Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server: Which Pi Works, How to Set It Up, and What to Expect

Yes, a Raspberry Pi Minecraft server works, and it's a good fit for a few friends or kids who want a world that's always on without leaving a PC running. The short version: get a Pi 5 or a Pi 4 with 4 or 8 GB of RAM, flash 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS Lite, install Java 25, run Paper, and keep the player count modest.

Most Pi guides online are still written around Java 17 or 21 and builds from a couple of Minecraft versions ago. This one is for current Minecraft Java, which uses year-style numbers like 26.3 now (as of September 2026, per the Minecraft Wiki). If you haven't built a server before, my general guide to how to make a Minecraft server covers the basics on a PC. Here we're doing the Pi version.

Which Raspberry Pi works for a Minecraft server?

The RAM matters more than the model name. One Reddit thread's take, which matches my gut, is that 8 GB is pretty much necessary for a modern Minecraft server, and that you can't hand the server all of it. The Java 25 package below needs a 64-bit OS, and both the Pi 4 and Pi 5 run 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS.

What to expect from it

Don't expect a public server. PiMyLifeUp's Pi server guide says anything over five players gets "a bit wonky" and two to three is the sweet spot (their experience, on an older Spigot build). Hanselman's 2020 write-up on a 4 GB Pi 4 ran into a server tick that took 60 seconds once hundreds of iron golems and chickens piled up. Same lesson: a handful of friends, and keep an eye on mob farms. If it starts to chug, how to reduce Minecraft server lag is the next stop.

SD card or SSD?

The Pi 5 has a PCIe port, so you can fit an NVMe SSD with an add-on board. If you can, I'd boot and store the world on an SSD rather than leave a server writing to an SD card all day.

Set up the Pi: OS and Java 25

Flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) and turn on SSH, so you can run the Pi without a screen or keyboard. Current images are based on Debian 13 "Trixie", which matters because Trixie carries Java 25 for arm64 in its own repos. Minecraft 26.1 and newer needs Java 25, and so does current Paper.

SSH in, update, and install Java:

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

sudo apt install openjdk-25-jre

Check it with java -version. The first line should start with openjdk 25 and the last should end in 64-Bit. If you want an older Minecraft (1.20 through 1.21.11), that's Java 21 instead. Paper's docs steer you away from "headless" Java builds because they can miss pieces Paper needs, so I went with the full JRE above.

Install Paper

Make a folder (mkdir ~/minecraft && cd ~/minecraft) and download the latest jar from papermc.io/downloads/paper, saved as paper.jar. Paper is a drop-in replacement for Spigot and CraftBukkit, and it's a direct download, so you skip the 15-minute BuildTools compile that some Pi guides still make you sit through. Not sure Paper is the right jar? Minecraft server software compared lays out the options.

Run it once so it creates eula.txt, change eula=false to eula=true, then start it for real:

java -Xms4G -Xmx4G -jar paper.jar --nogui

--nogui turns off the little server window, which you don't have on a headless Pi anyway. That's Paper's own example command: 4G is fine on an 8 GB Pi but too much for a 4 GB one, so size it with the next section before you leave it running.

Memory on a Pi

Keep -Xms and -Xmx the same. Paper's guidance is to leave roughly 1 to 1.5 GB of the machine's RAM for the OS and everything else, so on an 8 GB Pi that's around 6.5 GB for the server, and a 4 GB Pi gets a good deal less. Hanselman found about 2.5 GB was the sweet spot on a 4 GB Pi 4, and Java ran out of memory at 3 GB. Don't count on swap to cover the gap: current Raspberry Pi OS ships with zram swap on by default, and a Java heap that spills into swap is a slow heap.

Paper recommends its own tuned JVM flags (Aikar's flags), and says to generate them with its start script generator instead of copy-pasting. Paper writes that guidance for bigger machines, so treat them as a starting point on a Pi. More on sizing in how to allocate more RAM to a Minecraft server.

Lower the view and simulation distance

This is the cheapest speed-up you've got. Open server.properties and drop view-distance and simulation-distance. PiMyLifeUp's example uses view-distance=4 and max-players=5 for a Pi. Start there, then raise it until you notice stutter and back off. My server.properties explainer covers the rest of the file.

Run it headless and start it on boot

A server you SSH into and leave open dies when the connection does. Use systemd so it starts at boot and restarts itself. Put your start command in a script (say ~/minecraft/start.sh: a #!/bin/sh line, then your java command, made runnable with chmod +x), then create /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service with these lines, swapping in your own username and path:

• [Unit] then Description=Minecraft server
• [Service] then User=pi and WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/minecraft
• ExecStart=/home/pi/minecraft/start.sh and Restart=on-abort
• [Install] then WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then sudo systemctl enable minecraft and sudo systemctl start minecraft, and check on it with sudo systemctl status minecraft. If you get a 217/USER error, the user or paths in the unit don't match your real ones.

The catch: a systemd service has no console you can type into. If you want to run op and other commands live, start the server inside screen instead and reattach when you need it.

Let friends join

• Same Wi-Fi or router: they join with the Pi's local address. Run hostname -I on the Pi to see it. Give the Pi a fixed address in your router so it doesn't change on you.
• Over the internet: forward TCP port 25565 on your router to the Pi. PiMyLifeUp's warning is fair: opening ports always raises your security risk.
• Can't or don't want to forward ports: use a tunnel. I walk through the options in running a Minecraft server without port forwarding.

If this is a kids' server, turn on the whitelist (how to whitelist a Minecraft server) before you open anything to the internet.

Raspberry Pi Minecraft server for Bedrock friends

Mojang's official Bedrock Dedicated Server is built for Intel and AMD processors, and its Linux version is Ubuntu-only, so it won't run natively on a Pi. PiMyLifeUp falls back to Nukkit, a third-party server that they describe as not feature complete. I wouldn't bother.

The better route is Paper plus Geyser, a plugin that lets Bedrock players join a Java server. In short: drop the Geyser plugin jar into plugins/, restart, and Bedrock players connect to your server's address on port 19132. Floodgate, a companion plugin, lets Bedrock players in without a paid Java account. Geyser's setup keeps changing as Bedrock updates, so follow the current Geyser setup guide rather than anyone's pasted config, mine included. Expect to forward that Geyser port for both TCP and UDP to reach players outside your home. The Geyser wiki says ngrok won't work because it lacks UDP, and playit.gg does. My crossplay Minecraft server guide goes through the wider picture.

Back it up, and stop it properly

Minecraft autosaves roughly every five minutes by default, according to PiMyLifeUp, so an abrupt power cut can cost you that much, and readers there report corrupted worlds after repeated hard power-offs. Stop the server with the stop command or sudo systemctl stop minecraft before you pull the plug or reboot. A small UPS or a battery pack that can charge and supply at once is a sensible extra if the power at your place is flaky.

Then copy the world folder somewhere that isn't the Pi, on a schedule. An SD card or a single SSD is not a backup. How to back up a Minecraft server covers automating it.