If you've been playing Valheim with friends using the in-game "Start Server" option, you've already run into the limitations: the world only exists when you're online, your PC takes a hit hosting and rendering at the same time, and nobody can hop on while you're away. A dedicated server fixes all of that. It runs around the clock on its own machine, your friends can play whenever they want, and your home PC is no longer doing double duty.

This guide covers the two ways to host a Valheim dedicated server in 2026 – running it yourself on your own hardware, or renting one – and what you actually need to think about before pulling the trigger.

Option 1: Self-host with SteamCMD

If you've got a spare machine and you're comfortable on the command line, you can run a Valheim dedicated server for free using SteamCMD.

The rough steps:

Install SteamCMD.
Use it to download the Valheim Dedicated Server (Steam app ID 896660): steamcmd +login anonymous +app_update 896660 validate +quit
Edit the start script with your server name, world name, password, and port.
Forward UDP ports 2456 and 2457 on your router (Valheim uses two consecutive ports – the launch port and the next one up).
Leave the machine running.

It works, and it's free, but there are real downsides. Your home IP is handed out to everyone you play with, your upload speed becomes the server's upload speed, you're on the hook for updates and backups, and you need to keep that machine running 24/7 (electricity adds up faster than people expect). It's a fine option if you're already running a homelab. For most people it's more hassle than it's worth.

Option 2: Rent a dedicated server

This is what most groups end up doing, including most of our customers who started out self-hosting. The pitch is straightforward: someone else handles the box, the network and the game updates, you get proper backup tooling instead of a folder you keep meaning to copy somewhere, and you get to focus on actually playing.

What you should be looking for in a Valheim host:

Enough RAM – Valheim's recommended minimum is 4 GB but worlds with a lot of building or any modding will eat through that quickly. Aim for 8 GB or more if you can.
Single-core clock speed – Valheim's world simulation is largely single-threaded, so a fast core matters more than a high core count.
DDoS protection – your home connection isn't exposed.
Backups you can actually schedule – corrupt worlds happen, especially around game updates.
A region close to your players – ping makes a noticeable difference.
Support that actually knows the game – if you've ever opened a ticket about a Valheim mod conflict and had to explain what BepInEx is to the support agent, you'll understand.

Pricing is all over the place between hosts. Be a little careful: lots of providers advertise rock-bottom starting prices but only include 2 GB of RAM at that tier, which won't get you very far on Valheim. Always compare like-for-like on RAM and CPU before judging by the headline number. We list our Valheim hosting plans here, and you can pick the region closest to your group at checkout.

Setting up your LOW.MS Valheim server

Once your server is provisioned (it takes a couple of minutes), head into the LOW.MS Control Panel, open your server, and you'll see your IP and port front and center. Your port won't be the vanilla 2456 – ours are allocated from a different range, so take the IP and port off that page rather than assuming, and share them with your friends.

From the panel you can set:

Server name – what shows up in the in-game browser
Password – our panel asks for at least 8 characters, though Valheim's own floor is 5. It also must not be contained in your world name or seed name: call the world Midgard, set the password to gard, and the server refuses to start. It does say so, but in the log rather than the panel, on a line beginning Error bad password:
World name – this is the save file the server loads. Change it and you'll create or load a different world

Hit save, start the server, and you're up.

How your friends connect

Three options, depending on whether you're playing vanilla or modded and which platforms you're on.

Steam server browser. Open Steam → View → Servers → Favorites → Add a Server, drop in IP:Port, and join from the favorites list.

In-game browser. Start Valheim, hit Join Game, and either search for your server name in the Community tab or click "Add Server" and enter the IP and port directly.

Crossplay join code. If you've enabled crossplay (more on that below), the server prints a join code in the log instead of relying on IP/port. Friends on Xbox or Game Pass paste the code into the same Join Game screen.

For the long version with screenshots, see Getting Started with Your Valheim Server.

Crossplay and mods

Two things worth untangling here, because most of what's written about this online gets one of them badly wrong.

Turning crossplay on isn't a toggle in Settings. It's decided by which predefined command line your server starts with. Open Commandline Manager in the panel and switch to Default (With Crossplay), which is the line that passes -crossplay. Restart, and the join code appears in the server log on a line starting Join code: . One catch to know about first: only the Additional Configuration line carries the tokens for world presets and extra arguments, so switching over to the crossplay line quietly drops those. No predefined line gives you both, so if you need crossplay alongside custom arguments, open a ticket and we'll set up a custom line.

