Minecraft Server Hosting in Ireland: Low Ping for Irish, UK and EU Players

For Minecraft server hosting in Ireland, put the server in Dublin when most of your players are in Ireland or Northern Ireland, even with a few in Great Britain, and in Amsterdam when the group is spread over mainland Europe. Ping is mostly set by distance, so a Dublin server keeps Irish players within a few milliseconds and London about 11 ms away, while Amsterdam has roughly half the ping to Frankfurt or Warsaw. RS Computers runs KVM servers in both cities (and in Prishtina), and this guide shows which plan fits which group, plus a Paper server we installed and measured on Debian 13.

Key facts, checked on 14 October 2026:

• Minecraft runs at a fixed 20 ticks per second, so the server has 50 ms to finish each tick. If a tick takes longer, TPS (ticks per second) drops and the whole world slows down (Minecraft Wiki, Tick).
• The current Java Edition release is 26.3. Minecraft 26.1 and newer need Java 25 (Minecraft Wiki server tutorial), and Paper says the same: "Paper requires at least Java 25" (PaperMC docs).
• Paper 26.3 build 183 was marked stable on 14 October 2026 in the official PaperMC download API.
• Java Edition listens on port 25565; Bedrock Dedicated Server uses UDP 19132 for IPv4 and 19133 for IPv6 (Minecraft Wiki, BDS).
• Geyser, the bridge that lets Bedrock players join a Java server, supports Java 26.2 and Bedrock 26.30 to 26.52 (GeyserMC). It does not list 26.3 yet.
• Our lab (14 October 2026): Paper 26.3 with a 2 GB heap started in 17.7 seconds, used 2.1 to 2.6 GB of RAM and held 20.0 TPS while generating 16,129 chunks in 7 minutes on 2 vCPUs.

Why ping matters more in Minecraft than people think

Ping is the time a packet needs to travel from a player's computer to the server and back, measured in milliseconds (ms). In Minecraft the server decides whether your sword hit landed and whether the block you mined actually broke. Your client guesses ahead and the server corrects it, which is invisible at low ping. At 80 ms or more, PvP players notice missed hits, blocks that pop back after mining and rubber banding.

The second number that matters is the server's own speed. Each tick has a budget of 50 ms for mobs, redstone, crops, players and chunk loading; Paper calls the time actually used MSPT (milliseconds per tick). Over 50 ms, TPS falls and every player sees slow mobs and delayed blocks, however good their ping. A good host therefore gives you a short path to your players and a CPU that finishes each tick on time, which is what our Minecraft server hosting plans are built for.

Dublin or Amsterdam: ping figures for Irish, UK and EU players

We use two sources. The first is WonderNetwork, which pings between its own test servers every hour; the averages below are the ones we published on our Dublin VPS page on 6 October 2026, so they describe the region, not our network. The second is our own test: on 6 October 2026 we pinged an RS Computers server in Amsterdam from ping.pe probes and kept the lowest of about 10 pings per city, as listed on our Amsterdam VPS page.

Two things follow from the table. Players in Ireland lose about 20 ms if the server sits in Amsterdam instead of Dublin (our Amsterdam server measured 21.0 ms from Dublin), and Cork, Galway or Limerick are only a few hundred kilometres of fibre from Dublin, which is worth a few milliseconds at most (light in fibre needs about 1 ms of round trip per 100 km). For an Irish group, Dublin is the clear choice. For London the two cities are close to a tie, and for Germany or Poland Amsterdam wins by 15 to 21 ms.

Home connections add their own delay, more on Wi-Fi or mobile, so ask two or three players to ping the server from home before you invite everyone.

When Amsterdam is the better pick for a mixed group

Pick the city that keeps your worst-placed regular player under about 50 ms. A server for friends in Dublin, Belfast and Manchester belongs in Dublin. A guild with players in Dublin, Berlin and Warsaw is better in Amsterdam: the Irish players sit around 21 ms, and nobody on the continent goes far above 20 ms, whereas Dublin would push Warsaw to about 44 ms. Groups centred on the Balkans should look at Prishtina instead, where we run our own data centre. All three cities sell the same six plans; availability by city is on the plans page.

