FiveM Server Hosting: Requirements, txAdmin Setup on Linux and Which Plan to Pick

FiveM server hosting means running Cfx.re's multiplayer server for GTA V, with its built-in txAdmin web panel, on a machine that stays online all day. For a public roleplay server that machine should have dedicated vCPUs, which is what a VDS gives you, while a VPS with shared vCPUs is fine for learning and testing. Both are on our game server hosting page, in Amsterdam, Dublin and Prishtina.

On Linux the setup takes six short steps, and we ran the first five in our lab. The one you cannot skip is a license key from the Cfx.re Portal: in our Debian 13 lab in October 2026, neither the current Legacy build nor the new GTA V Enhanced build would start a game server without one. txAdmin itself idles at about 221 to 225 MB of RAM on Legacy; what decides the plan is the game server's main thread, which runs on a 50 ms timer.

Key facts, checked on 17 October 2026:

• Cfx.re's Server Download page listed Legacy build 35245 as Recommended for Linux and 37474 as Latest; the two files are dated 20 August and 16 October 2026. The server for GTAV Enhanced was at build 169, a file dated 14 October 2026.
• FiveM for GTAV Enhanced has been in early access since 21 July 2026, and Cfx.re warns that it "will contain bugs and missing features" (announcement).
• A FiveM server gets 48 player slots by default. Cfx.re's Element Club subscription raises that to 64 (Argentum), 128 (Aurum) or 2048 (Platinum) with OneSync Infinity (fivem.net).
• In FiveM's GameServer.cpp, the main thread ticks every 50 ms and logs a hitch warning when a tick comes more than 150 ms after the last one. The sync thread warns above 100 ms.

FiveM server requirements: the official list and what we measured

Cfx.re's server hosting page recommends an x86-64 system running Linux or Windows, "preferably a multi-core processor", and gives no figure for RAM or disk. Our column comes from a Debian 13.7 container limited to 2 vCPUs and 3 GiB of RAM on our Amsterdam test host (AMD EPYC 7742), in October 2026, read with ps and pidstat after a few idle minutes.

txAdmin is the web panel inside every server build: it installs your server from a template (a "recipe"), restarts it after a crash and gives your staff a live console and a ban list. It barely registers on any of our plans.

The RAM and CPU that matter belong to the game server, your scripts and the MySQL or MariaDB database most frameworks need, which we could not measure without a key. The plan table below builds on the idle baseline, the thread layout and the slot tiers.

FiveM server hosting: which plan and which city

Every plan has NVMe storage, unmetered traffic and its own IPv4 and IPv6. VPS plans share their vCPUs with other customers on the host; VDS plans have dedicated vCPUs that only your server uses.

We would not run FiveM on VPS Nano or Micro: with 1 and 2 GB of RAM, too little is left once a framework and a database load. If you prefer the Windows build, which Cfx.re says is more likely to get fixes than the Linux "courtesy port", Windows is available on VPS Mini and all VDS plans, chosen at the configure step. You can upgrade later from the client area with a short reboot.

For Balkan roleplay communities: Prishtina or Amsterdam?

A server that plays in Albanian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian or Macedonian has most of its players in one small corner of Europe. These are our own ping.pe measurements from 6 October 2026, published on our VPS Kosovo and Amsterdam pages: the lowest of about 10 pings per probe city.

Prishtina itself measured 36.9 ms to our Amsterdam server. Each player's ping also depends on their ISP, so ask a few to test before launch day. Availability by city is on the plans page, and our game server hosting page shows every plan per city.

Managed FiveM host or your own server?

Many results for "FiveM server hosting" are managed game hosts: you rent a ready server with their control panel and upload your resources. On your own VPS or VDS you install the server yourself, but the panel comes with it, because txAdmin is part of every build, and you get root access and the choice of city.

If you have never used a Linux shell and do not want to learn, a managed host is the easier start. If you want full control over files, database and who can reach txAdmin, your own server fits better, and we quote the install per job if you prefer not to do it.

Is a VPS enough for FiveM? The 50 ms tick and dedicated vCPUs

FXServer has three busy threads, named svMain, svNetwork and svSync in the source. A tick is one pass of the main loop: svMain runs it 20 times a second, and your server-side scripts work inside it. If one pass takes too long, the next starts late.

When the gap between two ticks passes 150 ms, three times the normal interval, the console prints server thread hitch warning: timer interval of N milliseconds. The sync thread, which handles entity updates for OneSync (FiveM's server-side sync mode), warns at 100 ms.

