Terraria VPS Hosting

Terraria server hosting means running your world on a dedicated server, so it stays online when the hosting player leaves. With Host & Play, the world shuts down when that player quits. The server can be the official TerrariaServer, TShock or tModLoader, and nobody has to keep the game open. On a GreenGeeks VPS, root access puts serverconfig.txt, the password and the ban list under your control. Players connect with Join via IP. When nobody's online, the server hibernates, and time in the world only passes while players are connected.

A vanilla Terraria server needs very little, about 500 MB of free RAM for a small world. Bigger worlds and more players raise that, and a large world has 4 times the tiles of a small one. On Linux, you run the TerrariaServer.bin.x86_64 file from the official zip. The current version is 1.4.5.8, and it works on GreenGeeks' AlmaLinux 9. TShock and tModLoader also need the .NET runtime, which installs on AlmaLinux 9 with dnf. Terraria publishes no CPU figure for the server. Mods are the biggest reason to buy more memory.

Most Terraria worlds run on GreenGeeks' 4 GB plan at $9.99 a month, renewing at $19.99, which covers vanilla and TShock with plenty to spare. Big mod packs or a second world need a larger plan, as the table above shows. Raising maxplayers or adding TShock plugins doesn't change the price. The official server is a free download from terraria.org, TShock is open source, and tModLoader installs from GitHub. Host & Play costs nothing, but the world only runs while the host is in the game.

Mobile players can, but console players can't yet. Right now, PC and mobile players on the same version can share a dedicated server, and mobile players join by typing in the IP and port. That's probably unintentional, so it could change. Console players can't play with PC or mobile at all today. Crossplay is planned for update 1.4.6, and its first phase lets console players connect to dedicated servers over the internet. As of late September 2026, it hadn't been released. Mobile online games top out at 16 players.

Terraria keeps one .wld.bak copy by itself, which only goes one save back. GreenGeeks leaves backups on a self-managed VPS to you, so set up proper ones. Type save in the server console, then archive the Worlds folder on a cron schedule and copy it off the server. On TShock, back up tshock.sqlite and config.json too. To restore, stop the server, swap in the saved .wld and restart.

Run vanilla for a small private world, TShock for moderation on bigger servers, and tModLoader for content mods. The vanilla TerrariaServer is the official build and needs nothing extra. TShock still feels like the regular game to players, but it adds groups, permissions, item bans, anti-cheat and server-side characters. TShock 6.2.1 supports Terraria 1.4.5.8. tModLoader is the one for packs like Calamity or Thorium, and it uses the most RAM of the three. Mobile players can only join vanilla or TShock servers, since tModLoader mods don't run on mobile.

Pick by mods and world size, since they set most of the RAM. Vanilla or TShock with up to 16 players fits easily in GreenGeeks' 4 GB plan. A tModLoader pack like Calamity on a large world can use 6 to 8 GB by community estimates, so plan on 8 GB for that. Pick 16 GB for heavy packs that stack Calamity and Thorium, or to run two worlds at once, such as one vanilla and one modded. Player count matters less. You set it with maxplayers, anywhere from 1 to 255, and the default is 16.

Yes, mods run through tModLoader and plugins run through TShock, and both need the .NET runtime on the server. For tModLoader, save your enabled mods as a mod pack in the Workshop Mod Packs menu, then copy Mods/install.txt and Mods/enabled.json to the server. tModLoader's official management script installs it from GitHub, then installs those mods with install-mods. Share the same pack with your players. TShock plugins add admin and moderation features while players keep the regular game. TShock and tModLoader are separate servers, so pick one per world.

Upload its .wld file, since a Terraria world is a single file. On Windows, worlds are saved in Documents\My Games\Terraria\Worlds, and on a Linux server they go in ~/.local/share/Terraria/Worlds. Upload the .wld there over SFTP and point world= in serverconfig.txt at that file name. For a tModLoader world, bring the matching .twld file along with the .wld and put both in the ModLoader/Worlds folder. The server and every player need to be on the same game version, so update everything before the first session on the new server.

You do. GreenGeeks looks after the hardware and network. A self-managed VPS gives you full root access, so AlmaLinux updates and installing, updating and backing up Terraria are up to you. Terraria still gets patches, like 1.4.5.7 and 1.4.5.8 this year, and players can't join a server running a different version. TShock puts out its own release to match, the way TShock 6.2.1 added support for 1.4.5.8, so wait for it before you update a TShock world. Back up the world before each update, then replace the server files with the new zip and restart.