Palworld Dedicated Server Setup: Real Specs, Config and Crossplay for 1.0

A Palworld dedicated server needs 16 GB of RAM, a CPU with four or more cores, fast SSD or NVMe storage, and UDP port 8211 open to the world. Those are Pocketpair’s own published figures from the official v1.0.0 server documentation, not a hosting company’s estimate. You can boot a server on 8 GB, but the same documentation warns that doing so raises the risk of out of memory crashes.

That distinction matters more this month than it has in two years. Palworld left early access on 10 July 2026, and the response was immediate: Steam concurrents climbed from roughly 58,000 to a peak of 956,613 within eleven days, putting the relaunch inside Steam’s all time top tier. So if your guild scattered in 2024, they are coming back, and they are coming back to a heavier game.

Here is what the 1.0 server actually asks of your hardware, how to install it, and how to prove the specs yourself.

What Pocketpair says a Palworld dedicated server needs

Start with the primary source rather than the aggregators. Pocketpair publishes an operating requirements table in its official server guide, and every number below comes straight from it.

Two lines in that table deserve more attention than they usually get. First, the storage warning is not about load times. Pocketpair explicitly ties slow storage to save data corruption, which means a cheap SATA drive is a data integrity risk rather than a mild inconvenience. Second, the CPU row asks for cores but says nothing about clock speed, and that omission trips up a lot of buyers. More on that shortly.

How much RAM your Palworld dedicated server really needs

The official 16 GB figure is a single number covering wildly different worlds, so treat it as a midpoint instead of a target. Memory use on a Palworld dedicated server scales with three things: how many players connect, how much your guild has built, and how long the process has been running.

The third one surprises people. Palworld’s server process has climbed in memory use over long uptimes since launch, a pattern operators have reported consistently across builds. Buying more RAM does not solve it, because the climb continues regardless of the ceiling. Instead, schedule a daily restart during your quiet hours and the memory returns to baseline. In short, restarts beat headroom.

As a practical starting point:

One caveat worth stating plainly: the official baseline comes from Pocketpair, while the player-count tiers reflect published operator guidance rather than measurements we have taken ourselves. Treat them as a sizing starting point, then watch your own graph.

Why single-core clock decides Palworld dedicated server smoothness

Palworld runs on Unreal Engine, and its world simulation leans on a small number of cores rather than spreading evenly across many. Consequently, a chip with sixteen slow cores will not outperform a chip with six fast ones for this workload. When your guild triggers a raid, or fifty Pals work a packed base at once, the simulation tick has to finish on one core before the next one starts.

You do not have to take that on faith, because Pocketpair effectively confirmed it in the 1.0 documentation.

The v1.0 change most setup guides still get wrong

For two years, nearly every Palworld setup guide on the web told you to launch with -useperfthreads -NoAsyncLoadingThread -UseMultithreadForDS. Those flags became copy-paste folklore. However, the official arguments page for v1.0.0 now states the opposite: in v1.0 and later, leaving those parameters unset may improve performance.

So if you are migrating an early access server, open your start script first. Most of them still carry those three flags, inherited from a 2024 tutorial. Removing them costs nothing and takes ten seconds.

This is also why clock speed beats core count when you shop. A high-clock CPU with 16 GB of RAM will hold a busy world more comfortably than a many-core chip with slow cores and the same memory.

How to install a Palworld dedicated server on Linux

The install is short. The order, on the other hand, is not optional, because the config directories only appear after the server has run once.

1. Install SteamCMD and log in anonymously.

bash

steamcmd +login anonymous

2. Pull the server files. The Palworld Dedicated Server app ID is 2394010.

bash

app_update 2394010 validate

3. Start the server once, then stop it. This creates the Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/ directory.

bash

./PalServer.sh

4. Copy the default config into place. Editing DefaultPalWorldSettings.ini directly does nothing, which is the single most common mistake new admins make.

bash

cp steamapps/common/PalServer/DefaultPalWorldSettings.ini \
   steamapps/common/PalServer/Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini

5. Edit PalWorldSettings.ini. Set your server name, both passwords and your slot count.

6. Open UDP 8211 on the firewall and, for self-hosting, on the router.

7. Restart. Add -publiclobby if you want your server listed publicly.

On Windows the same steps apply, except the config lives in Pal/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/ and you launch PalServer.exe. Pocketpair also ships an official Docker image, though it flags Docker Desktop as deprecated for this workload because of storage IO risk to your saves.

The PalWorldSettings.ini settings worth changing first

The file holds dozens of parameters. Nevertheless, only a handful change how your server feels on day one.

Notice the pattern in the last three rows. Pocketpair labels them performance parameters and warns that increasing each one raises processing load. As a result, the fastest fix for a struggling server is often a config change rather than a hardware upgrade.

