Minecraft Server Monetisation: What Mojang Actually Allows

Every Minecraft server that survives its first year is paying for itself somehow — a rank, a kit, a crate key, a donation link. And no game's monetisation rules are more misremembered than Minecraft's. Ask three owners what Mojang permits and you get three confident answers, most of them describing a document nobody has opened in a decade.

There is a current document, it is short, and it is specific: a section titled Servers and hosting inside the Minecraft Usage Guidelines. It names what you may sell, attaches conditions to each method, and lists obligations that apply whichever method you pick. This page quotes it directly and explains what each rule means for a server that already has players on it. Not legal advice — Mojang's published position, reproduced accurately, with the ambiguous parts flagged as ambiguous rather than smoothed over.

The Source, and How to Read This Page

Almost everything quoted below comes from one document — minecraft.net/en-us/usage-guidelines, Mojang AB / Microsoft, Minecraft Usage Guidelines, section Servers and hosting. A second is quoted where it overrides or adds to that one: minecraft.net/en-us/eula, the Minecraft End(er)-User License Agreement.

Quoted blocks are Mojang's words, not ours

Every plain indented quotation block on this page is copied from those two documents word for word. The labelled callouts like this one, the tables, and all the ordinary body text are our reading of what those words mean in practice. If the two ever seem to disagree, the quote wins — and so does the live page.

Neither document shows a last-updated date. We checked the rendered text and the page metadata of both on 19 August 2026; neither displays a "last updated" or "effective" date anywhere. So you cannot tell from the page whether a sentence was written last month or six years ago — and neither can we. The guidelines say as much:

"These guidelines may change as time goes by. We reserve the right to change our mind at any time (such as if people start to take advantage of our good intentions) and to update these guidelines. So don't count on these guidelines always being here or in the specific form they are in right now. It's up to you to occasionally check back here to see if these guidelines have changed and ensure your use of Minecraft is in line with what we allow."

The EULA is blunter about how much weight the guidelines carry:

"The Minecraft Usage Guidelines often change, and we have the right to withdraw the permissions given in them at any time without notice."

Stale advice persists partly because the address moved. Checked live on 19 August 2026, account.mojang.com/documents/commercial_guidelines now 301-redirects to the Minecraft home page and minecraft.net/en-us/terms 301-redirects to the usage guidelines. There is no separate Commercial Usage Guidelines document any more; commercial use is a section inside the Usage Guidelines, and servers are a subsection of it. Minecraft's help centre confirms as much in its article on how to report a server:

"Familiarize yourself with our Minecraft Usage Guidelines. These guidelines explain how we allow commercial use of the Minecraft name, brand, and assets, including Minecraft servers."

The Short Answer

You may charge for a Minecraft server. Mojang says so directly:

"Playing Minecraft with others is one of the best ways to play. You may host a server for Minecraft. You may even charge for access to the server as long as you follow the guidelines in this section. By "server," we mean a single connecting address or IP number."

Six methods are named, each with conditions. The two that catch people out are donations, defined far more narrowly than the way most servers run them, and anything that affects gameplay, which is permitted but fenced by a test Mojang never defines.

Does It Matter Whether the Server Is Private?

Yes — and the line is not public-versus-private, nor free-versus-paid. It is yourself versus anyone else.

"We are very relaxed about things you create for yourself. Pretty much anything goes there - so go for it and have fun, just remember the policies and don't do anything illegal or infringing on others."

"When you decide to share your content with the community (whether you plan to make money off it or not), you are doing what we consider to be a commercial thing. When you do commercial things, you must follow the Commercial Use guidelines."

"This applies, for example, if you want to set up and run any non-commercial blogs, servers, community forums, fan sites, fan clubs, news groups, events, and gatherings."

Our reading: the moment other people join your server the commercial-use rules apply, even if nobody pays a penny — non-commercial servers are named explicitly in that list. A free whitelisted server for twelve friends is inside the same rulebook as a 500-slot network; it simply is not selling anything, so most of the rules never bite.

