Minecraft server hosting

• - Which version you use
• - The amount of plugins you use
• - The amount of mods you use
• - The amount of players that play on your server at the same time

Version

Different Minecraft versions have different minimum RAM requirements for the server to run properly. A server running version 1.12.2 or lower needs at least 512 MB RAM to work. For 1.13 at least 1 GB RAM is required, and for 1.14, 1.15 and 1.16 a minimum of 2 GB is needed. These minimum requirements are based on a Vanilla server (without plugins or mods) with a couple of players online.

Plugins

Every plugin you install on your server uses RAM. The more plugins you want to use, the more RAM you'll need. How much RAM a specific plugin uses varies wildly. It very much depends on what the plugin does.

Mods

The same rules that apply for plugins apply for mods too. However, in general a mod uses more RAM than a plugin.

Players

Just like plugins and mods every player uses RAM as soon as they are playing on the server.