Answers

Those services run your server on their hardware and charge you monthly for access. SpawnBox runs your server on your Windows 11 PC and costs nothing on the Free tier. That flip matters: you keep full control, use any mods or plugins you want, your worlds never leave your hardware unless you choose, and there's no monthly bill to keep things alive.

You also get a live world map, detailed player analytics with 30+ metric streams, a Discord bot, and investigation tools - none of which Realms offers. The trade-off is that your PC needs to be on for your friends to play, but most gaming PCs can host and play at the same time.

No. SpawnBox installs everything it needs. The installer silently enables the Windows Subsystem for Linux, downloads and installs the official WSL2 runtime from Microsoft, imports an Ubuntu environment, installs Docker Engine inside that Ubuntu environment, and registers a background helper as a Windows Task Scheduler entry so your servers can run 24/7 whether or not the SpawnBox app is open. You don't need Docker Desktop, you don't need to touch PowerShell, and you don't manage WSL distros yourself. Plan on about 10 minutes for this one-time first-run setup. Creating new servers after that takes about 5 minutes each.

Three things to know:

• SpawnBox uses its own isolated Docker socket, so if you already have Docker Desktop the two coexist without conflict.
• If WSL2 wasn't already enabled on your machine, you'll need to reboot once during first-run - that's a Windows limitation, not a SpawnBox choice.
• Hardware virtualization (VT-x or AMD-V) must be enabled in your BIOS for WSL2 to work at all. Most gaming PCs have this on by default.

Three background services continuously monitor your setup and repair themselves if anything regresses - so once you're up, you stay up.

You open the Create Server wizard, answer a few questions, and SpawnBox handles the rest. There are two ways to start: pick the server type (Vanilla, Paper, Fabric, Forge, NeoForge, or Quilt) and Minecraft version first and then browse compatible add-ons, or go asset-first - pick the mods, plugins, or datapacks you want and SpawnBox's compatibility solver figures out which Minecraft versions and loaders your whole set works on. That second flow is unique to SpawnBox: instead of manually cross-referencing 'does this mod work with that version?' across Modrinth pages, the wizard builds a compatibility matrix from real Modrinth release data and shows you only the Minecraft versions where your selected add-ons are all available.

Once you confirm, SpawnBox creates the server folder, allocates ports automatically (game port, RCON port, and plugin/Geyser ports are all derived from a single offset so servers never collide, even if you run 10 of them), writes a server.env config, spins up the Docker container on the itzg Minecraft image, configures UPnP so your friends can join without you touching your router, and hands the server back to you ready to start. Plan on about 5 minutes from 'click new server' to 'friends can connect' for a vanilla server; a bit longer for a modded server because Minecraft's first boot has to generate the world and mods have to load.

Two notes on ports: RCON (used by SpawnBox to send administrative commands to the server) runs on a port that is not exposed externally - it's only reachable by the SpawnBox backend on the same machine, never from the LAN or the internet. The Minecraft game port is the only one that gets opened up for multiplayer access, and you can always run a LAN-only server if you prefer.

Yes, on every tier including Free. SpawnBox supports six server types out of the box - Vanilla, Paper, Fabric, Forge, NeoForge, and Quilt - which covers essentially every way to mod a Minecraft server. You can browse and install mods, plugins, and datapacks directly from Modrinth with one-click installs, and SpawnBox handles dependency resolution automatically so you never manually match mod versions again.

There's also a flow no other Minecraft server tool offers: asset-first server creation. Pick the mods and plugins you want first, and SpawnBox's compatibility solver determines which Minecraft versions and loaders your whole set works on - no manual cross-referencing of compatibility tables across ten browser tabs. You can also build your own modpack collections, export them, and share them with friends so everyone has the exact same setup.

Every modern Minecraft Java Edition version. SpawnBox supports vanilla servers and every major modded server type at their current versions. You pick the version when you create a server, and SpawnBox handles the jar downloads in the background.

