Best Factorio Server Hosting UK 2026
Factorio hosting has an unusual problem: the server that feels perfect during your first rocket launch may be the wrong server 300 hours later when the save has expanded across planets, thousands of machines are updating every tick and a stack of mods has joined the factory. We compared current Factorio hosts on long-term resource flexibility, CPU and memory performance, London availability, mod support, backups and whether you can test the service before trusting it with a long-running world.
Best Factorio hosting for UK players
Indifferent Broccoli takes #1 because Factorio rewards a hosting plan that can grow with the save rather than forcing you into a fixed 4GB, 6GB or 8GB box forever. Meanwhile, Kinetic has the strongest explicit London CPU specification, and LOW.MS bundles an unusually generous 10GB baseline with native support for both stable and experimental Factorio branches.
Indifferent Broccoli £9.63 /mo approx. · 6 players
- No plan-level RAM ceiling as your save expands
- Test your real factory before paying anything
- Full file access, mods and seven-day refund after purchase
Kinetic Hosting $4.99 /mo · 4GB
- 4GB from $4.99 or 8GB for $7.99
- London pool includes 7950X, 9950X and EPYC 4564P
- No artificial Factorio player-slot cap
LOW.MS £6.49 /mo approx. · $8.76
- 10GB baseline with upgrades to 30GB
- Native stable and experimental branch switching
- Cloud backups and five-day refund
Host Havoc Host Havoc is a particularly good choice if you care more about a mature managed platform and transparent infrastructure than squeezing out the lowest monthly price. London is available, the company owns and operates its hardware fleet, and its Factorio product includes FTP, mods, web console, offsite backups and data restores.
Factorio 2.1 is experimental — and probably the last major update
Wube Software returned with Friday Facts #440 in May 2026 and laid out a surprisingly clear long-term plan. Factorio 2.1 had already been in development for eight months, but rather than another Space Age-sized expansion, its focus is quality of life, smaller features, polish, fixes and improvements for mod authors.
More importantly, Wube described 2.1 as the game’s final major update before development shifts toward long-term support. That still includes bug fixes, compatibility work and modding features; however, the era of regular large gameplay expansions is approaching its conclusion.
The experimental release arrived on June 26. Wube deliberately planned to keep 2.1 experimental through the entire summer so mod developers would have time to update rather than being forced into an immediate stable migration.
This also makes branch controls unusually valuable in August 2026. LOW.MS, for example, exposes the stable and experimental Factorio branches directly, while other hosts allow version changes through their game-management tools.
Factorio breaks the usual game-hosting formula
Most hosting comparisons begin with player slots and RAM. Factorio makes both numbers less useful than they first appear. A four-player factory can eventually demand more simulation work than a 30-player early-game server because the real workload is the world you have built.
Factorio aims to simulate the game at 60 updates per second. As your factory grows, every active machine, inserter, logistic network, train system and modded script contributes some amount of work to those updates. Therefore, the meaningful performance question eventually becomes whether every tick still completes quickly enough to maintain 60 UPS.
UPS means Updates Per Second. Once a factory becomes too complex for the hardware to simulate at full speed, UPS falls below 60 and the entire game effectively begins running more slowly.
Factorio uses multiple threads for selected tasks, but much of the important update workload remains difficult to parallelise. Consequently, strong per-core performance remains valuable.
Wube’s own optimisation work has repeatedly shown that memory latency and memory throughput can constrain large factories. CPU GHz alone is therefore not a complete Factorio benchmark.
Best Factorio server hosts, ranked
DatHost does not currently include Factorio in its supported-game catalogue, so it cannot enter the ranking. Indifferent Broccoli does, and its no-card trial plus uncapped-RAM model gives it a particularly strong advantage for the long-lived worlds Factorio encourages.
Indifferent Broccoli takes first place because its pricing model matches Factorio unusually well. Instead of buying a fixed amount of RAM and hoping your save still fits comfortably a year later, its Factorio plans are sold by maximum player count while RAM itself is uncapped at the plan level.
That distinction becomes increasingly useful as a world matures. A fresh vanilla map is very light, whereas an explored multi-planet Space Age save, larger entity count and increasingly ambitious mod stack can consume substantially more memory. Therefore, not having to migrate from a 4GB plan to 6GB, then 8GB, simply because the factory grew is a genuine convenience.
