Valheim
Valheim server requirements
Everything here comes from Iron Gate's own current pages: the 1.0 FAQ and the dedicated server guide. They are detailed about setup and networking. They publish no hardware figures at all, and that section of this page is as important as the rest.
There is no official RAM or CPU figure for a Valheim server
This is the honest headline, and we would rather lead with it than bury it. Iron Gate's dedicated server guide does not publish a memory requirement, a core count, a clock speed or a processor model. It does not connect a player count to either. Every other game we cover gives you at least one number to hold a machine up against. This one gives you none.
That absence is filled elsewhere with great confidence — provider sizing tables, community consensus figures, a number repeated often enough to sound official. None of it is Iron Gate's, so none of it is here. Valheim does publish client system requirements, and those are real figures, but a dedicated server runs no client and they answer a different question. We have not relabelled them either.
Current 1.0 game and server facts
Stated by Iron Gate in the official 1.0 FAQ. These describe what Valheim supports at 1.0: how many people can play, which platforms can play together, and where the studio stands on mods. They are statements about capability and support, and none of them carries a hardware implication.
Scope: About the game as it now ships — what it supports, not what it needs.
- Official 1.0 factPlayers
Valheim 1.0 is for 1 to 10 players
The supported range, stated by Iron Gate. It is worth being precise about what this does and does not tell you: it is the number of people the game supports together, and no source connects any point in that range to an amount of memory or a processor. Ten players is documented as supported. What ten players cost a machine is not documented at all.
- Official 1.0 factCrossplay
Crossplay is supported across platforms
People on different platforms can play together. This matters for servers because of how connections are made rather than what runs them — see the crossplay backend in the server section, which changes the networking rather than the hardware.
- Official 1.0 factMods
Valheim has no official mod support
Iron Gate's own position, and the honest end of it is this: because mods are not officially supported, nothing official describes what they do to a server. No memory figure, no processor figure, no relationship of any kind. If you run them, you are past the documentation, and we are not going to guess on its behalf.
- Official 1.0 factLarge builds
Large builds remain a performance consideration, even though 1.0 includes optimisations such as zone loading and unloading and faster saving
Worth reading closely, because the sentence has two halves and they pull in different directions. 1.0 brought optimisations — zones loading and unloading, saving made faster — and even so, Iron Gate still names large builds as something to be aware of. Build size is one of the few things you control that the studio mentions at all. What does not follow it is a figure: no memory or processor amount is published for any build size, before or after those optimisations.
Dedicated server setup and network facts
Documented in Iron Gate's official dedicated server guide. This is the practical material: where the server comes from, which script starts it, which ports matter, how people connect, and what it does with your world while it runs. Every figure in it is a port, a count or an interval. There is no hardware figure anywhere in this category, because there is none in the source.
Scope: How a dedicated server is obtained, started, reached and kept — not what hardware runs it.
- Official server documentationWhere the server comes from
The dedicated server is available through Steam Tools
A separate download from the game, in the Tools section of your Steam library. You do not need a second copy of Valheim to run it, and there is nothing to buy.
- Official server documentationStarting it on Windows
Windows uses start_headless_server.bat
The batch file shipped with the server, and the thing you edit when you want to change how the server starts. Headless means no game window — the server draws nothing and nobody plays on it directly.
- Official server documentationStarting it on Linux
Linux uses start_server.sh
The Linux equivalent. Same job, same place: it is the file you edit rather than a config elsewhere.
- Official server documentationSteam backend ports
The Steam backend uses a default port range of 2456 to 2457
Two ports, and they are the default rather than the only possibility. This applies to the Steam backend specifically, which is the distinction that catches people out — see the note about which backend you are running.
- Official server documentationSteam backend port forwarding
The Steam backend requires appropriate port forwarding for the server to be reachable from the internet
The work you do on your router so people outside your house can connect. It is a requirement of the Steam backend, not of dedicated servers in general, which is worth holding onto because the crossplay backend behaves differently.
- Official server documentationCrossplay backend
The crossplay backend uses a relay and does not require port forwarding for outside access
The genuinely useful one. Traffic goes through a relay rather than straight to your machine, so the router work the Steam backend needs does not apply. If port forwarding is the part of self-hosting you were dreading, this is the documented way around it.
