About Minecraft Best Servers

What is Minecraft Best Servers?

Minecraft Best Servers is a Minecraft server list. It exists to connect players looking for somewhere to play with the public servers that want them. We track 888 servers across 44 gamemodes and 31 countries, and we check every one of them ourselves rather than taking an owner's word for it. Browsing is free, listing is free, and there is no account needed to copy an address and play.

How are servers ranked here?

Two things decide the order, and we would rather say so plainly than imply a secret formula. A small number of editor's picks lead the list. Everything below them is ordered by the votes players cast during the current calendar month, and those votes reset on the first of each month. That reset is deliberate: it means the ranking shows which servers are being played now, not which ones were popular in 2019. Nothing in the numbered ranking is for sale.

What do you measure yourselves?

Player counts, uptime and server icons all come from our own status ping, sent to each listed address roughly every five minutes from our own infrastructure. Bedrock addresses get a separate RakNet check on their own port. At the last cycle, 772 of 888 listed servers answered. Nothing on a listing is a number an owner typed in, and when a server stops answering we show the last reading we got and label it as last seen rather than presenting it as live.

Who lists the servers?

Both of us. Server owners add and manage their own listings, and we also list servers ourselves so that the categories are useful from day one rather than empty. If we listed your server and you want control of it, you can claim it: we issue a short code, you put it in your server's MOTD, and we verify it with a live ping before handing the listing over. After that the name, description, gamemodes, links and Votifier settings are yours to edit.

Do you support voting and Votifier?

Yes, fully. Voting takes a Minecraft username and nothing else, and it is limited to once every 24 hours per server, enforced on both the username and a keyed hash of the connection so a fresh browser does not reset it. Every vote solves a small proof of work check before it counts. If your server runs Votifier or NuVotifier we deliver the vote to it immediately so you can reward the player, and our free Votifier tester tells you exactly where the handshake failed if it does not arrive.

What servers are allowed?

Java and Bedrock servers of any size, any gamemode, cracked or premium, as long as the listing describes the server that actually answers at that address. We expect servers to comply with Mojang's commercial usage guidelines and their EULA. If you believe a listed server is in breach of them, or is blacklisted by Mojang, tell us and we will look at it. We also keep a short blacklist of addresses we will not list again, mostly for vote manipulation.

What gets a server removed?

Vote manipulation, a listing that describes a different server than the one at the address, or a name field stuffed with keywords. We treat a first removal as a warning. A pattern of it ends in a permanent block on the address and the account behind it.

What will you not do?

We publish no star rating for a server we have not reviewed, which is why you will not see a wall of five star scores here. We do not sell rank in the numbered list, we do not sell extra votes, and we do not print a player count we did not measure. A featured placement is marked with a gold star and sits in its own block, and it does not reorder the ranking underneath it.

Can I use your data?

Yes. The live ranking is published as JSON at /api/rankings.json under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, with no key and no quota. The licence page sets out what the licence covers, what belongs to the server owners rather than to us, and the credit line to use.

Who writes the guides?

We do, from running and pinging servers rather than from rewriting other articles. The guides cover setting a server up and keeping it running, the blog covers choosing one to play on. There are no affiliate links in either, and no host or server has paid for a mention.

How do I get in touch?

Owners can manage a listing from their dashboard once they have claimed it. For anything about a specific listing, include the address so we can check it against our ping history. Server owners can also create a free account to add or claim a listing without contacting us at all.