Switching a server between Paper, Fabric, Forge, Vanilla and friends later is a few clicks with automatic backup and data preservation (see the loader switching question below). Changing the Minecraft version of an existing server is on the roadmap; until then, the Import World wizard lets you move an existing world into a new server running a different version. (Bedrock Edition is not supported today - SpawnBox is Java-first.)

Yes, and SpawnBox preserves more than most users expect. Changing a server's type (say, Paper to Fabric, or Vanilla to NeoForge) is a guided operation: you pick the new type, SpawnBox analyzes what needs to happen, creates an automatic full backup of your server, then migrates everything that can be migrated - your world data, player data, inventories, villager trades, and your entire historical gameplay analytics (session history, combat events, chunk activity, investigation anchors).

The one thing to know is that each server type supports different modifications: Paper runs plugins from the Bukkit ecosystem, while Fabric, Forge, NeoForge, and Quilt run mods, and Vanilla runs neither. When you switch from Paper to Fabric your plugins stop working because Fabric can't load them, so you'd replace them with equivalent Fabric mods (many popular plugins have mod ports, and you can browse Modrinth directly inside SpawnBox).

The migration also handles the quiet technical detail that Paper and non-Paper servers store dimensions differently - Paper splits Nether and End into separate root-level folders, non-Paper nests them inside the world folder. SpawnBox merges or splits them as needed so your builds and structures are where the new server expects them. Your server must be stopped for the migration, and if anything goes wrong the pre-migration backup is ready to roll back to.

Partially. Today, changing a server's Minecraft version isn't a one-click operation in SpawnBox - the version you pick during server creation is the version that server stays on. The supported workaround uses a shipping feature: create a new server on the newer Minecraft version, then use SpawnBox's built-in Import World wizard to pull your existing world into it. The wizard scans the source, detects worlds and their dimensions, and lets you selectively bring over your mods, plugins, datapacks, and access control (whitelist, operators, bans) in a single guided flow.

When the new-version server first loads the imported world, Minecraft itself migrates the world data to the new format - that's Minecraft's own behavior, not something SpawnBox has to reinvent. A proper in-app version upgrade flow is on the roadmap and will match the care that loader switching already gets today: automatic pre-upgrade backup, version-compatibility warnings, and a guided walk-through against your existing server in-place.

One constraint worth knowing either way: downgrading a world to an older Minecraft version isn't possible in Minecraft itself, regardless of who's hosting - that's how the Minecraft world format works, not a SpawnBox limitation. Always back up before any version bump.

Yes, and there's more control than most parents realize. SpawnBox supports Minecraft's built-in whitelist so only approved usernames can connect - anyone else gets rejected at the door. You can also run a LAN-only server (no internet exposure at all) if you only want your kid's household friends to join. For online servers, you control the operator list, ban list, and whitelist directly from SpawnBox.

Beyond basic access control, SpawnBox gives administrators a set of tools that most server software doesn't, and they're especially useful for parents:

• Chat isn't moderated in real time (that's Minecraft's responsibility, and SpawnBox doesn't intercept messages as they're sent), but every chat message on your server is captured as an event alongside joins, deaths, PvP, and server restarts. The Activity Log lets you filter by event type and search the full text, so if you ever need to see who said what, it's a keyword search away.
• Session history shows who played, when, for how long, and who they overlapped with - so 'was my kid actually on the server last night?' or 'who were they playing with?' is a glance, not an investigation.
• A built-in anti-cheat and investigation engine runs quietly in the background watching for x-ray mining patterns, spawn camping, suspicious base visits, griefing, and impossible movement speeds - and surfaces anomalies before you have to go looking.

For chat-safe environments, pair the whitelist with Minecraft's built-in profanity filter so only known players can connect and inappropriate words are filtered on the way in.

Free. The Free tier includes everything you need to run one server: guided setup, mod and plugin installation, analytics, scoreboard, daily backups, crash recovery, 24/7 automatic running, UPnP, and a mob-suffixed server address.

Pro is $9.99/month or $99.99/year (saving about 17%) and adds up to 3 servers, the live world map, player inventory and admin tools, investigation and anti-cheat, social graph, Discord bot integration, a clean reserved address, 15-minute backups, and unlimited session history. During the preview, every member gets full Pro access at no cost - no credit card required.

