Minecraft hosting, compared honestly

Aternos

Aternos and Voxi are both free, and both nap. What differs is who pays for it and what you can install.

How Aternos and Voxi differ, aspect by aspect. Aspects where the two give effectively the same answer are left out. Each answer is marked good, mixed or bad in both columns, Voxi's included.
	Aternos	Voxi
How the price is expressed	Mixed: No price. Ads pay for it instead.	Good: Plain dollars: $0.005 per running GB-hour, $3.60 per GB-month.
Ads & offerwalls	Bad: Ad-funded. Asks you to disable adblock; offerwall for RAM.	Good: None. It's in our terms, not just marketing.
Getting back in after it sleeps	Bad: You restart it by hand, with an ad en route.	Good: Joining wakes it, not a ping. You wait, then enter.
Always-on	Bad: No. It stops whenever the room empties.	Bad: A Pro feature, not the default. $3.60 per GB-month.
Being told when it stops	Bad: No uptime record. You find out by trying to join.	Good: We tell you it stopped. Status is last-known.
Mods & modpacks	Mixed: One-click from their own library. No uploads, no FTP.	Good: One-click from CurseForge and Modrinth, or upload your own.
Knowing what runs where	Bad: No labelling.	Good: Every mod labelled server, client or both.
Bedrock cross-play	Good: One-click Geyser, Floodgate automatic, config preset.	Bad: Off by default, and not on modded loaders yet.
Backups & restore	Mixed: Free backups, Google Drive only. Restore wipes the world.	Good: Free automatic backups. Restore keeps what's there; writes pause first.

Minehut

Minehut is free to start, like Voxi. Past that it sells plans, where Voxi sells what runs.

How Minehut and Voxi differ, aspect by aspect. Aspects where the two give effectively the same answer are left out. Each answer is marked good, mixed or bad in both columns, Voxi's included.
	Minehut	Voxi
How the price is expressed	Bad: Dollars buy credits, credits buy plans. Two conversions.	Good: Plain dollars: $0.005 per running GB-hour, $3.60 per GB-month.
What an empty server costs	Bad: Nothing free. A paid plan bills the month.	Good: Nothing. A sleeping world isn't billed.
Recurring charge & cancelling	Bad: Monthly plans per server, billed in credits.	Good: Nothing renews. Unused balance doesn't expire.
Ads & offerwalls	Mixed: Pushes its community, and a resource pack on join.	Good: None. It's in our terms, not just marketing.
Waiting for a slot	Mixed: A proxy and an age gate before your server.	Bad: Without Pro, worlds share slots. If full, yours waits.
Getting back in after it sleeps	Mixed: You start it yourself from the panel.	Good: Joining wakes it, not a ping. You wait, then enter.
Being told when it stops	Bad: Good resource panels, no message when it goes down.	Good: We tell you it stopped. Status is last-known.
Mods & modpacks	Bad: Software fixed at creation. File access and SFTP are paid.	Good: One-click from CurseForge and Modrinth, or upload your own.
Knowing what runs where	Bad: No labelling.	Good: Every mod labelled server, client or both.
Bedrock cross-play	Mixed: Routes through Minehut's proxy.	Bad: Off by default, and not on modded loaders yet.
Backups & restore	Mixed: Built in. One free backup, and the server must stop.	Good: Free automatic backups. Restore keeps what's there; writes pause first.
How much of the machine you get	Bad: A 1GB free slot. SFTP and plugin ports are paid.	Bad: Pinned cores on a shared machine. No root, SSH, FTP.

Exaroton

Exaroton's billing is the closest to Voxi's: you pay for what runs, and nothing renews.

How Exaroton and Voxi differ, aspect by aspect. Aspects where the two give effectively the same answer are left out. Each answer is marked good, mixed or bad in both columns, Voxi's included.
	Exaroton	Voxi
How the price is expressed	Mixed: Credits, with per-use estimates.	Good: Plain dollars: $0.005 per running GB-hour, $3.60 per GB-month.
Waiting for a slot	Good: No free pool to share; you pay hourly.	Bad: Without Pro, worlds share slots. If full, yours waits.
Getting back in after it sleeps	Mixed: Closes ten minutes after emptying; restarting is on you.	Good: Joining wakes it, not a ping. You wait, then enter.
Always-on	Good: Set it to run until credits run out.	Bad: A Pro feature, not the default. $3.60 per GB-month.
Being told when it stops	Bad: At zero credits it stops silently. No message.	Good: We tell you it stopped. Status is last-known.
Mods & modpacks	Mixed: No version or mod choice at creation. Set up afterwards.	Good: One-click from CurseForge and Modrinth, or upload your own.
Knowing what runs where	Bad: No labelling.	Good: Every mod labelled server, client or both.
Bedrock cross-play	Good: The same one-click Geyser, same one-port caveat.	Bad: Off by default, and not on modded loaders yet.
Bringing an existing world in	Good: A real one-click import, from Aternos. Theirs, and best.	Mixed: Upload a world .zip or modpack archive at creation.
Backups & restore	Mixed: Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox. Restore is one click, destructive.	Good: Free automatic backups. Restore keeps what's there; writes pause first.
How much of the machine you get	Mixed: 2 to 16GB, shared cores that scale. No root.	Bad: Pinned cores on a shared machine. No root, SSH, FTP.

