Cheap Satisfactory server hosting — what does it really cost? (May 2026, Patch 1.1)

What does a Satisfactory server really cost?

Satisfactory has shipped with an official Dedicated Server since patch 0.7, massively improved with the 1.0 release in late 2024. Coffee Stain Studios’ patch 1.1 in 2025 further optimized save performance. Even so, Satisfactory remains a RAM-hungry game because the entire factory is kept in memory.

As of May 2026, realistic prices:

Factory stage	Players	RAM needed	Price range / month
Early Game (Tier 1-4)	1-4	6-8 GB	€5 - 10
Mid Game (Tier 5-7, one mega-node)	1-4	8-12 GB	€8 - 15
Late Game (Tier 8-9, multiple mega factories)	1-4	16-20 GB	€15 - 25
Post-Phase 4 megabase with mods (SMM)	1-4	20-32 GB	€20 - 40

The 4-player limit — and how to lift it

Satisfactory officially supports 4 simultaneously connected players — but on a dedicated server this is not a hard limit. You can raise it without any mods via the Game.ini (under FactoryGame/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/):

[/Script/Engine.GameSession]
MaxPlayers=8

Important: make the change with the server stopped — the ini files are rewritten on graceful shutdown, so your edit would otherwise be overwritten. At RespawnHost it’s even easier via the “[Experimental] Maximum player count” startup variable in the panel — see the setup guide for a step-by-step walkthrough.

In practice, up to about 8 players works fine; technically the engine allows up to 127, but performance drops noticeably because the entire simulation runs on a single CPU thread. From 5+ players and large factories, plan for 16 GB RAM.

Why does Satisfactory eat so much RAM?

Unlike Minecraft, which loads the world in chunks, Satisfactory keeps all machines, all conveyor belts, and all in-flight items entirely in RAM. That’s deterministic (important for pixel-precise production) but expensive.

Concrete real-world examples:

• Early Game: up to about 500 machines, 5 GB RAM is fine
• Tier 7 with Modular Frame production: ~1500 machines, 8-10 GB RAM
• Phase 4 fully done, multiple industrial districts: 5000+ machines, 16-20 GB RAM
• Megabase with Save Editor and 50,000+ items in-flight: 24-32 GB RAM

Save files grow accordingly: 500 MB saves for big late-game are normal, 1 GB+ happens. That also means every server restart needs an extra 30-60 seconds for save loading. An SSD on the server backend is mandatory, not nice-to-have.

”cheap satisfactory server hosting” — how cheap can it go?

Honestly: aggressive saving doesn’t really pay off for Satisfactory. The game either needs 8+ GB RAM or you’ll hit major lag after 50 hours of gameplay.

Realistic budget options:

• Pay-per-use with low usage — you can run an 8 GB Satisfactory server for €2-4/month if you only play 3 evenings a week. Heavy gameplay (24/7 weekends) costs more like €10-15/month.
• Stop the server when on break — Satisfactory has no real auto-stop detection, so you need to stop it manually. More practical than DayZ because gameplay is more scheduled.
• Singleplayer + shared cloud saves — if you don’t need simultaneous gameplay, share a save via Steam Cloud. Free, but not real coop.

What hardware is optimal?

Satisfactory benefits in this order:

1. Single-core performance — the tick-rate limit is on one thread
2. RAM — see table above
3. NVMe SSD — smaller effect but halves save load times
4. CPU core count — irrelevant above 4 cores

Our servers run on modern AMD Ryzen CPUs with single-core clocks over 5 GHz, the right choice for Satisfactory.

Cross-save between singleplayer and server

A question that keeps coming up: can I upload my singleplayer save to the server?

Yes, that works. Copy the save from %LocalAppData%\FactoryGame\Saved\SaveGames\<YourSteamID>\ via SFTP to the same directory on the server, then in the server menu “Load World” → pick your save.

For SFTP details see our SFTP wiki article — especially for 500 MB+ save files, SFTP is the only practical route.

Concrete recommendation

• Starting fresh with friends → 8 GB plan, pay-per-use, around €3-8/month depending on play time
• Mid-game save with 1500+ machines → 12 GB plan, around €6-12/month
• Big late-game setup, many hours per week → 16 GB plan 24/7, around €15-20/month
• With mods (Smart!, Refined Power, Ficsmas, etc.) → plan for at least 16 GB

See Satisfactory plans