Free Valheim Server: The Real Options and Their Catches

1. Let your game be the server

When you load your world, tick the start server box and set a password. Your friends join through Steam or, if you turn on crossplay, with the code the game gives you in the pause menu (that's how console players join too). It's free and ready in a minute. Step by step, in how to play Valheim with friends.

The catch: the world only exists while you're playing. If you're not there, nobody can join, and your PC has to run the game and everyone's session at once, which shows when several of you are exploring separately.

2. Steam's free dedicated server

In your Steam library, under “Tools”, there's “Valheim Dedicated Server”, for free. You leave it running on a PC that's always on and your friends can join even when you're not playing.

You pay no rent, but you pay for the electricity of a PC running day and night: the electricity cost calculator tells you how much. If you start it with crossplay you don't need to open ports; if not, you have to open UDP 2456 and 2457 on the router (and it won't work behind CG-NAT). If that PC switches off or Windows updates, the session is over. How to set it up, in running a Valheim dedicated server on your PC.

3. The NapNodes free server

A Valheim dedicated server with 4 GB of RAM and 5 GB of disk, with no card and no end date. There's one per person, for the game you choose. It doesn't depend on anyone's PC: you turn it on with “Start” in the panel when you want to play, and it switches off by itself after 20 minutes with nobody on.

Things worth knowing first: the password to join is generated automatically: you can see it (and change it) in your panel's “Settings”. It has no backups, so if the world matters to you, download it now and then from “Files”. If nobody plays for 7 days in a row, it's deleted along with its world (we email you 2 days before). And paid servers come first: the free server has the RAM and processor of the smallest plan, but it only starts using RAM nobody has paid for. If there's none at that moment, you join a start queue and we let you know when it's your turn; with people waiting, turns last 1 hour. If all the free slots are taken, you join the waitlist and the server is created automatically when there's room.

1. Create your account

   From “Create your free server”, with your email. No card needed.

2. Choose Valheim

   In “Buy”, the free server appears above each game's plans.

3. Wait for the install

   The first time it downloads the server from Steam and takes about 5 minutes. You'll get an email when it's ready.

4. Join

   In the game, “Join game” → “Add server”, with the address and port from the “Address to play” card, and the password from “Settings”. The world is created the first time someone joins. If something goes wrong, see the usual errors when joining.

When is it worth paying?

When you want the world on at any time without anyone having to start it or wait for a turn, when you run lots of mods or a very big world, and when you want backups. Meadows (4 GB) is enough for the 10 players the game allows; Mountain (6 GB), for mods and heavily explored worlds.

From the free server, in “My plan & invoices”, “Choose a plan”: it's still the same server, with the same world. You pay for the whole plan and the month starts that day.

Frequently asked questions