Crossplay does not stop your mods loading. You'll read the opposite almost everywhere, including in earlier versions of this post: that Iron Gate's PlayFab backend hooks the same DLLs BepInEx does, so -crossplay kills modding outright. That explanation isn't true. The flag swaps which matchmaking backend the server uses and leaves the mod loader alone, and BepInEx attaches when the process starts, before the server has even read its command line. Run a crossplay server with mods and you'll see BepInEx start, load your plugins, and PlayFab come up, all in the same log.

What crossplay genuinely costs you is narrower than the myth, but it's real. Mods written on the assumption that every player arriving is on Steam, typically anything reading a SteamID64 for admin or permitted lists, or leaning on Steam networking, can throw errors when someone joins. Enough mods still carry that assumption that keeping crossplay off on a heavily modded server remains sensible advice. The reason usually given for it just isn't the right one.

There's also a harder limit underneath all of this: console players can't install mods at all. Any client-side mod on your server shuts them out regardless of what the server is doing.

So the trade-off in practice:

Crossplay on – Steam, Xbox and Game Pass players all join one server with a join code. Server-side mods still run; client-side mods lock your console players out.
Crossplay off – everyone's on Steam, and the whole Thunderstore scene is open to you.

What about hardware?

Valheim isn't a heavy game on the server side, with two caveats:

Worlds with huge builds get expensive. Every building piece is tracked and synced to every player who walks into the area. If your group builds the kind of bases that get featured on r/valheimbuilds, expect to chew through more RAM and more single-thread CPU.
Single-thread performance matters more than core count. A 2-core machine with high clocks will outperform a 6-core machine with low clocks for Valheim's purposes. The world simulation runs on one thread.

For a typical group of 4-10 vanilla players, 4-6 GB of RAM is enough. For modded servers or building-heavy groups, give it more.

Moving an existing world to your server

If you've been playing on a local world and want to bring it across, your save lives in %appdata%\..\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local\ on your PC. Each world is two files: YourWorld.db and YourWorld.fwl, and you need both. The folder has the same name at our end, but it isn't at the top level: open the Valheim folder in the panel's File Manager and worlds_local is inside it. Upload both files there and set the world name in your server settings to match.

There's a step-by-step walkthrough here: Locate your Valheim save and upload it to LOW.MS.

Mods

If you're going modded, the install workflow on LOW.MS is a bit different than the typical self-hosted BepInEx guide. Our servers run on Windows with TCAdmin, and the control panel deliberately blocks customer .dll uploads – so the two paths in are:

Mod Manager in the panel. A curated catalogue of popular mods (ValheimRAFT, BuildShare V2, Better Wisplight and others) that install with one click. No ticket, no files.
Custom mods via support. For anything outside the Mod Manager catalogue, open a ticket with the Thunderstore URLs of the mods you want and we'll install them on the server for you. First-time tickets also get BepInEx dropped in.

Your players still handle their own clients – r2modman is what I'd suggest, because it keeps everyone on the same mod versions automatically.

Full walkthrough with client-side setup, config file editing and troubleshooting is in the Mod Installation Guide.

A few things I've learned from running modded servers for years:

Wait a few days after a Valheim update before updating the server. Mods nearly always break on update day, and rolling back is more painful than waiting.
Keep mod versions pinned across the group. Mismatched versions are the single most common cause of "I can't connect" tickets.
Start small. Resist the urge to install 30 mods on day one. Add them in batches and verify the server still boots between batches.

Things people forget

Pick a region close to most of your players. It's the easiest performance win you'll ever make.
Set up your admin list early so you're not locked out of your own server when something goes wrong.
Restart weekly. It's not strictly necessary, but it cleans up memory and keeps things smooth.
Back your world up before any major change – adding mods, changing world modifiers, accepting an unstable game update. Cloud Backup is in the panel sidebar and you can put it on a schedule with Scheduled Tasks, but a manual one taken right before a risky change is the cheap insurance that actually saves you.

Ready to get your server going? Our Valheim hosting plans are here, and if you get stuck during setup our support team is around 24/7 – open a ticket from the panel and we'll help you sort it.

How to Host a Valheim Dedicated Server