Java or Bedrock, and Paper, vanilla or Fabric

Java Edition runs on PCs and has the big plugin and mod scene; Bedrock Edition runs on phones, tablets and consoles. They cannot play together without help. Java servers listen on TCP port 25565; Mojang's Bedrock Dedicated Server listens on UDP 19132 (and 19133 for IPv6), needs at least 4 GB of memory and officially supports only Ubuntu 22.04 or later on Linux, according to the Minecraft Wiki.

For a Java server you also choose the server software:

• Vanilla is Mojang's own server jar. No plugins, no mods, exactly the game as released.
• Paper is a drop-in replacement for Spigot and CraftBukkit that runs Bukkit plugins (anti-grief, economy, permissions, maps) and has many performance fixes. It is the usual pick for friends' servers and public communities.
• Fabric, like NeoForge and Forge, loads mods instead of plugins. Modpacks need one of these, and every player installs the same mods.

Plugins and mods do not mix on one server, so decide on Paper or a mod loader before you build the world.

Letting Bedrock players join a Java server

Geyser is a free translator between the editions that runs as a Paper plugin, on a Velocity proxy or standalone. It listens on UDP 19132 by default, so that port needs to be open too (Geyser setup docs). Its companion plugin Floodgate lets Bedrock players join without also owning a Java account. One catch on 14 October 2026: Geyser supports Java 26.2, not yet 26.3. If crossplay matters more than the newest blocks, download a stable Paper 26.2 build instead of 26.3; both are in the PaperMC API. We did not test Geyser; this section summarises its official documentation.

How much server you need: players, plugins and the right plan

The Minecraft Wiki's requirements page lists 1 GB of RAM as acceptable for 5 to 10 players and 6 GB as optimal for 20+ on a vanilla server run from the Linux command line, for a new world, and warns that big worlds with lots of redstone or mobs can more than double that. Paper's guide to its recommended JVM flags says to leave 1000 to 1500 MB of the machine's memory outside the Java heap. In our lab, a 2 GB heap meant 2.1 GB of real memory right after a boot and 2.6 GB after heavy chunk generation, so plan on the heap plus about half a gigabyte for Java itself.

The heap ranges are our planning figures, not limits from Mojang or PaperMC. Watch MSPT for a week and move up a plan from the client area if it climbs; the upgrade needs only a short reboot. Every plan has NVMe storage, unmetered traffic and its own IPv4 and IPv6, listed on the Minecraft hosting page.

Why dedicated vCPUs help the tick rate

Most of a Minecraft tick runs on one main thread. The Minecraft Wiki asks for "a CPU with good single-core performance" and notes that the server typically uses three cores at most (Server requirements). On a VPS plan (Nano, Micro, Mini) the vCPUs are shared with other customers on the host, so if a neighbour is busy when your server needs its 50 ms, the tick can run long; Linux shows that wait as "steal" time, explained in our slow VPS guide. On a VDS plan (Small, Medium, Large) the vCPUs are dedicated to your server, so the main thread gets its core when it asks. Shared vCPUs are fine for a few friends; a public server, PvP events or a heavy modpack deserve the steadier tick of a VDS. Our VPS, VDS and dedicated comparison goes deeper.

Our lab: Paper 26.3 on Debian 13, measured

We ran everything below on 14 October 2026 in a Debian 13 container limited to 3 GB of RAM and 2 vCPUs, on one of our Amsterdam test machines. Commands are shown in the order we ran them, with the output we saw. Log in to your new server as root first; our Debian 13 hardening guide covers SSH keys and updates.

Step 1: install Java 25 and create a user for the server

Debian 13 ships OpenJDK 25 in its own repository. The server runs as a separate user called minecraft, never as root, so a bad plugin cannot take over the machine.

# as root
apt-get update
apt-get install -y openjdk-25-jre-headless curl jq ufw
java -version
adduser --system --group --home /opt/minecraft minecraft

The install took 10 seconds. java -version printed openjdk version "25.0.4.1" 2026-08-18.