Late ticks have two causes. The usual one is a script doing too much in one tick, which no hardware fixes; Cfx.re's profiler guide has you run profiler record 500 in the server console, then profiler view, to find the resource behind each spike.

The other cause is the server: on a VPS the vCPUs are shared, so when the host is busy your vCPU waits for its turn. top shows that wait as "st" (steal time); see our guide to diagnosing a slow VPS.

We could not run a real FiveM server, so we wrote a short Python loop that copies svMain's timer: tick every 50 ms, burn a set amount of CPU per tick, record the gap between ticks. Each run lasted 45 seconds, with always-busy processes on the same 2 vCPUs as a crude stand-in for a crowded host. It is a model, not FiveM, and the crowding is heavy on purpose.

No tick crossed 150 ms, so FXServer would have printed no hitch warning at all. Yet in the last row the loop managed 519 ticks instead of about 900, 42% fewer, because each tick waited for a core. A quiet console is not proof of a healthy server. Cfx.re's development update of 15 July 2026 says Legacy exposes tick-time histograms for the three threads on a /perf endpoint, so you can watch tick times creep up before any warning.

On a VDS the vCPUs are dedicated to you, so no other customer takes your turn, and slow ticks point at a script you can profile. Four dedicated vCPUs give the three FXServer threads, txAdmin and the database room to run at once. A faster core still helps the main thread more than extra cores do, so 16 vCPUs will not rescue a slow script. Our VPS vs VDS vs dedicated server comparison covers the server types in depth.

Legacy or Enhanced: which FiveM server build to download

FiveM is made by Cfx.re, which joined Rockstar Games in August 2023. Since July 2026 its download page offers two servers, and most guides we read still describe only the first.

Legacy is the classic FXServer for the original GTA V; each release is called an "artifact", and existing roleplay servers and their resources were built on it. Enhanced is the new Cfx Server, which the announcement says any server supporting GTAV Enhanced needs. Both have txAdmin inside, and we started it from each on Debian 13:

For a live server today, use the Legacy Recommended build: your resources were written for it, and Enhanced is early access. Test Enhanced on a copy if your community plans to move.

Cfx.re's update of 15 July 2026 shows why it is worth watching: sync at up to 120 updates per second instead of 30 (or 40 with sv_useAccurateSends) on Legacy, up to 50% less memory per player and entity, and entity culling spread across several CPU cores. An update from March 2026 says every Enhanced server runs OneSync in its high-performance mode, and the older, lower-capacity modes are gone.

Can you run a FiveM server without a license key?

No, not in our tests. A license key is a code you generate on the Cfx.re Portal with a Cfx.re account, and the server checks it when it starts. Without one, txAdmin ran on both builds but the game server did not.

With Cfx.re's sample resources and no key, Legacy found 19 resources, printed "This server does not have a license key specified", pointed to portal.cfx.re/servers/registration-keys and ended itself within 0.14 seconds. Older guides send you to Keymaster; the server's own message now names the Cfx.re Portal. Enhanced found 18 resources, printed "A valid license check is required to run this server" and shut down after 1.8 seconds. Port 30120 never opened.

Cfx.re's server commands page says sv_lan makes a server LAN-only and skips the license check. Neither build accepted it in our tests. We did not create a Cfx.re account for the lab, so we could not connect a player, load a framework or measure a busy server; where a step relies on Cfx.re's documentation, we say so.

How to host a FiveM server on a VPS: txAdmin setup on Linux

These steps are for a VPS or VDS running Debian 13. Every command in steps 1 to 5 and in the Enhanced switch ran in our lab in this order, and we replayed them on a fresh container. Step 6 needs a Cfx.re account, so it follows Cfx.re's documentation. Replace YOUR_SERVER_IP with your server's address. New to Linux servers? Do the basics from our Debian 13 hardening guide first.

1. Firewall first

Open SSH and the game port to everyone, and txAdmin's port only to a WireGuard subnet, here 10.8.0.0/24. If you will only use the SSH tunnel from step 5, leave that line out.

# as root
apt update
apt install -y curl xz-utils ufw
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 30120/tcp
ufw allow 30120/udp
ufw allow from 10.8.0.0/24 to any port 40120 proto tcp
ufw --force enable
ufw status

You should see Status: active, with 22/tcp, 30120/tcp and 30120/udp allowed from Anywhere and 40120/tcp only from 10.8.0.0/24. In our lab, a request to port 40120 from outside the server timed out.

