How much RAM each game needs on a Multi-Game Server

A Multi-Game Server runs one game at a time, so all of its RAM goes to whichever game is installed right now. This guide gives the practical amount each game wants for a small group and points you at the full guide for every one of them.

6 min read · Updated Oct 21, 2026 · By GuavaHost Team

One pool of RAM, one game at a time

This is the part worth understanding before you look at any number. A Multi-Game Server is a single server that can be reinstalled as a different game. It does not run two games side by side, and there is no splitting of RAM between them.

So the RAM on your plan is not divided. When the server is running Minecraft, Minecraft has all of it. Switch it to Rust and Rust has all of it. You only ever need enough RAM for the single hungriest game you intend to run, not for all of them added together.

Multi-Game plans start with enough RAM for every game on the list, and you can add more if a particular game or a bigger group wants it. The current sizes are on the pricing page, and changing your server RAM up or down covers how to move between them.

The practical numbers

Two columns, and the difference between them matters. Minimum is what the game needs to start and run at all. Comfortable for a small group is what it wants with roughly four to ten people on it, a normal amount of building and no heavy modding. Each game's own guide goes further, including what happens when the world gets big or the player count climbs.

The minimums in that table are the same ones the panel enforces when you pick a game, so a game whose minimum is above your plan's RAM will not be offered until you add more.

Why the comfortable number is higher than the minimum

The minimum is the floor for a quiet server on its first day. Three things push a game above it:

• Players. Every connected player has state the server holds in memory, and more players means more of the world loaded at once. Do more players need more RAM? covers how that scales, and it is not always linear.
• World size and age. A world that has been played for months is bigger than a fresh one, in every game that generates terrain as you explore. Rust, ARK, Palworld and Project Zomboid all grow noticeably.
• Mods and plugins. This is the big one. A modded Minecraft or Valheim server can want several times what the vanilla game does, because every mod loads its own content and keeps its own data in memory.

If you are not sure how to think about it in general, how much RAM do I need for server hosting? is the broader guide, and CPU versus RAM for a game server explains why some games stutter no matter how much memory you throw at them.

Sizing for the game you switch to, not the one you are on

The usual mistake with a Multi-Game Server is sizing the plan for today's game and then switching to a heavier one. If your group alternates between, say, Terraria and ARK: Survival Ascended, the plan needs to suit ARK. Terraria will not mind the extra.

So pick your plan by the heaviest game on your group's actual rotation, and check it before a switch rather than after. Backing up before switching your Multi-Game Server is the other thing to do first, and which games a Multi-Game Server can run lists where to see the current set.

Adding RAM is not a one way door. If you add memory for a modded month and then go back to something small, you can drop it again, and the billing is prorated either way.

Signs you are short on RAM

The symptoms look like lag, which is why people often tune the wrong thing first. The giveaways that it is memory and not the network:

• The server runs fine for an hour or two, then gets progressively worse until a restart fixes it.
• Players are kicked or the server stops with no clear error, which is what an out of memory kill looks like. On Minecraft it shows as java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space.
• Saving pauses the whole server for several seconds.
• Memory use sits pinned near the top of its limit rather than rising and falling.

Signs your server is running out of RAM goes through each of those properly. A nightly restart papers over a lot of it and is worth having anyway: see scheduling automatic restarts.

Common questions

Is the RAM shared between the games on a Multi-Game Server?

There is nothing to share. Only one game is installed and running at a time, so that game gets the whole plan. You size the plan for the heaviest game you plan to run, not the total of all of them.

Do I need to change my RAM when I switch games?

Only if the new game wants more than you have. The panel will not offer a game whose minimum is above your plan's RAM, so if a game you want is not selectable, adding memory is what unlocks it. Switching to a lighter game needs no change at all.

Does adding RAM delete my world?

No. Changing RAM is purely a resource change, so the server comes back with its files exactly as they were. A game switch is the destructive one, and that is a separate action you have to confirm.

Why is my server still laggy with plenty of RAM free?

Because most game servers are limited by single thread CPU performance rather than memory, and extra RAM does nothing for that. Mob farms, redstone, huge bases and long mod lists all cost CPU time, so look at what the world is asking the server to calculate each tick.

Still stuck? Jump into our Discord at discord.gg/GuavaHost and the team will help you out.

• multi-game
• ram
• performance
• switch-game
• sizing

Host a Multi-Game Server From $24.99/mo, with instant setup and DDoS protection.

Still need help? Our team is online 24/7 to answer questions.

Contact support