Which ports to open, and which to leave shut

Only one port carries gameplay: UDP 8211. Everything else is optional administration.

• UDP 8211 is required. You can move it with -port=, but most setups leave it alone.
• TCP 8212 serves the REST API, enabled through RESTAPIEnabled and RESTAPIPort.
• TCP 25575 serves RCON, enabled through RCONEnabled and RCONPort.

Keep the last two closed unless you genuinely use them. An exposed admin port with a weak password is a far more realistic threat to your world than a DDoS attack. Meanwhile, if you self-host behind a router that lacks Hairpin NAT support, players on your own network will not be able to connect to your community server. That limitation sits in your router, not in the game.

Admin commands for your Palworld dedicated server

First, set AdminPassword in the config. Then, in game, press Enter and run /AdminPassword <your password> to claim privileges. After that, these are the commands you will use weekly:

Run /Save before any planned restart. It takes a second and it has saved more guild progress than any backup policy.

Crossplay in Palworld 1.0

Crossplay works through one config line. CrossplayPlatforms defaults to Steam, Xbox, PS5 and Mac, so a fresh 1.0 server accepts all four out of the box. The older AllowConnectPlatform parameter no longer applies, and Pocketpair’s documentation now points admins to CrossplayPlatforms instead.

Two practical notes follow from that. First, console players find servers through the community list, so launch with -publiclobby if you want Xbox and PS5 friends to reach you. Second, if you deliberately want a PC-only world, narrow the platform list rather than relying on a password.

Backups and the restart schedule

Turn on bIsUseBackupSaveData. It creates a backup directory alongside your save, and Pocketpair documents the rotation clearly: five saves every 30 seconds, six every 10 minutes, twelve hourly, and seven daily. That is genuinely generous for a built-in system.

Even so, backups solve corruption, not memory creep. Therefore, pair them with a scheduled restart in your community’s quiet hours. A world that restarts nightly at 5 AM will outlive a world with twice the RAM and no schedule.

Why Rabisu suits a Palworld dedicated server

Palworld rewards a specific hardware shape: high single-core clock, enough RAM to absorb a growing world, and NVMe storage that will not put your saves at risk. That is the same shape our game server hosting is built around, because AMD Ryzen chips lead on single-thread performance and Gen4 NVMe removes the save corruption risk Pocketpair warns about.

The price-to-performance angle is the honest reason to look. You are not paying an enterprise premium for a survival game world, so the question is simply how much fast RAM and clock speed your budget buys, and how close the server sits to your players. Our Palworld server hosting plans start at the 8 GB tier and scale to full 32-player worlds, with DDoS protection and daily backups included rather than sold separately.

Pick a location near your guild, not near you. A 40ms difference in your admin ping matters far less than a 40ms difference for the twenty people actually playing.

Test it yourself before you trust anyone’s specs

Do not take our word for any of this, including ours. Run these three checks on whatever server you are evaluating:

1. Check the single-core clock. On Linux, run lscpu | grep MHz and compare the figure against the provider’s marketing. Cores are easy to advertise. Clock speed is not.
2. Watch memory over 72 hours. Run watch -n 60 'free -m' or read your panel graph across three days of real play. A healthy server climbs and then flattens after a restart. If it climbs without a restart schedule, you have found your future crash.
3. Time a world save. Run /Save and time it. On NVMe it should feel instant. If it stutters, your storage is the bottleneck Pocketpair warned about, and no amount of RAM will fix it.

Three commands, one weekend. That is the whole proof.

Quick Answers

References

1. Pocketpair, Palworld Server Guide: Requirements, v1.0.0. Available at: https://docs.palworldgame.com/getting-started/requirements
2. Pocketpair, Configure the server (arguments), v1.0.0. Available at: https://docs.palworldgame.com/settings-and-operation/arguments
3. Pocketpair, Configuration parameters, v1.0.0. Available at: https://docs.palworldgame.com/settings-and-operation/configuration
4. Pocketpair, Commands, v1.0.0. Available at: https://docs.palworldgame.com/settings-and-operation/commands
5. Pocketpair, Configure for community server, v1.0.0. Available at: https://docs.palworldgame.com/getting-started/deploy-community-server
6. Pocketpair, Palworld 1.0 Official Launch Trailer Unveiled. Available at: https://www.pocketpair.jp/en/game-news/palworld-1-0-official-launch-trailer-unveiled/
7. Forbes, Paul Tassi, Both Palworld And Palworld 1.0 Are In Steam’s Best-Ever Playercount List, 11 July 2026
8. Massively Overpowered, Palworld has now hit nearly a million concurrent players since its 1.0 launch, 21 July 2026 (SteamCharts figure: 956,613)