Step 2: open the firewall for SSH and Minecraft

Allow SSH before you switch the firewall on, or you lock yourself out. Then open TCP 25565 for Java players. Add ufw allow 19132/udp only if you install Geyser or run a Bedrock server.

# as root
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 25565/tcp
ufw --force enable
ufw status

Expected output: four ALLOW lines, 25565/tcp and 22/tcp for IPv4 and the same two with (v6). We tested it from outside: port 25565 answered, while a test web server on port 8080 timed out from outside and still answered locally.

Step 3: download Paper from the official API and accept the EULA

The first two lines after cd fetch Chunky, a free plugin we use in step 6 to pre-generate the world; skip them if you do not want it. The rest ask the PaperMC API for the newest version, pick its latest stable build and save it as server.jar. Running a Minecraft server means accepting Mojang's End User License Agreement; read it, then write eula=true into eula.txt.

# as root: open a shell as the minecraft user
runuser -u minecraft -- bash
# as the minecraft user
cd /opt/minecraft
mkdir -p plugins
curl -s -L -o plugins/Chunky-Bukkit-1.5.3.jar https://cdn.modrinth.com/data/fALzjamp/versions/MdY6JATr/Chunky-Bukkit-1.5.3.jar
VER=$(curl -s -A "my-server" https://fill.papermc.io/v3/projects/paper | jq -r '.versions | to_entries[0].value[0]')
echo "$VER"
URL=$(curl -s -A "my-server" https://fill.papermc.io/v3/projects/paper/versions/$VER/builds | jq -r 'first(.[] | select(.channel=="STABLE")) | .downloads."server:default".url')
echo "$URL"
curl -s -o server.jar "$URL"
sha256sum server.jar
echo "eula=true" > eula.txt
exit

We got 26.3 and build paper-26.3-183.jar, 55 MB. The SHA-256 checksum printed by sha256sum matched the long hex string inside the download URL, which is a quick way to confirm the file arrived intact. For Geyser crossplay today, replace $VER with a 26.2 version as explained above.

Step 4: run it with systemd

systemd starts the server at boot, restarts it after a crash and keeps the log. The small socket unit gives the server a "console": a pipe at /run/minecraft.stdin where you write commands such as tps or whitelist add. Create both files as root.

# as root: /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.socket
[Unit]
Description=Console input for the Minecraft server

[Socket]
ListenFIFO=/run/minecraft.stdin
SocketUser=minecraft
SocketMode=0600
RemoveOnStop=true

# as root: /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
[Unit]
Description=Minecraft server (Paper)
Requires=minecraft.socket
After=network-online.target minecraft.socket
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
User=minecraft
WorkingDirectory=/opt/minecraft
Sockets=minecraft.socket
StandardInput=socket
StandardOutput=journal
StandardError=journal
ExecStart=/usr/bin/java -Xms2G -Xmx2G -jar server.jar --nogui
SuccessExitStatus=143
TimeoutStopSec=90
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# as root
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now minecraft
journalctl -u minecraft -f

Change -Xms2G -Xmx2G to the heap from the sizing table. Within about 20 seconds the log showed Starting Minecraft server on *:25565 and then Done (17.739s)! For help, type "help". Press Ctrl+C to leave the log; the server keeps running.

Our first version stopped the server by writing stop into the pipe from an ExecStop line; that turned the pipe into a plain file and the next start failed with "File exists". The version above lets systemd send the normal stop signal: Paper logged Saving worlds, systemctl stop took 1.5 seconds, and SuccessExitStatus=143 marks that exit as clean. After a full container restart the server came back on its own.

Step 5: whitelist your friends and check TPS

New 26.3 servers start with white-list=true in server.properties, so nobody can join until you add them. That is a good default for a private server.