2. A user and the server build

FXServer should not run as root. Build numbers change often, so on the Server Download page pick FiveM / RedM, Linux and Recommended, and copy the fx.tar.xz link if it is newer than ours.

# as root
useradd -m -s /bin/bash fivem
su - fivem

# as the fivem user
mkdir -p ~/FXServer/server && cd ~/FXServer/server
curl -sSLo fx.tar.xz https://runtime.fivem.net/artifacts/fivem/build_proot_linux/master/35245-6efb47dff473c0e2a12fb50b08d74c0eb24a50d5/fx.tar.xz
tar xf fx.tar.xz
ls
exit

ls prints alpine fx.tar.xz run.sh, and the folder now holds 350 MB. The build brings its own small Alpine Linux, so your distribution hardly matters. exit returns you to root.

3. Run txAdmin as a service

A systemd service keeps txAdmin running after you log out and brings it back after a reboot or crash. TXHOST_DATA_PATH keeps txAdmin's data outside the build folder you will replace on updates; that folder and your database are what to copy off the server regularly.

The SuccessExitStatus line comes from the lab. Every time systemd stopped the Legacy build, it logged "Got SIGTERM, shutting down..." and then died with a segmentation fault, so the service showed as failed. That line treats this exit as normal, and Restart=always still restarts txAdmin after a real crash. We tested both.

# as root
cat > /etc/systemd/system/txadmin.service <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=FiveM txAdmin + FXServer
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
User=fivem
WorkingDirectory=/home/fivem/FXServer
Environment=TXHOST_DATA_PATH=/home/fivem/txData
ExecStart=/home/fivem/FXServer/server/run.sh
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
SuccessExitStatus=SIGSEGV

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now txadmin
systemctl is-active txadmin

The last command prints active. When we killed txAdmin on purpose, systemd started it again after the 10-second RestartSec delay, and after a full reboot it came back on its own.

4. Read the setup PIN

# as root, about 10 seconds after the start
journalctl -u txadmin --no-pager -o cat | grep -A1 "PIN below" | tail -n 1

You get one line with a four-digit PIN in a box. txAdmin prints a new PIN at every start until setup is done, and this shows the newest. The full banner also shows your public IP with port 40120 and advises opening that port. With the firewall from step 1 it will not answer, which is what you want.

5. Open the panel through an SSH tunnel

An SSH tunnel carries the panel over your normal SSH login, so nothing new is exposed. Run this on your own computer (PowerShell on Windows 10 or 11, a terminal on macOS or Linux) and leave the window open. If you disabled root logins, use your own user name.

# on your own computer, not the server
ssh -N -L 40120:127.0.0.1:40120 root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

Then open http://localhost:40120 in your browser. The command prints nothing while it works. From a Windows 10 PC (through our test host), the panel answered with HTTP 200 through the tunnel and stopped answering once we closed it.

6. Finish in the browser (from Cfx.re's docs, not tested)

This needs a Cfx.re account, so it follows Cfx.re's txAdmin setup guide. Enter the PIN, link your Cfx.re account and set a panel password. Choose "Popular Recipes" and the "CFX Default FiveM" template (other templates may need a database server), and paste the key from the Cfx.re Portal in the recipe step. txAdmin then writes the server files and a server.cfg into a new folder and starts the server. Players connect to YOUR_SERVER_IP:30120. The lines from Cfx.re's sample config worth knowing:

# in server.cfg, edited as the fivem user
endpoint_add_tcp "0.0.0.0:30120"
endpoint_add_udp "0.0.0.0:30120"
sv_maxclients 48
set onesync on
sv_licenseKey "your_key_from_portal.cfx.re"

The endpoint lines are the game port; Cfx.re says to change only the port unless your server has several network interfaces. 48 slots is the maximum without an Element Club tier. Keep the key out of screenshots and public Git repositories.

Switching to the Enhanced build

To test Enhanced, unpack it in its own folder and point the service at it. Its link is on the Server Download page under "FiveM for GTAV Enhanced"; ours was build 169.