Flat-monthly hosts

Bisect, Apex, Shockbyte and similarA flat-monthly host rents you a machine that never sleeps, and you pay for it when nobody's on.

How Flat-monthly hosts and Voxi differ, aspect by aspect. Aspects where the two give effectively the same answer are left out. Each answer is marked good, mixed or bad in both columns, Voxi's included.
	Flat-monthly hosts	Voxi
What it costs to start	Bad: Paid from day one. No free tier.	Good: Free, no card.
What an empty server costs	Bad: The full month.	Good: Nothing. A sleeping world isn't billed.
Recurring charge & cancelling	Bad: A subscription, monthly to annual, until you cancel.	Good: Nothing renews. Unused balance doesn't expire.
Waiting for a slot	Good: The machine is held for your plan. No line.	Bad: Without Pro, worlds share slots. If full, yours waits.
Always-on	Good: Yes, from day one. It's what you're buying.	Bad: A Pro feature, not the default. $3.60 per GB-month.
Being told when it stops	Bad: Managed hardware, but no heads-up if it crashes.	Good: We tell you it stopped. Status is last-known.
Knowing what runs where	Bad: No labelling.	Good: Every mod labelled server, client or both.
Bedrock cross-play	Good: At least one ships a one-click Geyser installer.	Bad: Off by default, and not on modded loaders yet.
How much of the machine you get	Mixed: A managed game panel on shared hardware.	Bad: Pinned cores on a shared machine. No root, SSH, FTP.

Self-hosting

your own box or VPSSelf-hosting gets you the whole machine, and every job that comes with it.

How Self-hosting and Voxi differ, aspect by aspect. Aspects where the two give effectively the same answer are left out. Each answer is marked good, mixed or bad in both columns, Voxi's included.
	Self-hosting	Voxi
What it costs to start	Bad: A few dollars a month for a box.	Good: Free, no card.
What an empty server costs	Bad: The same as busy.	Good: Nothing. A sleeping world isn't billed.
Recurring charge & cancelling	Bad: The bill renews until you shut it down.	Good: Nothing renews. Unused balance doesn't expire.
Waiting for a slot	Good: It's your box. It starts when you start it.	Bad: Without Pro, worlds share slots. If full, yours waits.
Always-on	Good: Yes, while the box and power hold.	Bad: A Pro feature, not the default. $3.60 per GB-month.
Being told when it stops	Bad: You notice yourself, unless you build the alerting.	Good: We tell you it stopped. Status is last-known.
Mods & modpacks	Good: Anything you want, installed by you.	Good: One-click from CurseForge and Modrinth, or upload your own.
Knowing what runs where	Mixed: You already know, or learn it the hard way.	Good: Every mod labelled server, client or both.
Bedrock cross-play	Mixed: You install Geyser yourself. Nothing stops you.	Bad: Off by default, and not on modded loaders yet.
Bringing an existing world in	Good: Copy the folder. It's already yours.	Mixed: Upload a world .zip or modpack archive at creation.
Backups & restore	Bad: Scripts, cron, and somewhere to put them.	Good: Free automatic backups. Restore keeps what's there; writes pause first.
How much of the machine you get	Good: The whole box, root and all. Theirs outright.	Bad: Pinned cores on a shared machine. No root, SSH, FTP.

About Voxi internals

You're not renting a box. Voxi is three pieces. The dashboard is where you change what your world is - version, mods, who can join, server properties. The proxy sits out front and holds your address; it points at your world, not at a machine. The node is the machine your world actually runs on.

The same three pieces the paragraph above names, and the path a friend actually takes into your world.

You don't get direct access to the node, by design, and that is what buys the rest of it. Your world can move to another node - for capacity, for hardware, for maintenance - and the address doesn't move with it, so your friends never re-paste anything. There's no port forwarding, no OS to patch, and nothing of yours that has to stay alive at 2am.

Backups are taken with the world paused: we stop writes, flush everything to disk, snapshot it, then let it write again, so a backup is a whole world instead of a torn one. A world sleeps when it's empty and wakes when someone joins - a join wakes it, a ping doesn't, so nothing on the internet can bill you by knocking. The friend who joined waits in a small holding room while the world boots, then gets moved across without reconnecting.