Free vs Paid Eaglercraft Hosting in 2026: Eagler.Host vs Sealos

If you're still reading, you already know. Relays have no plugins, no persistence, no file manager, no console. The second you close your browser, your server is gone. That's fine for 20 minutes of building with a friend. It is not fine for a community with scheduled events, a ranked economy, or a world you've sunk 200 hours into.

We wrote a full breakdown in Eagler.Host vs Relays vs Self-Hosting if you want the deeper dive. For now: relays are out. You're here for the next step.

Eagler.Host is free forever. Not a trial, not credit-card-required free-until-they-bill-you. The Basic tier gives you 2GB of storage, up to 10 player slots, and two servers running in parallel. Eaglercraft 1.8 and 1.12 are both supported.

What makes it work for community admins is the stuff underneath. One-click plugin manager with EssentialsX, WorldEdit, SkinsRestorer, and ViaVersion. A file manager and FTP access, so if you want to drop in a custom world or upload your own plugin JAR, you can. Custom join URLs, DDoS protection built in, and 24/7 uptime without you babysitting anything.

If you outgrow Basic, upgrades are credit-based. You earn credits free on the platform or buy them, and every upgrade is permanent. More RAM, more player slots, more CPU, and it stays on your server. Nothing expires.

The honest limit: Eagler.Host is managed hosting. You don't get root. You don't get Docker. You get a dashboard, plugins, file access, and an SLA you don't pay for. For 95% of community admins, that's exactly what you want. You're not trying to run a Kubernetes cluster, you're trying to run a Minecraft server your friends can log into from school.

Sealos is a different thing. It's a Kubernetes-based cloud platform with a one-click Eaglercraft deployment template. You get a public wss:// URL with automatic SSL, and full container control if you need to SSH in and tune things.

There is no free tier. Sealos offers a 7-day free trial without a credit card, but after that you're paying. Current pricing breaks down like this:

• •Starter, around $7/mo (2 vCPU, 2GB RAM). Too small for a real community server. Skip.
• •Hobby, around $25/mo (4 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 50GB traffic). Their "most popular" plan and the realistic floor for a community server you care about.
• •Standard, around $128/mo (8 vCPU, 16GB RAM, 300GB traffic). For bigger communities.

What you're paying for is control. If you already use Sealos for other projects (a Discord bot, a web backend, a database), putting your Eaglercraft server in the same dashboard is clean. If you need custom Docker images, specific kernel tweaks, or cloud-level scaling, Sealos gives you that. The Sealos Eaglercraft template handles the first-run setup so you're not building the image yourself.

The tradeoff is simple. It's not free, and it's not Eaglercraft-specific. You're renting compute from a cloud provider and running Eaglercraft on top, versus using a platform built around Eaglercraft.

For most community admins, Eagler.Host is the right fit. You get plugins, DDoS protection, backups, and 24/7 uptime with no bill attached. Permanent credit upgrades let you scale up when your server actually needs it, on your own timeline.

Sealos is the right fit in three specific cases. First, you already run other projects on Sealos and want everything in one dashboard. Second, you need container-level control, custom Docker images, or Kubernetes features that no managed host offers. Third, you're scaling past what managed Eaglercraft hosting is designed to handle and want the headroom of full cloud compute.

Use the tool that fits your situation. Start free on Eagler.Host if you're not sure. Move to Sealos when you need what Sealos is actually built for.