Where this is ambiguous, and the conservative reading

Mojang never defines what counts as something you create purely for yourself, and a server two people play on sits between that and sharing with the community. Assume anything with a second player on it is shared. That costs a private server nothing — the obligations it triggers are things a well-run private server already does.

The Two Gates on Access

Before the permitted methods, two conditions attach to server access itself. They apply to every server, monetised or not.

"Access to your server:

Must only be granted to users who have a genuine paid-for version of Minecraft

Can't be limited to or controlled, directly or indirectly, by a player owning or having access to out-of-game content, products, or services"

The first is why online-mode=true matters beyond anti-impersonation: it is the mechanism that checks a joining player owns the game. Admitting unauthenticated clients to a public server breaches it directly, whatever else you sell — see Minecraft Whitelist and Ban Management. The second is genuinely difficult wording and is treated below; read it before building a Patreon-gated or token-gated whitelist.

What Mojang Says You Can Sell

The permitted methods, quoted in full:

"You may make money by charging for access to your server by:

Charging for access to your server, provided that:

— The cost to access the server is the same for everyone

— Everyone who pays to access the server has access to all the mods you chose to enable on your server (except in the case of mods and other admin tool reserved for server administrators)

— Own or control the server and continue to do so for the whole time that you charge for access to it

Asking for donations, so long as you don't offer the donor something that only they can use However, you may offer all players server wide rewards if donation goals are met.

Selling entitlements that affect gameplay provided they don't ruin other players' experience or give a competitive advantage in the game

Selling cosmetics, except for capes or anything that attempts to visually act like the feature of a Minecraft player cape

Providing in-game display and video advertising that:

— Doesn't hurt gameplay or give some players any competitive advantage

— Follow the guidelines in the Constructed Promotions in Minecraft section

Selling and using in-game virtual currencies as long as they:

— Have no real-world value and can't be cashed out, used, transferred across other servers, or converted into any other real-world currency

— Don't give the impression that the in-game currency is from or affiliated with Mojang

— Don't look like or have a name like Minecoins or any other virtual currency"

Here is what each of the six looks like on an actual server. This column is ours, not Mojang's:

Two conditions on the first method are easy to skim and expensive to get wrong. One price for everyone means exactly that: a cheap entry tier and an expensive one that both buy the same access is not the same cost for everyone. And everyone who paid gets all the enabled mods, with a carve-out only for admin tooling — which cuts across the common modpack design where premium mods sit behind a rank.

Donations Are Narrower Than Almost Anyone Runs Them

This is the most frequently broken clause in Minecraft server monetisation, and it is one sentence:

"Asking for donations, so long as you don't offer the donor something that only they can use However, you may offer all players server wide rewards if donation goals are met."

(The missing full stop is in Mojang's own text; we reproduce it as published.)

Our reading: a "donation" that gives the donor a rank, a kit, a colour or anything else only they receive is not a donation under these guidelines. It is a sale. What the clause permits as a donation is money given with nothing exclusive coming back, plus server-wide rewards at a goal milestone.

That does not ban donor ranks — it means the label is wrong. A donor rank is a sale of an entitlement or a cosmetic and is judged under those clauses, which carry their own tests.

Calling a sale a "donation" does not make the donation rule apply to it

If your store page says "donate for VIP", the transaction is still a sale of an entitlement in Mojang's framework and the entitlement conditions apply in full. The label adds nothing and risks the separate obligation, quoted below, to give paying users a purchase record. Call the product what it is, and keep genuine donations as a distinct, no-perk option.

The Pay-to-Win Boundary

The governing sentence is:

"Selling entitlements that affect gameplay provided they don't ruin other players' experience or give a competitive advantage in the game"

Read that carefully, because it says something different from the folklore. Selling things that affect gameplay is permitted. The prohibition is not on gameplay effect but on two named outcomes.

"Pay to win" is not a phrase Mojang uses

We searched the full text of both the Usage Guidelines and the EULA on 19 August 2026. The strings "pay to win", "pay-to-win" and "p2w" appear in neither document. So do not argue about whether something is pay-to-win — that is a community term with no standing here. The two tests that count are the ones Mojang wrote: whether a purchase would "ruin other players' experience" or "give a competitive advantage in the game".

