Your friends press Join and they're instantly in.
There is no lobby and no “server is starting, try again in a minute” screen, because the moment a friend presses Join they are in your world and playing. It's free, and there is no credit card to enter.
Make a free serverNo lobby and no waiting screen, just straight into your world.
JetRift hosts a vanilla-style survival world for you and a few friends, playable from Minecraft Java Edition. It's free, with no ads and no ranks to buy. It runs on Butternut, a server engine we wrote in Rust, so there's nothing to warm up and a world is ready the moment someone joins. It's also light enough that one small computer can host many worlds, which is how we can offer it for free.
Every account gets three free servers, each running the latest Minecraft Java release that Butternut supports for up to four players at a time. Worlds are saved whenever a server goes idle and can be downloaded at any time, and Butternut has its own plugins that you install from the dashboard.
Make a server, send your friends the address, and then close the tab.
They can still play without you, and once the last player leaves the world is saved and the server goes idle.
About Butternut
What it is
Butternut is a Minecraft Java Edition server written from scratch in Rust, starting from the open-source PumpkinMC project. It was built for one job, which is running survival worlds for small groups of friends without making anyone wait or pay.
What you gain
A world can start from idle the moment someone joins, and it uses far less memory than a typical Java server, which is what lets one small computer look after many worlds and why JetRift can be free. Survival plays like vanilla, including villagers, iron golems and redstone.
What you give up
Butternut is not Paper, Spigot, Forge or Fabric, so plugins and mods written for those will not load. It has its own plugin system with a smaller library, a few vanilla mechanics can still behave slightly differently in rare edge cases, and it only supports Java Edition. It is also young, so far fewer people have run it than the standard Java server.
Friend groups of about four who want a survival world that is there whenever someone feels like playing, people who would rather not look after a server, and anyone happy with vanilla gameplay plus a few plugins.
If your world depends on a modpack, a specific Paper plugin such as WorldGuard or EssentialsX, a minigame network, or a large public server with dozens of players online at once, a conventional host will serve you better, and the same goes for Bedrock players.
Hi, I'm Julius. I built JetRift because every time my friends and I wanted to play, someone had to log into a hosting site, press Start and then wait while the rest of us sat in the Multiplayer screen hitting refresh.
To fix that properly I wrote the server itself. Butternut is the Rust engine underneath, and it is the reason a world can be ready the moment somebody joins instead of whenever the owner remembers to start it.
JetRift is small and I run it on a few little ARM computers, which is why every account gets three free servers and why I would rather tell you when we are full than make you wait in a queue.
Quick answers.
Do I need a credit card?
No credit card is needed to make a server or to keep one.
Is it really free?
Yes, and there are no ads either, so if paid options ever show up they will be optional.
How many servers can I have?
Each account can have up to three free servers.
Can I use plugins or mods?
Paper and Spigot plugins and Forge or Fabric mods do not run on Butternut, but it has its own plugins that you can install from the dashboard.
Do my friends need accounts?
No, they only need the address and Minecraft.
What if I'm offline?
It doesn't matter, because anyone with the address can wake the server unless you have turned the whitelist on.
Is there a queue?
There is no waiting line, though capacity is finite, so if we are full we will tell you up front instead of making you wait.
What happens to my world?
It's saved every time the server goes idle, and you can download it whenever you like.