- Published qualifierWhich backend you run decides whether port forwarding applies
Port forwarding is required for internet access on the Steam backend; the crossplay backend uses a relay and does not require it
The most consequential thing in the server documentation, and the easiest to miss because it is a distinction rather than a figure. Port forwarding is not a property of self-hosting Valheim — it is a property of one of the two backends. Read any guidance about opening 2456 and 2457 with that in mind, including ours.
- Official server documentationHow people connect to a crossplay server
Crossplay servers support connection by public IP and port, by join code, and through the server list
Three documented routes in, which is unusually generous. The join code is the one to know about if you would rather not hand out an address, and the server list is how people find you without being told anything at all.
- Official server documentationWorlds, backups and permissions
The dedicated server supports world saves, automatic backups, and permission and admin files
Three things the server does for you rather than three things to set up. Saves and backups are handled; admin and permission lists are plain files you edit, which is how you decide who can do what.
- Official server documentationSave interval
The default save interval is 1800 seconds
Thirty minutes, which is the same figure in friendlier units. It is a default and it is configurable, so it is the amount of progress at risk between saves rather than a fixed property of the server.
- Official server documentationAutomatic backups
The default number of automatic backups is 4
Four kept automatically, with older ones making way for newer. A documented default rather than a limit, and the kind of thing worth knowing exists before you need it.
Software and library requirements
A minimum library version named in the official guide for Linux hosts. It is worth checking before you start, because the server will not run without it. It is emphatically not a hardware requirement: a library version is satisfied by your distribution, not by your processor or your memory, and an old GLIBC on a powerful machine is still an old GLIBC.
Scope: A software version your operating system either provides or does not — never a hardware specification.
- Software requirementGLIBC
Linux library requirements include GLIBC_2.29
A minimum version of the C library your distribution provides. Either your Linux has it or it does not, and if it does not, the answer is a newer distribution rather than a better machine.
- Software requirementGLIBCXX
Linux library requirements include GLIBCXX_3.4.26
The C++ standard library equivalent, and the same logic applies. Older long-term-support releases are the usual place this bites, and no amount of memory or processor changes it.
Sources, last checked:
- Valheim — Official 1.0 FAQ — 29 September 2026
- Valheim — A Guide to Dedicated Servers — 29 September 2026
What the official sources do not publish
Each of these is a figure people reasonably expect to exist. None of them appears in Iron Gate's current material. This is a statement about the documentation rather than about the game, and it is here so the gaps read as findings instead of as things we failed to look up.
- Not publishedA RAM requirement in gigabytes
- No memory figure for a dedicated server appears in the official guide. Not a minimum, not a recommendation, not a range.
- Not publishedA CPU requirement
- No core count, no clock speed and no processor model. The guide names no hardware at all on the processor side.
- Not publishedA relationship between player count and memory
- The FAQ states 1 to 10 players are supported. Nothing anywhere connects a number of players to an amount of memory.
- Not publishedA relationship between player count and processor
- Likewise. The supported range is published; what any point in it demands of a processor is not.
- Not publishedA relationship between build size and hardware
- Large builds are acknowledged as a performance consideration, which is a direction without a measurement. No memory or processor figure is attached to any build size.
- Not publishedA relationship between mods and hardware
- There is no official mod support, so there is no official account of what mods cost a server either.
What we will not do about those gaps
A missing figure is an invitation, and this is our answer to it:
- We will not fill the hardware gap with provider sizing tables or community consensus figures. Numbers like these circulate widely and sound authoritative through sheer repetition, but none of them is Iron Gate's. Republishing one here would make somebody's guess into our figure, which is the one thing this site exists not to do.
- We will not copy Valheim's client system requirements and present them as dedicated-server requirements. They are real published figures, which is exactly what makes the swap tempting — and a dedicated server runs no client, so they answer a different question than the one being asked.
- We will not convert the Linux library versions into hardware requirements. GLIBC_2.29 and GLIBCXX_3.4.26 are software versions your distribution either provides or does not. They describe your operating system, not your machine.
- We will not derive a memory or processor figure from the player range, the build-size note, or mods. Two of those have no figure published anywhere, and the third has no official documentation at all.
- We will not treat the documented ports, save interval or backup count as sizing information. They are network and behaviour settings. A port number tells you nothing about hardware, and neither does a thirty-minute save interval.
Where to take this next
- Server Planner
Two questions about your group and your building, read against this evidence. It names the missing hardware figures rather than filling them in.
- Self-host or rent
The operational side rather than the hardware side: your machine, your availability, the backend you expect, and the work of running it.