Both tests are undefined. Neither "ruin" nor "competitive advantage" is given a threshold, an example or a carve-out anywhere in the guidelines. That is genuinely ambiguous and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The conservative reading:

• "competitive advantage in the game" is easiest to judge where players compete. On PvP, factions or anything with a leaderboard, a purchased item that helps one player beat another is the clearest fit for the prohibition. On a creative or co-operative server there is much less for an advantage to be relative to.
• "ruin other players' experience" is the wider net. It catches things that are not competitive at all — an entitlement that lets a buyer disrupt, spam or override how other people play.
• Where you are unsure, the guidelines say which way to fall: "If something isn't covered by these guidelines and we haven't otherwise said it's okay, that probably means we don't want you to do it."

How the usual store catalogue maps onto that. The verdicts are ours, not Mojang's — the conservative reading, not a ruling:

Crates, keys and the gambling clause

Loot boxes are not mentioned in the guidelines. Gambling is, twice. The essential guidelines say "Do not do anything that would harm or damage our name, brand, or assets (for example: gambling, pornography, violence, terrorism, or other unsafe/mature content)", and the server obligations repeat it: "All servers, entitlements, and advertising are suitable for audiences of all ages (for example, gambling, pornography, violence, terrorism, explicit lyrics, or other unsafe/mature content) and they don't harm the Minecraft brand". Minecraft's help centre also lists gambling first among the behaviours it asks players to report servers for. Whether a paid crate key is gambling is exactly the judgement Mojang reserves to itself — so a paid randomised reward on an all-ages server is the riskiest product in this article, and a fixed-contents kit at the same price carries none of that exposure.

The Obligations That Apply Whatever You Sell

Seven conditions attach to every method:

"Regardless of how you choose to make money to support your server, you may only do so if:

All servers, entitlements, and advertising are suitable for audiences of all ages (for example, gambling, pornography, violence, terrorism, explicit lyrics, or other unsafe/mature content) and they don't harm the Minecraft brand

You make it clear that you are responsible for all end user data privacy and protection requirements

You don't hide or alter any of the dialogs or prompts that are part of Minecraft (this includes the End User License Agreement (EULA), warning messages, and error messages)

You provide any user who gives you real-world currency an online payment and purchase history for purchases made with that currency

You provide information to users on all the content and pricing applicable to your server before a person joins, signs up, or signs in

You don't host or distribute malware, spyware, or engage in illegal activity through your server

You require any social influencers (for example, on YouTube, Facebook Gaming, Instagram, Twitch) promoting your server to disclose their relationship with you and follow the guidelines published by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission"

Three of these change how you build. A purchase history is mandatory — any competent webstore provides one, a Discord message and a PayPal note does not. Pricing and content must be visible before a player joins, not behind an in-game store command, which makes a public website a prerequisite for taking money. And your promoters have to disclose: if a creator is paid or perked to promote your server, the guidelines put that disclosure obligation on you.

Where the Wording Is Genuinely Ambiguous

Three places beyond the advantage test where a careful owner should read conservatively.

The out-of-game ownership gate

Read literally, the second access gate quoted earlier — access "Can't be limited to or controlled, directly or indirectly, by a player owning or having access to out-of-game content, products, or services" — sits in tension with the sentence a few lines later permitting you to charge for access. A paid whitelist limits access on the strength of an out-of-game purchase. Both cannot be read at full width. The mods section shows what Mojang is aiming at:

"The mod cannot be used to directly or indirectly verify whether a player owns or has access to out-of-game content, products, or services that affect in-game features and functions"

"Basically, we don't want mods that affect players' experience and creates scarcity of in-game content based off out-of-game conditions. For example, a mod that directly or indirectly checks a player owns an NFT to unlock skins, functions, or other in-game experiences is not ok with us."

