"It depends" is a useless answer, so here are numbers. A Minecraft server in 2026 costs somewhere between $0-plus-electricity and $40/month, and which end you land on comes down to three questions: how many players, how many mods, and who keeps the machine running.
Option 1: Self-hosting — free, except for everything
The server jar costs nothing. The machine it runs on isn't free: an always-on PC pulling 100–200 W costs roughly $5–15/month in electricity at typical rates — comparable to a hosting plan by itself. Add the hardware (a capable spare PC is a few hundred dollars if you don't have one), your upload bandwidth, and the setup/maintenance hours from the setup guide. Great as a hobby project; rarely the cheap option it looks like.
Option 2: Realms — $7.99, with walls
Mojang's official subscription is genuinely simple: $7.99/month (VAT/regional pricing varies), 10 players, always online. The walls: vanilla or curated content only — no plugins, no Forge/Fabric mods, no crossplay bridges (Java Realms), no console, no file access, and world control is limited to what the app exposes. It's the right product for a family survival world and the wrong one the day someone says "can we add one mod?"
Option 3: Rented hosting — $5–40/month by RAM
Across the market, prices track RAM tiers, and RAM tracks what you run:
- Vanilla, 2–6 friends: 2–4 GB plans, roughly $5–12/month
- Paper + plugins, 6–15 players: 4–6 GB, roughly $10–20/month
- Modded / modpacks: 8 GB and up, roughly $15–40/month — heavy packs like All the Mods sit at the top
Watch for the classic pricing tricks when comparing hosts: teaser first-month prices that double on renewal, "unlimited" slots on hardware that can't hold them, and per-feature upcharges for backups or extra ports.
The honest comparison
For a friend group that just wants to play: hosting a 4 GB server costs about as much as the electricity to self-host, with none of the setup, port forwarding, or "whose PC is on" coordination. Self-hosting wins when you already run a home server 24/7 for other reasons, or when tinkering is the point. Realms wins for pure vanilla simplicity — until mods enter the chat.
Rule of thumb: price out the RAM you need (see the RAM guide), not the player count on the marketing page. RAM is the number that decides whether your server lags.