CHUNKYHOST
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exaroton invented pay-per-play. We just gave it a flat cap.

Let us concede this up front: exaroton, built by the Aternos team, has sold genuine pay-per-use hosting for years. Our idea of billing only while you play is not new — they did it first, and they do it well. ChunkyHost differs by trading the metered meter for a flat, predictable cap on dedicated hardware.

Last updated 15 June 2026 · prices re-checked 15 June 2026

▎ THE VERDICT ▎

Stay on exaroton if your play is light and unpredictable and you would rather pay cents some months and nothing others. Switch to ChunkyHost when you want a fixed monthly price you can budget around, dedicated hardware instead of a shared pool, and Australian metal close to home — without a surprise bill after a heavy month.

When exaroton is the better choice

  • Very light, irregular play on a small server. A 2 GB world played a handful of hours a month costs roughly cents at about EUR 0.01 per GB per hour — that beats our $4/mo entry plan.
  • You play rarely and unpredictably and do not want any fixed monthly price at all — prepaid credits only draw down when the server is actually running.
  • You want the original, battle-tested pay-per-use model from the team that pioneered it.
  • Broad shared-pool regions matter more to you than dedicated hardware or Australian nodes.

exaroton vs ChunkyHost

exaroton ChunkyHost
Billing model Pay-per-use: ~EUR 0.01/GB/hr from prepaid credits Flat plan from $4/mo (modded $12) — your price is the cap
Monthly cost predictability Varies with usage; heavy months cost more Fixed — flat monthly or yearly (−30%), no usage surprises
Idle handling Auto-shutdown after a short idle period Hibernation; warm wake-on-connect; $0 charge while idle
Hardware Shared server pool Dedicated metal: Ryzen 9 7950X3D, DDR5 ECC, Gen-4 NVMe RAID-1
Regions Broad shared-pool regions AU (Sydney, Melbourne, Perth) plus US, EU, Japan, Brazil
Performance visibility Standard panel Live TPS/MSPT graphs (Spark + Pufferfish)
Trial Prepaid credits (pay before you play) 7 days, no credit card

Where exaroton falls short

  • Metered per-GB-per-hour billing means a heavy month — a big modpack with friends online a lot — can cost noticeably more than a flat plan, and the bill is hard to predict in advance. (exaroton documents its pay-per-use, credit-based pricing model.)
  • Servers run on a shared pool, so you cannot pin dedicated CPU for a demanding modpack the way you can on dedicated hardware.
  • No Australian nodes, so AU players take a longer round trip than they would on local metal.

How switching works

Moving over is one click: ChunkyHost auto-imports worlds from Aternos, Apex, BisectHosting and Shockbyte, so you can lift your save across without zipping and re-uploading by hand.

FAQ

Is exaroton or ChunkyHost cheaper?
It depends on how you play. For very light, irregular use on a small server, exaroton can cost just cents a month at about EUR 0.01/GB/hr — cheaper than our $4/mo entry plan. If you play regularly or run a big modpack, a flat plan usually costs less than a metered bill and never surprises you. You can read exaroton’s model at support.exaroton.com.
Did ChunkyHost copy pay-per-play from exaroton?
exaroton pioneered pay-per-use hosting and deserves the credit — we are not claiming the idea. Our take is a flat monthly or yearly price that acts as a hard cap, on dedicated hardware, so you get fair billing without a variable meter.
What happens when nobody is online?
Both stop billing idle servers. exaroton shuts the server down after a short idle period; ChunkyHost hibernates and wakes the instant a friend connects, and you are charged $0 while it sleeps.
Will I lose my world if I switch from exaroton?
No. You can download your world from exaroton, and ChunkyHost also auto-imports worlds from Aternos, Apex, BisectHosting and Shockbyte, so your save comes across intact.
Why pick a flat plan over pay-per-use?
A flat plan is predictable: you know the exact price every month and a heavy play week never inflates the bill. You also get dedicated hardware and Australian nodes — and you can try it 7 days with no credit card before committing.

Try it free for 7 days

No credit card. Spin up a server in 60 seconds and only pay while you actually play.

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