Our reading: the target is gating in-game content on ownership of external assets — NFTs, tokens, third-party products — not on having paid you. Conservatively: paid access and entitlements delivered through your own store are the case Mojang explicitly permits; checking whether a player holds an asset on another platform is the case it explicitly refuses. A perk requiring membership of a paid third-party service sits between the two, and we cannot tell you which side it lands on.

"consistent with our brand"

"We want Minecraft to be a place where players can have fun and a trusted place to explore, build, and invest their time and money. Please use your common sense and discretion in creating a safe, fun, and trusted environment for all players. We reserve the right to decide if the way you are monetizing your server is consistent with our brand. In short, don't do evil things to players and you should be fine."

Complying with every rule above is not a guarantee. The general reservation, stated earlier, is broader still:

"All permissions and consents are given by us at our discretion and may be revoked at any time if we think that it is appropriate to do so, or we don't like what you are doing"

Build your economy so it survives losing any one revenue line.

The guidelines are not the top of the stack

The EULA is the binding agreement; the guidelines are permissions layered on it. What the EULA itself prohibits is broad:

"make commercial use of anything we've made;"

"try to make money from anything we've made; or"

"let other people get access to anything we've made in a way that is unfair or unreasonable."

The Usage Guidelines are the carve-out that makes a paid server possible at all — and, per the EULA sentence quoted at the top of this page, they can be withdrawn at any time without notice.

Realms Is Not a Server You May Monetise

If you play on a Realm rather than run a server, none of the above applies. The EULA is explicit, and on a Realm you may not:

"sell, lease, rent, transfer, give away, or otherwise deal in access to your Realm or receive financial, commercial or other benefits for letting other people play on your Realm."

Note "give away" and "other benefits" — that bars considerably more than charging money.

Selling Plugins Is a Different Question

If your question is about selling a plugin rather than a server perk, you are in a different part of the rulebook and the answer is less comfortable than the marketplaces suggest. The EULA says:

"Any Mods you create for Minecraft: Java Edition from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them and so long as you don't distribute Modded Versions of the game."

The Usage Guidelines add conditions of their own — a mod must be distributed on its own rather than as a modded version of the game, must not create a play-to-earn function, and must not verify out-of-game ownership — but they contain no sentence permitting sale.

We could not find any Mojang or Microsoft text permitting the sale of Java Edition mods or plugins, and the EULA sentence above reads against it. A large paid-plugin economy exists regardless, and we will not tell you it is fine because it is common — read that sentence yourself before you decide. For installing plugins, a different matter entirely, see How to install plugins for Minecraft Java Edition.

What Happens If You Get It Wrong

There is no published penalty schedule for servers — no Minecraft equivalent of a server-browser delisting notice. What is published is a reporting channel and a general enforcement power. The help centre asks players to report servers, listing "Gambling", "Pornography", "Pretending to be associated with Mojang or Microsoft", "Abusive behavior like attacking a group of people", "Redistributing Mojang games or game files" and "Illegal activity" as example behaviours. The EULA supplies the sanction:

"We reserve the right to suspend or permanently ban anyone who violates these Community Standards or this EULA."

What we could not establish: how often this is enforced against monetised servers, or what the escalation path looks like. Nothing published says.

One related obligation applies to your store as much as your server:

"Prominently include the disclaimer similar to the following: "NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT [PRODUCT/SERVICE/EVENT/etc.]. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT" on your product, listing, description, website/webpage, and all other related materials."

That covers your webstore, your server listing and your Discord. The naming rules apply there too: the guidelines allow the Minecraft name as a secondary title but state you may not use it "as the primary or dominant name or title" — which rules out a store called Minecraft Ranks.

The Practical Layer: How a Purchase Reaches Your Server

None of the above tells you how a payment becomes a perk. The chain is the same on every Minecraft server:

Payment clears → your webstore fires a command over RCON or through its plugin → the server grants a permission or a group → the plugins behind that permission change what the player can do.

Webstores are third-party services, and Mojang publishes nothing about which one you use — the obligations above are about what the store must do, not who provides it. The options are below.

