCPU-hour of burst above baseline. For a continuously running Minecraft server, this can add $10 to $30/month in surprise charges.

Optimizing for 1 GB RAM

With 700 MB available for the JVM, every setting matters:

• Set view-distance=4 in server.properties
• Set simulation-distance=4
• Disable generate-structures or pre-generate the world with Chunky
• Use Paper's built-in mob limits to reduce entity count
• Avoid plugins with large caches (CoreProtect, Dynmap)

See our RAM reduction guide for detailed optimization steps.

Cost Traps

AWS Free Tier has several cost traps for the unaware:

• Data transfer: Free tier includes 100 GB outbound. A busy Minecraft server can exceed this, costing $0.09/GB.
• Elastic IP: Free while attached to a running instance. If you stop the instance and forget the IP, you are billed $3.65/month.
• EBS snapshots: If you create manual snapshots for backups, they cost $0.05/GB/month.
• After 12 months: The t3.micro costs about $8.50/month (us-east-1, on-demand). Not terrible, but dedicated Minecraft hosting starts at similar prices with better specs.

See what optimized hardware feels like in game: Astroworld MC, IP play.astroworldmc.com, Java + Bedrock.

Is AWS Worth It?

The aws free tier minecraft server is a solid learning project. You will gain real cloud computing skills that are valuable professionally. For actually playing Minecraft with friends, the 1 GB RAM limit makes it impractical for more than 2 to 3 players. If you want a free cloud server with usable specs, Oracle Cloud Free Tier offers 24 GB of RAM at no cost. If you want reliable hosting without cloud complexity, check our shared vs dedicated hosting guide for affordable alternatives.