# as root
echo "whitelist add jeb_" > /run/minecraft.stdin
echo "tps" > /run/minecraft.stdin
echo "mspt" > /run/minecraft.stdin
journalctl -u minecraft -n 4 -o cat

# output we saw (idle server)
Added jeb_ to the whitelist
TPS from last 1m, 5m, 15m: 20.0, 20.0, 20.0
Server tick times (avg/min/max) from last 5s, 10s, 1m:
◴ 0.3/0.2/0.8, 0.3/0.1/3.1, 0.3/0.1/7.2

An idle tick took 0.3 ms of its 50 ms budget. Replace jeb_ with each player's Java username.

Step 6: pre-generate the world and measure under load

Generating new chunks is the heaviest work a server does, so pre-generating the area around spawn moves it to a quiet hour. We used the free Chunky plugin from step 3, version 1.5.3, which lists support for 26.3.

# as root
echo "chunky radius 1000" > /run/minecraft.stdin
echo "chunky start" > /run/minecraft.stdin

A radius of 1000 blocks is a 2,000 by 2,000 block square around spawn. These are our results on 2 vCPUs and a 2 GB heap:

With no players online TPS never dropped below 20, but the slowest tick used two thirds of the budget while Java kept a full core busy. Players exploring at the same time eat that headroom, which is why we put busy servers on dedicated vCPUs. The fuller walkthrough for other games, with CS2, Rust and Valheim, is in our game server hosting guide.

Keeping the server online

Keep RCON (port 25575) closed to the internet, leave the whitelist on for private servers and share the address only with your players. If the server suddenly lags while MSPT looks normal, read our guide to spotting a DDoS attack on a Linux server, and ask us on Telegram about protection options for your city before you open a big public server. Keep your own copies of the world folders on another machine, too; our restic guide shows one way to automate that.

A VPS is not for everyone. If you never want to touch a terminal, a panel host or Mojang's own Realms is simpler. A VPS pays off when you want your own IP address, any plugin or modpack, and room for a Discord bot or website beside it. If that is you, compare the plans on our Minecraft server hosting page.

Frequently asked questions

Is there Minecraft server hosting in Ireland?

Yes. RS Computers runs KVM servers in Dublin, where you install a Java or Bedrock Minecraft server with full root access. Whichever provider you compare, check which city the server is actually in before you buy, because a server in London or Frankfurt adds distance for players in Ireland.

What is a good ping for Minecraft?

As a rough rule of thumb, under 50 ms feels responsive for survival and building, and under 30 ms is comfortable for PvP. Above about 80 ms, players notice delayed hits and blocks that reappear after mining.

Is a Dublin Minecraft server good for UK players?

Yes. WonderNetwork's averages put Dublin about 11 ms from London and 19 ms from Manchester, close to the 10 and 18 ms it lists for Amsterdam. Dublin is the better choice as soon as part of the group lives in Ireland, because the same players would sit about 21 ms from our Amsterdam server.

How much RAM does a Minecraft server need for 10 players?

A Paper server for about 10 friends runs well with a 2 to 2.5 GB Java heap. In our lab, a 2 GB heap used 2.1 to 2.6 GB of real memory, so a 4 GB server such as the RS Computers VPS Mini fits with room for the operating system. Modpacks need far more, often 6 GB of heap or more.

Which Java version does Minecraft 26.3 need?

Minecraft 26.1 and newer, including 26.3, need Java 25, according to the Minecraft Wiki and the PaperMC documentation. On Debian 13, install it with apt-get install openjdk-25-jre-headless; we tested version 25.0.4.1 with Paper 26.3.

Can Bedrock players join a Java server hosted in Ireland?

Yes, with the Geyser plugin on a Paper server, which listens on UDP port 19132 for Bedrock players, plus Floodgate if they do not own Java Edition. On 14 October 2026 Geyser supported Java 26.2, so a crossplay server should run Paper 26.2 until Geyser adds 26.3. The server's location does not affect crossplay.

Get your players a server close to home

For an Irish or UK group, start with VPS Mini in Dublin for a Paper server of friends, and move to VDS Small with dedicated vCPUs when you pass 20 players or install a modpack. For a group spread across Europe, take the same plan in Amsterdam. Pick the plan and city on our Minecraft server hosting page, or ask about a modpack, a network or the right city on Telegram before you order.

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