Nothing is deleted and nothing breaks. Your servers, worlds, configurations, and history are all preserved on your PC.

If you drop from Pro to Free, the Pro-only features pause: your Discord bot goes offline, the live map and investigation tools become unavailable, your clean address gets a mob suffix added, 15-minute backups revert to daily, and session history clamps to 7 days. Everything else keeps working: analytics, scoreboard, mods, backups, 24/7 running, crash recovery. Upgrade again anytime and Pro features come back online instantly.

Native Windows desktop app, end to end. The interface is React with TypeScript running inside a Chromium webview, but the shell around it is Tauri v2 - so the process you launch is a real Rust binary, not a browser wrapper. Behind the UI sits a local HTTP backend in Rust (axum + tokio + sqlx) that owns your server state, metadata, session history, and analytics. A separate always-on daemon process, registered with Windows Task Scheduler, handles what the UI shouldn't block on: keeping servers running 24/7, watching for crashes and auto-restarting, managing UPnP, and repairing its own WSL2 and Docker prerequisites automatically when they drift.

Persistent state is a local SQLite database for app metadata and enriched analytics, plus the standard Minecraft world format for game data - stored unchanged, on your filesystem, yours to back up or migrate. Servers themselves run as Docker containers inside SpawnBox's own WSL2 Ubuntu distro, one container per server, fully isolated from each other and from the host.

Real-time telemetry works in three capture modes so the product degrades gracefully. On vanilla, Fabric, Forge, and Quilt servers, a bundled datapack captures live events via mcfunction hooks. On Paper servers, a Java plugin does the same thing with a deeper API. When neither is active, the backend falls back to polling RCON for what it can get. (RCON is kept on a private port inside the Docker network - never exposed to your LAN, the internet, or UPnP. Only the SpawnBox backend on the same machine can talk to it, which prevents one of the most common self-hosted-Minecraft security mistakes.) The frontend reads from a single data abstraction, so the UI looks the same across all three tiers - it gets richer as capabilities increase.

The cloud is entirely optional. Core features (server management, analytics, mods, backups, 24/7 running) work with zero network calls. Cloud features (Discord bot, reserved DNS, public dashboard, the Hibernation add-on) only sync the minimum data that specific service needs. SpawnBox is local-first by construction, not as a marketing claim.

Yes, and safely. RCON is enabled on every server SpawnBox runs - it's the Minecraft administrative protocol that lets software send commands to the server. In SpawnBox, RCON runs on a private port inside the Docker network and is never exposed to your LAN, the internet, or UPnP. Only the SpawnBox backend on the same machine can talk to it, which is deliberate: exposing RCON directly to the outside world is one of the most common self-hosted-Minecraft security mistakes, and SpawnBox's backend is the only authorized client.

Pro-tier servers get clean reserved addresses under *.mc.spawnbox.app for player connections, with fully custom domain support on the roadmap. Networking for the Minecraft game port itself is handled via automatic UPnP by default, but power users can override the port, run a LAN-only server, or wire SpawnBox into an existing reverse proxy or tunneling setup if they prefer manual control.

Yes. Every Minecraft server SpawnBox runs lives in its own Docker container inside SpawnBox's own WSL2 environment. Containers are the right unit of isolation for multi-server hosting: each server gets its own Java runtime, its own filesystem, its own network ports, and its own memory and CPU limits, without any of them interfering with each other or with other software on your PC. Running three servers at once (a vanilla 1.21, a Paper SMP, and a modded Fabric experiment) means three containers - no cross-contamination, no library conflicts, and resource allocation for each is independent.

SpawnBox uses the itzg/minecraft-server image family as a base, which is the de facto standard for containerized Minecraft servers and is actively maintained. SpawnBox's Docker Engine runs on an isolated socket inside its own WSL2 distro, so it coexists peacefully with Docker Desktop if you already have that installed - you don't need Docker Desktop. You can docker exec into any SpawnBox container directly if you want; SpawnBox doesn't hide the containers, it just makes them easy to manage from the app.