How we measure

Pinging

Once a minute our pinger asks every listed server for its status from our server in Europe. For Java Edition it sends the same Server List Ping your game sends when you open Multiplayer, and for servers with a Bedrock address it also sends a RakNet ping to the Bedrock port. Nothing is installed on the server and nothing joins it.

Up to 128 servers are pinged at the same time, and a sweep of the whole list finishes within the minute. A server that does not answer in time gets a second try with longer timeouts, so one slow answer is not counted as a failure.

• IntervalEvery listed server, every minute, day and night.
• Timeouts2 seconds for the first try, then a retry with 4.5 seconds to connect and 3 seconds to answer.
• Java EditionServer List Ping with a modern protocol first, then older protocols and the legacy ping for very old servers. SRV records are followed.
• Bedrock EditionA RakNet unconnected ping to the Bedrock address and port the owner listed, with a 2 second timeout.

Playable or just answering

A server can answer a ping without being a world you can play. Free hosts answer for sleeping servers with a placeholder, and many servers answer with a maintenance message. We read every answer and treat it as not playable when the maximum player count is zero, or when the message of the day or the version says the server is offline, sleeping, starting, stopped, deleted or in maintenance, in English and several other languages.

Playable is the number that matters to you, so uptime, the online first order and the Online now filter all use it. Every server row shows one of these states:

• OnlineAnswered the last ping with an open world and at least one player.
• Online, emptyAnswered with an open world and nobody on.
• Online, not joinableAnswered, but with a placeholder or a maintenance message.
• OfflineDid not answer two pings in a row.
• Not checked yetListed so recently that the pinger has not reached it.

Uptime and outages

Uptime is the share of our pings in which a server was playable. We count it per hour and per day, so a day with one hour of maintenance shows as about 96 percent. The seven cells on each row are the last seven days, today included so far, and the server page shows 30 and 90 days.

Outages are worked out from the raw pings. It takes at least two failed pings to start one, short blips under 10 minutes are merged into the outage around them, and gaps in our own pinging are never counted against a server. When an outage was already running before our window began, we say so instead of guessing when it started.

Player counts

Player counts are what the server reports in its answer, the same number your game shows next to the server. Hourly and daily figures are averages of the minute pings, with the lowest and highest count of each period kept alongside.

Network totals, such as the players online number on the home page, add up playable servers only and leave out shared lobbies. An hour is only charted when at least 85 percent of listed servers reported in it, so a gap in our data never looks like a drop in players.

How the list is ordered

The default list puts servers that are alive first and orders them by the votes of real players:

• 1Servers that were playable in the last 24 hours come first.
• 2Among them, more votes in the last 30 days ranks higher.
• 3Ties are broken by votes of all time.
• 4Then by the newest listing.

A server that stops answering keeps its rank number, which is its vote standing, but sinks below every server that is alive until it answers again. The players, uptime and new sorts reorder the same list by what we measure.

Some positions are sponsored. Owners can book a slot, it is always labelled Sponsored, it never appears in search results, and the same server is never shown twice on one page.

Votes

Anyone can vote for a server once every 24 hours with their Minecraft name. A vote is refused when the same name, the same browser or the same network already voted for that server in the last 24 hours, and a captcha keeps scripts out.

The count on each row is votes this month. Servers that reward voting receive the vote through Votifier after it is recorded, so a failed reward never cancels a vote.

Reviews

Only players who voted for a server can review it, one review per vote, with a rating from 1 to 5 and between 30 and 1,000 characters.

Reviews pass an automatic filter for spam, abuse and copied text. Clean reviews appear right away, doubtful ones wait for a moderator, and owners can reply once to each review.

Mode, version and country lists

Every game mode, version, country and platform has its own list with a short guide and questions answered from our data. A list only asks search engines to index it when at least 5 of its servers were playable in the last 7 days, so empty lists do not pretend to be useful.

Filtering or sorting a list makes a page for you, not for search engines. Those pages point search engines back to the closest list.

What we leave out

Some listings point at a shared hosting lobby, such as a Minehut subdomain, whose player count belongs to the whole host. Others copy a bigger network's address. We flag these, 4 right now, show n/a instead of their player count and leave them out of every total, chart and report.

Duplicate listings of the same server are not shown in the list. Only the original listing is ranked, so a network cannot fill a page with copies of itself.

How long we keep data

We have measured every listed server since 2 September 2026, and we keep the measurements for as long as they are useful:

• Minute pingsKept for 35 days.
• Hourly summariesKept for good, written a few minutes after each hour.
• Daily summariesKept for good, written shortly after midnight UTC.
• VotesKept for good. The voter's IP address is deleted after 90 days.

Times are stored in UTC. Charts and busiest hours are shown in your own time zone where your browser tells us which one it is, and in UTC everywhere else.