The strongest feature, however, may be the two-day free trial. It requires no credit card, which means you can upload an existing save, install the real mods your group uses and measure how that actual factory behaves before paying anything.
European servers are available in Frankfurt, Roubaix and Amsterdam rather than London. Nevertheless, Factorio is less latency-sensitive than a competitive shooter, while the host’s European locations remain geographically close to British players.
Full file access, mod compatibility, DDoS protection, 24/7 human support and a seven-day refund after purchase complete the package. For a factory you expect to abandon after one weekend, cheaper plans exist. For a world you expect to keep expanding for hundreds of hours, however, the flexible resource model makes much more sense.
- Two-day free trial with no credit card
- No fixed RAM allocation per Factorio plan
- Full file and mod access
- Factorio: Space Age support
- European locations
- Seven-day refund after purchase
- 24/7 human support
- No London location
- Six-player plan costs more than Kinetic and LOW.MS
- Uncapped RAM does not remove Factorio’s CPU or memory-latency bottlenecks
Kinetic Hosting is arguably the strongest pure performance-per-pound option in this comparison. Its Factorio plans now begin at $4.99 for 4GB, while an 8GB configuration costs $7.99.
More importantly, its London Performance pool is unusually transparent. Current systems include the Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 9 9950X and EPYC 4564P, all with DDR5 and NVMe storage. Factorio’s workload benefits from both strong single-thread performance and a fast memory subsystem, so this hardware profile is particularly relevant.
Kinetic also avoids arbitrary Factorio slot limits. Instead, player count is determined by what the server and your factory can actually handle. Moreover, you can scale memory from 4GB through 124GB without migrating your files to another provider.
Five backup slots, SFTP, schedules, full startup-flag control and a seven-day refund make the panel competitive with more expensive hosts. Consequently, Kinetic would be our first choice over #1 for a UK-only group that prioritises London and known hardware over the free-trial model.
- London server location
- 4GB for $4.99
- Ryzen 7950X / 9950X hardware pool
- DDR5 and NVMe
- No artificial player cap
- Memory upgrades to 124GB
- Five backups and seven-day refund
- No pre-payment free trial
- Exact CPU depends on available London node
LOW.MS has one of the simplest Factorio offers to understand. The current entry plan costs $8.76 per month, provides 50 slots and starts with 10GB RAM — considerably more memory than a new vanilla factory needs.
That spare capacity is nevertheless useful because Factorio games have a habit of outliving the hardware assumptions made on day one. LOW.MS also allows upgrades to 30GB, so a large Space Age or heavily modded world can remain on the same service as its requirements change.
The provider earns extra credit in August 2026 for branch management. Its current Factorio panel recognises stable 2.0 releases and the experimental 2.1 branch, allowing server owners to switch versions without manually replacing the installation.
London, automatic cloud backups, one-click restores, downloadable backup archives, modern Intel/AMD hardware and a five-day refund round out a very strong package. The only reason it sits below Kinetic is that Kinetic currently publishes considerably more exact information about the specific processors available in London.
- 10GB RAM from the base plan
- London location
- 50 slots for $8.76
- Experimental 2.1 branch supported
- Cloud backups
- Upgrades to 30GB
- Five-day refund
- 50 slots are mostly irrelevant for a typical Factorio group
- Exact London CPU model is less transparent than Kinetic
Host Havoc remains an excellent choice for groups that value a mature managed environment. Factorio starts at $10 per month for ten slots, with London among the available European locations.
Host Havoc owns and operates its broader hardware fleet, which includes both Xeon and Ryzen systems, DDR4 and DDR5 memory and NVMe storage. That does not mean every customer receives an entire physical machine, but it does give the company direct control over the underlying infrastructure.
Factorio-specific management includes a web console, file manager, mod support, offsite backups and straightforward restores. In addition, full FTP makes save migration and manual mod management possible without asking support to touch your files.
Finally, Host Havoc publishes an average ticket response below ten minutes. Therefore, it remains one of the safer choices for somebody who wants the convenience of managed hosting without learning the details of maintaining Factorio’s Linux headless build.