# as the fivem user (su - fivem)
mkdir -p ~/CfxServer && cd ~/CfxServer
curl -sSLo cfx-server_linux_x64.tar.xz https://downloads.cfx-services.net/prod/01a13a8b-a2b6-748d-8109-1b661cae66ea/cfx-server_linux_x64.tar.xz
tar xf cfx-server_linux_x64.tar.xz
exit

# as root
sed -i -e 's#/home/fivem/FXServer/server/run.sh#/home/fivem/CfxServer/run.sh#' -e 's#txData$#txData-enhanced#' /etc/systemd/system/txadmin.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart txadmin

The log now shows Starting txAdmin v9.0.0-beta-a2037545/b169-ea/Lin..., and Enhanced keeps its data in txData-enhanced, so your Legacy setup stays untouched. Read the new PIN as in step 4. We tested this switch only, but a Legacy update uses the same two moves: unpack the new build next to the old one and change the ExecStart line.

How to keep txAdmin and port 40120 off the internet

Out of the box, txAdmin listens on every address (0.0.0.0:40120) and its banner tells you to open the port. Don't: whoever gets into the panel controls your server, its files and your players' bans. You have three options, and one is a trap.

• The firewall plus SSH tunnel from steps 1 and 5. Nothing extra to install, and we tested it end to end.
• A WireGuard tunnel for your staff. Run a WireGuard VPN server, give each admin a peer in 10.8.0.0/24 and keep the rule from step 1. The panel then answers only people inside the VPN, and admins need no SSH access.
• The trap is TXHOST_INTERFACE=127.0.0.1. In our test txAdmin bound to 127.0.0.1:40120 only and refused outside requests. But txAdmin's source then requires every endpoint_add_* line to use the same address, which would close the game port to players too. Leave it unset and use the firewall.

Game servers attract DDoS attacks; our guide on how to spot a DDoS attack on a Linux server shows what to check first. Running several games, or giving friends their own servers? See our Pelican vs Pterodactyl comparison, and the guide on how to host a game server on a VPS for Minecraft, CS2, Rust, Valheim and Palworld.

Frequently asked questions

What are the FiveM server requirements?

Cfx.re recommends an x86-64 server running Linux or Windows, preferably with a multi-core processor, plus a license key from the Cfx.re Portal. Port 30120 must be open over TCP and UDP. In our October 2026 lab, the Legacy build took 350 MB of disk after unpacking and the Enhanced build 921 MB, before resources.

How much RAM does a FiveM server need?

txAdmin alone used about 221 to 225 MB on the Legacy build and 154 to 169 MB on the Enhanced build in our Debian 13 lab in October 2026. The game server, resources and a MariaDB database come on top, driven mostly by scripts and custom maps. We suggest 4 GB for testing and 8 GB with dedicated vCPUs for a public roleplay server of up to 48 or 64 slots.

Which ports does a FiveM server use?

Players connect on port 30120 over TCP and UDP, the default in Cfx.re's sample server.cfg. The txAdmin web panel uses TCP port 40120. Open 30120 to everyone and keep 40120 closed to the internet, reachable only through an SSH tunnel or a VPN such as WireGuard.

Can you run a FiveM server without a license key?

No. In our October 2026 tests, Legacy build 35245 and Enhanced build 169 both stopped at startup with a license error and never opened port 30120, even with sv_lan set, although Cfx.re's docs say sv_lan skips the check. You generate the key on the Cfx.re Portal and put it in sv_licenseKey in server.cfg.

Is a VPS good enough for FiveM, or do I need a VDS?

A FiveM VPS with shared vCPUs is fine for learning txAdmin, writing scripts and private test servers. FiveM's main thread ticks every 50 ms and warns about hitches only past 150 ms, so ticks can run late long before a warning appears. For a public roleplay server, a VDS with dedicated vCPUs keeps other customers' load off your cores.

Should I use the Legacy or the Enhanced FiveM server?

Use Legacy for a live server in 2026. FiveM for GTAV Enhanced has been in early access since 21 July 2026, and Cfx.re warns it will contain bugs and missing features. Cfx.re's July 2026 development update says Enhanced cuts memory per player and per entity by up to 50%, so test it on a copy before moving your community.

Test small, then go live on dedicated vCPUs

For most roleplay communities the path is short: build your framework on a VPS Mini, then go live on a VDS Small in the city closest to your players. That is Prishtina for Kosovo, Albania and North Macedonia, Amsterdam for Western Europe and Dublin for Ireland. RS Computers runs KVM servers in all three, and the plans are on our game server hosting page.

If you want help choosing a city, or want the install done as a quoted job, message us on Telegram.

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