TrueTick vs Exaroton: two pay-as-you-go hosts, compared

If you've decided that paying a flat monthly fee for a server nobody is on is a bad deal, you've probably already found Exaroton. It sells pay-as-you-go Minecraft hosting, and it comes from the team behind Aternos. We're the competitor writing this page, so every claim about them below links to their own documentation for you to check.

The short version first: Exaroton meters by the gigabyte-hour, stops your server when it empties, starts it again when someone joins, parks them in a lobby while it boots, and shows live TPS. We do all of that too (our lobby works on fewer server types, as the table shows), and at November 2026 exchange rates their rate is lower than ours. The differences are where the CPU comes from, what a stopped server costs, and a few features only one of us has.

Who each one is for

Exaroton is for players who want the cheapest metered hosting from an established name, on a CPU core shared with other servers. For many servers that works fine.

TrueTick is for players who want that same model on a CPU share the platform reserves for them, and who want MSPT next to TPS, to see the tick budget filling up before TPS drops.

The comparison

On a metered plan, neither of us bills for a server that's stopped. The table shows where the two products differ. Checked November 2026. Every Exaroton row links to their own docs:

	Exaroton	TrueTick
Metered rate	1 credit per GB of RAM per hour; 100 credits = €1, so €0.01 per GB-hour. They don't bill whole hours either: they "calculate the exact price and round it up to the next hundredth of a credit"	$0.012 per active GB-hour. At the ECB reference rate for 6 November 2026 (1 EUR = 1.1165 USD), their rate is about 7% below ours
Always-on, per GB	€7.20 per month at 24/7 (30 × 24 h × €0.01). "Servers on exaroton don't have a fixed monthly price"; metered is the only mode	$3/GB-month on the flat plan, under half their metered cost at November 2026 exchange rates
Idle cost	AutoStop stops an empty server for free. A stopped server still carries a storage fee of 10 credits (€0.10) a month, less every credit it spent running that month, and "If you do not have enough credits to pay the storage fee, we have to delete your server"	$0 while asleep on the metered plan. No storage fee, and a sleeping paid server isn't deleted when the balance runs out. From December 1, 2026, one that hasn't run for 60 days may be deleted; we email its owner at least 7 days before and keep a final backup
Wake on join	AutoStart boots the server when someone connects, for Java Edition and for Bedrock Edition on its latest version, at no charge	Wake-on-join, the same idea, for Java Edition
While it boots	Offline waiting lobby: players wait in a holding world and are transferred when it's up	Wake-limbo on Paper, Purpur and Vanilla servers from Minecraft 1.20.5 to 1.21.11: players wait in-game and get transferred; on other servers the join is held, and the player is asked to rejoin if the server isn't up yet
CPU	0.5 shared cores per GB: "a shared CPU core doesn't mean exclusive usage rights for a specific core but general usage equal to a single core if possible"	A reserved share per running server; admission control refuses to overcommit a node
Live metrics	TPS on the server page, Java Edition 1.16 and up	TPS, plus MSPT on Paper, Purpur, Forge and NeoForge, with nothing to install. Where the core prints percentiles (Paper, Purpur, Vanilla and Fabric from Minecraft 1.20.3) we also show the p95 tail; Forge, NeoForge and older Paper/Purpur print none, and the panel says so instead of drawing a flat line. On those same 1.20.3+ cores we count the rate off the world's own tick counter instead of inferring it from tick time; below 1.20.3 Vanilla and Fabric have no tick command at all
RAM	2 to 16 GB self-serve; more if you "contact our support if you have a valid use case"	up to 16 GB self-serve; 24 or 32 GB on request
Bedrock Edition	Bedrock servers: Vanilla, Preview and Nukkit	Java servers only; Bedrock players can join a flat-plan server through a crossplay add-on
Sharing the bill	Credit pools: "Share payments for your server with your friends"	One wallet per account

Where Exaroton is the right call

• You want the lowest metered rate. Theirs is lower. €0.01 per GB-hour against our $0.012 is about 7% in their favour at November 2026 exchange rates. If you're counting cents on a small server, that matters.
• Their case for shared cores holds for many servers. Their docs say assigning cores exclusively "would be much more expensive and is usually unnecessary since the full CPU power is only required during short load peaks." For a lot of servers that's true, and they price accordingly.
• You play Bedrock Edition. They host Bedrock servers, and AutoStart works for Bedrock too. We run Java servers; Bedrock players can only join one through a crossplay add-on on the flat plan, which never sleeps.
• Your friends want to chip in. Credit pools let several people pay for one server. Here, one account's wallet pays.
• You want backups in your own cloud. Exaroton can save backups to cloud storage such as Google Drive. Ours are stored with us, and each one has a Download button.

If your server is small, quiet and occasional, this is a close call and their price wins it.

Where it hits a ceiling

Their case for sharing cores rests on one assumption: that load peaks are short and don't line up. For many workloads that holds. For Minecraft it often doesn't: Friday evening is busy for everyone on the node at once, so a shared core is at its worst when your server is at its busiest.

So we don't make that assumption:

• A share we don't oversell. Every running server's CPU share is reserved, and admission control blocks creating or starting a server the node can't carry. When a node is full, the panel tells you so.
• MSPT and its tail as well as TPS. Exaroton shows TPS, so you'll see the drop. MSPT shows how much of the 50 ms tick budget each tick uses, so you can see trouble coming before TPS falls. On Paper, Purpur, Forge and NeoForge it's in the panel with nothing to install; on Vanilla and Fabric it arrives from Minecraft 1.20.3. The p95 tail catches stutter that an average hides: a world can average 48 ms and still stutter. Only cores that answer the vanilla tick command print percentiles, so the tail appears on Paper, Purpur, Vanilla and Fabric from 1.20.3 and nowhere else. Where a core prints none, the panel says so.
• A flat plan for when metered stops making sense. If the server is up 24/7, a flat plan is cheaper: their metering works out to €7.20/GB-month against our $3/GB-month flat, which is under half at November 2026 exchange rates.
• A sleeping server that costs nothing. Here a paid server costs nothing while it's asleep and isn't deleted when your balance runs out. It isn't kept forever, though: from December 1, 2026, a paid server that hasn't run for 60 days may be deleted. We email its owner at least 7 days before and keep a final backup of its files. On Exaroton a server owes a monthly storage fee unless it spent 10 credits running that month, and a server whose fee can't be paid is deleted.

Verdict

If you want the cheapest metered hosting from an established name, and a shared core is fine for your server, take Exaroton. They're good at this, and at November 2026 exchange rates their rate beats ours.

If you want the same model on a CPU share the platform refuses to oversell, MSPT for when something does go wrong, or a flat plan that costs less than metered on an always-on server, check the maths for your server or create one and watch the tick line yourself.