- London location
- Own and operate hardware fleet
- Ryzen and DDR5 systems available
- Full FTP and mod support
- Offsite backups
- Fast published support response
- Costs more than Kinetic and LOW.MS entry plans
- Exact CPU varies by server/location
10 verified Factorio hosts compared
Every provider below currently sells Factorio hosting. ScalaCube has been removed because its current Factorio page is marked “Coming Soon”, while DatHost does not currently include Factorio among its supported games.
| Provider | Example price | UK / EU | RAM model | Factorio strength | Trial / backup | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Indifferent Broccoli Best long-term flexibility | £9.63 $12.99 · 6 players | Frankfurt / EU | Uncapped Player-count pricing | No fixed RAM ceiling · mods · full files | 2-day trial 7-day refund | Visit |
| 2 Kinetic Hosting Best UK CPU value | $4.99 4GB · $7.99 / 8GB | London | 4–124GB | 7950X / 9950X pool · no player cap | 5 backups 7-day refund | Visit |
| 3 LOW.MS Best 10GB bundle | £6.49 $8.76 · 50 slots | London | 10GB base Upgrades to 30GB | Stable + experimental branch switching | Cloud backups 5-day refund | Visit |
| 4 Host Havoc Best mature platform | $10 10 slots | London | Managed | Own hardware fleet · mods · FTP | Offsite backups Fast support | Visit |
| 5 AleForge Best ultra-budget | $1.99 2GB budget | Frankfurt | 2–64GB | Unlimited slots · premium Ryzen tier available | Backups 48h guarantee | Visit |
| 6  Wabbanode Flexible CPU choice | ~$8.94 6GB EPYC example | London | 1–16GB+ | EPYC budget or 7950X performance nodes | Configurable backups | Visit |
| 7 Nitrado Flexible short-term rental | €5.39 4 slots / 30 days | London available | Managed | Stable + experimental products · game switching | Daily backups 3–365 day terms | Visit |
| 8  GPORTAL Simple prepaid hosting | $15.59 10 slots / 30 days | Central Europe | Managed | Live console · FTP mod workflow | 50GB backup space | Visit |
| 9 GGServers Strong mod tooling | $6 2GB entry | Europe available | 2–32GB | Mod installer · FTP · unlimited slots | Automated backups | Visit |
| 10 Apex Hosting Best beginner panel | $3.99 1GB recurring | Global | 1GB+ | Easy panel · EX Ryzen tier available | Automatic backups | Visit |
ScalaCube is excluded because its current Factorio product is marked “Coming Soon”. DatHost currently supports a limited game catalogue that does not include Factorio. Prices are snapshots and can change; several providers also vary price by hardware tier, location or billing term.
Why uncapped RAM is particularly useful for Factorio
Factorio does not need enormous amounts of memory when a world is new. In fact, a small vanilla dedicated server can run on a surprisingly modest allocation. However, that is only half the purchasing decision because Factorio worlds rarely stay small.
Over time, players explore more chunks, construct more entities, expand logistics networks, visit additional Space Age surfaces and often add larger mods. Consequently, the working memory footprint of a mature world can become substantially larger than it was during the first evening.
A small factory and a handful of players can run with only a few gigabytes. Paying for 16GB on day one is usually unnecessary.
Explored surfaces, entities and modded systems accumulate. Therefore, the memory requirement you measure after 20 hours is not necessarily representative of the same world after 300.
Indifferent Broccoli does not tie its Factorio plans to a hard RAM quantity. That removes one artificial upgrade trigger as the save grows.
UPS, CPU speed and memory latency explained
Factorio normally targets 60 Updates Per Second. At 60 UPS, the simulation is progressing at the intended game speed. When a very large factory takes too long to calculate each update, UPS begins dropping and the entire world visibly slows.
This is why processor specifications matter. Nevertheless, simply sorting hosts by advertised GHz would still be misleading. Wube has documented several optimisation cases where Factorio was limited by memory latency or memory throughput rather than raw arithmetic speed.
The simulation keeps pace with the normal target. At this point there is little reason to chase a more expensive server purely for Factorio performance.
Your factory is beginning to exceed the available simulation performance. Before migrating hosts, inspect mods and known UPS-heavy factory designs as well.
