Free plans and limits

In short: Torchlite has four free plans. Lite gives 1.5 GB of RAM, 1.25 CPU cores and 15 GB of disk and is renewed every 50 minutes. Turbo gives 3 GB, 1.5 cores and 20 GB, renewed every 40 minutes. Max gives 4.2 GB, 1.8 cores and 35 GB, renewed every 30 minutes, and is only for Hytale and Forge or NeoForge modpacks. Bot gives 512 MB, half a core and 3 GB for one Discord bot, renewed once every 24 hours. There is no paid plan: each start and renew shows a short ad break in the panel, and that pays for the servers. One account holds one free game server, on any plan, and one Discord bot.

The four plans

The CPU figures are cores of two Intel Xeon Gold 6134 processors with DDR4-2666 ECC memory. Every server sits behind zero.ms DDoS protection in Bucharest, Romania.

Which plan to pick

• Lite for a small group: a vanilla or Paper Minecraft world with a few friends, Terraria, Factorio, Unturned, Counter-Strike 1.6, SA-MP or a TeamSpeak 6 voice server.
• Turbo when you want room: more players, more plugins, a Fabric pack or a bigger map. It is the plan most people pick.
• Max only appears for games that need it: Hytale and Minecraft Forge or NeoForge, where modpacks need the memory. Because it holds more of the machine, it renews fastest.
• Bot only appears for Discord bots, in Node.js or Python. See Discord bot hosting.

What every plan includes

• The Pterodactyl panel at game.torchlite.host with a live console, start and stop, resource graphs and an activity log.
• A file manager and SFTP access.
• Subusers, so friends can help without your password.
• One backup of up to 10 GB.
• A MySQL database, two on Max.
• zero.ms DDoS protection and a 1-10 Gbps network.

The rules that keep it free

• Renew while it runs. A running server has a timer. The Renew button opens in the last 5 minutes (the last 6 hours on Bot), and time left over is kept, so renewing early costs nothing. Miss it and the server stops after one minute of grace; nothing is deleted.
• Bots renew once a day. On the Bot plan a renew lasts 24 hours and the button opens 6 hours early, so nobody has to be up at night to keep a bot online.
• One game server and one bot per account. The game server can be on any plan, Max included. A Discord bot is counted apart, one per account.
• Use it every few days. A server nobody does anything on for 5 days (a start, a console command, a file, a setting) is deleted with its files. Just signing in to the panel does not count. We email you the day before.
• Start queue. When a node is full, Start puts you in a queue. Your place lasts 60 minutes.
• Ad blocker off in the panel. The ads in the panel are what pay for the servers.

The renewal guide explains each rule in detail.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a paid Torchlite plan?

No. Every plan is free. If you need dedicated resources around the clock, TorchByte, the company that sponsors Torchlite, sells paid game servers.

Can I change plans later?

A server keeps the plan it was created with, and an account holds one game server. Download your files over SFTP, delete the server in the panel, then create a new one on the other plan and upload them.

Why does Max renew more often than Lite?

It holds more of the machine. A shorter timer hands that memory back quickly when nobody is playing.

Can I have a game server and a Discord bot?

Yes. A Discord bot does not count toward the game server: every account can have one game server and one bot, even next to a Max server.