The last two steps are yours to configure, and they are pure permissions work. A rank is not a special object in Minecraft; it is a LuckPerms group with permissions attached:

lp user Notch parent add vip

A subscription is the same command with a duration, which is far more reliable than remembering to revoke it later:

lp user Notch parent addtemp vip 30d

And a refund or chargeback is the reverse:

lp user Notch parent remove vip

Cosmetic perks are a prefix on the same group (meta addprefix) plus a chat-formatting plugin; convenience entitlements are permission nodes on the relevant plugin, granted to the group; currency is a balance credited by your economy plugin. How to Set Up LuckPerms Permissions for Minecraft covers groups, inheritance, weights and prefixes in full. Build that structure before you build a store, because every perk you sell hangs off a permission node.

Taking payment

Mojang names no payment provider, processor or platform in the usage guidelines, so the choice of storefront is yours. What you may sell is settled above; the services below are only the tooling that collects the money and fires the command.

Three publish Minecraft support on their own sites:

• Tebex — separate integration guides for Java Edition and Bedrock, plus an offline-mode game type.
• PayNow — names Minecraft, including offline mode and Geyser, among the games it officially supports.
• CraftingStore — lists Minecraft Java Edition and offline/Bedrock.

We are not affiliated with any of them and are not ranking them. Each publishes its own pricing and its own acceptable-use rules; those rules are the platform's, not Mojang's, and can be stricter than the guidelines quoted above. Read both before you build a catalogue on one.

Whichever you choose, the store only ever sends a command. What turns that command into a rank is the group structure in How to Set Up LuckPerms Permissions for Minecraft, so build that first.

Four things that break Minecraft stores in practice

• Key purchases on UUID, not username. Minecraft names change; UUIDs do not. A grant recorded against a name becomes a support ticket the day that player renames — Minecraft Whitelist and Ban Management covers the UUID trap.
• Subscriptions need an expiry mechanism. Nothing expires a group membership on its own. Use parent addtemp, or have the store issue the revoke on cancellation. Without one, every lapsed subscriber keeps their rank forever.
• Payment records are the source of truth; the permission database is a cache. If plugins/LuckPerms/ is lost you must be able to rebuild every active perk from store records. Servers that cannot do this end up refunding.
• Publish pricing and content on the website. The guidelines require it before a player joins, signs up or signs in — an in-game store menu alone does not satisfy that sentence. Put the disclaimer there too.

If You Also Run a Rust Server

Do not copy a store design across. Facepunch permits five methods broadly and spends most of its policy on a different problem entirely — access to Facepunch's own paid DLC. Mojang permits six but conditions each one, defines donations narrowly, forbids one specific cosmetic outright, and fences gameplay entitlements with an undefined advantage test. Rust Server Monetisation: What Facepunch Actually Allows covers the Rust side in the same detail.

A Pre-Launch Audit

Before you take a first payment, walk this against your live server:

1. Is online-mode set so only players who own the game can join? That gate applies whether or not you sell anything.
2. If access itself is paid, is it one price for everyone, with every enabled mod available to everyone who paid?
3. Does anything you sell give an advantage where players compete? The clause most likely to be held against you.
4. Is anything called a "donation" while giving the donor something only they get? Rename it and judge it as an entitlement sale.
5. Are you selling a cape, or a cosmetic imitating one? The single explicitly excluded cosmetic.
6. Does your currency have any cash-out, cross-server transfer, or Minecoins-like name? All three are named conditions.
7. Is every paid perk backed by a permission node, with an expiry path for subscriptions?
8. Does every paying player get a purchase history, is pricing published before they join, and is the disclaimer on the store page?
9. Re-read the guidelines. With no date on the page, reading it again is the only way to know it has changed.

What to Read Next

• How to Set Up LuckPerms Permissions for Minecraft — the group structure every paid perk hangs off
• How to install plugins for Minecraft Java Edition — installing the plugins whose nodes you are granting
• Minecraft Whitelist and Ban Management — UUIDs, offline mode, and paid-access whitelists
• Rust Server Monetisation: What Facepunch Actually Allows — the same treatment for a studio with looser rules

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