The slowdown becomes increasingly noticeable. At this stage a stronger CPU/memory platform or factory optimisation can make a meaningful difference.
How much RAM does a Factorio server actually need?
These figures are practical starting points rather than official hard requirements. Factory design, explored map size and mods can matter more than player count.
| Factory type | Practical RAM | What matters next |
|---|---|---|
| New vanilla world | 2–3GB | Almost any modern host should have enough memory. Choose price, backups and location instead. |
| Growing Space Age factory | 3–4GB | Start paying attention to CPU quality as the number of active systems increases. |
| Large / lightly modded world | 4–6GB | Faster single-thread performance and memory latency become increasingly important. |
| Heavy modpack / large Space Age save | 6–8GB+ | Monitor real usage rather than guessing. Leave memory headroom for save growth. |
| Extreme megabase | 8GB+ as required | At this scale, UPS is frequently constrained by simulation performance before raw RAM capacity. |
If you want the broader explanation of game-server CPU, memory, storage and networking, see our game server hardware requirements guide .
Factorio versions and mods have to match
Factorio is extremely strict about deterministic multiplayer. Every game instance needs the same Factorio version and the same mod set. Consequently, a server updated to experimental 2.1 cannot simply accept players still running stable 2.0.77.
The same principle applies to mods. A server-side mod mismatch can block the connection even when the difference appears minor, although Factorio’s multiplayer interface can help players synchronise their mods with the server.
For a long-running modded world, stable 2.0.77 remains the conservative choice in August 2026. Use 2.1 only when you actively want the experimental branch.
Wube warns that a save upgraded into 2.1 cannot simply be downgraded back into 2.0 afterwards.
Confirm that your overhaul, utility and script mods support the target game version before changing the live server.
Download a copy outside the hosting platform so an automatic backup rotation cannot replace every pre-update restore point.
Factorio is exactly the kind of game where backups matter
A Minecraft world can represent hundreds of hours of work, but Factorio may be even more concentrated: one save contains the entire production system your group has iterated on for months. Therefore, backup quality deserves more weight here than on a disposable match-based server.
Scheduled backups, one-click restoration and downloadable snapshots make it particularly easy to create a permanent checkpoint before switching branches.
The included backup manager is enough for a normal rotating schedule, while SFTP makes keeping your own offline archives straightforward.
Backup data sits outside the normal game-server files and can be restored through the control panel if a save or update causes trouble.
Before a major update such as 2.1, download a copy yourself. Redundant backups beat discovering that every automatic generation was created after the problem began.
You can still host a Factorio server for free
Factorio is one of the few games where we would genuinely tell some users not to buy hosting immediately. The official Linux headless server is free to download, and Factorio.zone also still provides a free browser-based service where you can choose a region and version, upload saves and mods, then start a temporary Factorio server.
Useful when a small group wants occasional multiplayer without paying monthly. The service stores saves and supports mod uploads, so it is far more capable than a simple demo.
If you have a spare Linux machine and are comfortable configuring networking, Wube provides a lightweight headless server without graphics or audio.
Best Factorio host for your factory
A two-day no-card trial plus no fixed RAM ceiling makes the most sense for a world you expect to keep growing for hundreds of hours.
London, a 9950X-class hardware pool, 4GB for $4.99 and no player cap make Kinetic the strongest explicit performance deal.
Native branch switching plus 10GB RAM, London and cloud backups make it especially convenient while 2.0 stable and 2.1 experimental coexist.
A mature panel, full FTP, offsite backups, London and fast support suit groups that want somebody else responsible for the infrastructure.
The current Factorio budget tier starts at $1.99 for 2GB. However, serious megabase builders should consider the faster Standard or Premium hardware rather than buying purely on price.
If you only need an occasional private session, start here before paying monthly. You can always migrate the save to a permanent host later.
Factorio server hosting UK — FAQ
Indifferent Broccoli — Best Factorio Server Hosting 2026
Two-day free trial with no card · no fixed RAM cap · Factorio: Space Age support · full file access · European locations · seven-day refund · ideal for long-running factories that keep expanding
Affiliate disclosure: we may earn a commission when you purchase through qualifying links at no additional cost to you. Provider availability, pricing and features were checked in August 2026 and can change.
