Aternos is a strange kind of business model. They offer free, forever Minecraft servers. There is also NO option to upgrade and pay for more. They supposedly make money by ads in the web dashboard. Based on the amount of ads, it’s clear this is how they make money. If the server is smooth then maybe the ads are worth it.
I jumped into Aternos with a new account. I haven’t used Aternos in a while so I wanted to give it a test. I was bombarded by ads, one at the top of my screen, a large ad on the left, and after the sidebar ad went away another popped up at the bottom. The peak was 3 ads on screen at once, and I haven’t moved an inch in the website, besides logging into a new account.
I went on anyway, and created an Aternos server. Suddenly the high score was broken with 4 ads on screen, but again let’s remember the server is free and it might be good.
I was prepared to turn my server on, and looking beyond the ads there was a RAM boost? Now I know I’m harping on the ads, but they are everywhere and if you have an ad blocker on it puts up a page like the one below every page you move to.
Now it’s time to boot the server on and try it out. I want to examine a few things like boot up time, RAM, Player caps, and I want to try making a small track system in Creative mode that spans a few chunks. A small area with entities in motion. I will be monitoring the TPS and MSTP the entire time.
The server is 26.2 on the vanilla loader. There are no optimizations on this server, it’s time to get in game and test it out.
On the very first boot of the server it took 47 seconds. This includes the creation of the game files and generation of the world. From the logs it doesn’t look like it downloaded the files during this time, which is important. Overall not bad start time, all things considered. It’s looking up for Aternos.
This is me in game, in an Aternos server. I didn’t get the player and operator system at first, but it’s very beginner friendly for adding operators. You type a username and they are now an operator, pretty simple. The main drawback is you have to use the dashboard and see the ads, which I feel will be a theme. I feel like because of ads in the dashboard Aternos will incentivize you to always come back to the dashboard.
Note
If you are wondering I use Complementary Unbound on max settings, I know you were dying to know my shaders.
The server as I fly around doesn’t feel choppy, or laggy. I did begin to fly fast and try and leave spawn and I did outpace the chunk generation as one person, BUT I’m in creative mode, and it never dragged too far behind.
Aternos has generously given me 3.45GB of RAM (3450 MB), a strange value but I suppose who cares it’s not the end of the world. There is a “free” RAM boost if you download Medal and record a Minecraft clip, then claim the boost. I didn’t take Aternos up on this offer, I want to investigate the lowest tier of server, it’s really the only tier but this is most certainly a tier above.
Me flying around in Creative isn’t causing any performance issues, so that’s a start I suppose. It’s time to try a little entity test. I’m going to make a small track that spans 4 chunks and Im going to put as many carts as the track will allow on it and see if the TPS leaves 20. Below is a picture of the track plus the chunk outlines below.
I didn’t expect the TPS to drop, but I wanted to check if a tiny test could challenge it. Fortunately the TPS held at 20. The minecarts do stutter as they travel on the track which I have experienced before on my own servers, and it’s a little annoying but it’s not bad or experience ruining, its negligible.
Overall Aternos servers are ok at best, BUT if you factor in the fact they are “free” then they are pretty awesome.
Now to answer the questions the title proposes, things I like is that it’s free, it doesn’t lag at the first drop of stress, and it’s beginner friendly. It’s made for someone’s first server and/or someone’s server for a friend group. Aternos is not built for serious servers, for big public servers, or mod heavy servers. It is for someone who has friends and everyone just wants to play vanilla Minecraft and the important part is it’s together.
Now the reason I give it an 8/10 is that it’s pretty limited, there is no upgrade path, you just need to switch providers. The ads are for lack of a better term, “tacky”, it feels like a scam. Aternos is not a scam (as far as I know) and it makes sense there are ads since servers are free, but still. Aternos is a pretty solid provider if a small vanilla server is your goal.