How we rank servers

Short version: players vote, we measure, and nobody can pay to fake either.

The ranking

• Online servers come first. An offline server is no use to someone who wants to play now.
• Then by votes this month. Each player can vote for a server once every 24 hours. Counts reset on the 1st of each month (UTC), so new servers get a fair shot.
• Ties go to the server with more players online.

You can also sort any list by most players or newest.

Player counts and uptime

Most lists show whatever number a server reports on its own page. We check every server ourselves at least every 5 minutes (the busiest every minute, and any server whose page you have open every minute), the same way the Minecraft client does when it refreshes your server list, and keep the history. That's where the player charts, 24-hour peaks and 7-day uptime come from.

"Player count looks unusual"

Some servers use plugins that inflate the number they report. We can't prove that from outside, so we don't accuse anyone; we just point out a count that looks unusual, when:

• it's higher than the server's own maximum,
• the maximum is 1 while it claims many players,
• it hasn't changed at all for hours (real player counts always move), or
• it's been exactly full at every check.

Flagged servers stay listed, but they never get the "busiest server" spotlight, and they're sorted below believable counts when you sort by players.

Votes

One vote per Minecraft username and per internet connection, per server, every 24 hours. We use a bot check and keep only a scrambled fingerprint of your IP address, never the address itself. Vote rewards are delivered to servers through Votifier and NuVotifier.

Sponsored listings

If a server ever pays to be featured, it will say Sponsored on it in plain words and won't take a rank number from the real list. Paying never changes votes, player counts or flags.

Verified owners

A server shows Verified owner when the person managing its listing proved they run it by putting a one-time code in the server's message of the day.

What we don't list

Servers on Mojang's blocked-server list, servers whose owners asked to be removed, and anything reported and confirmed as a scam. Servers that stay offline for 30 days drop off the list automatically.