Understanding Server Uptime and Why It Matters

Explains the 7-day uptime metric, how pings work, what good uptime looks like, and how it affects rankings.

What Is Uptime?

Uptime is the percentage of time a server was reachable and responding to pings over a given period. On this server list, we display a 7-day uptime metric on every server card and detail page.

A high uptime means a server is stable and reliable. A low uptime signals that the server frequently goes offline, which can drive players away.

How We Measure Uptime

Regular Pinging

Our system pings every listed server on a regular schedule from multiple regions. Each ping attempt:

1. Connects to the server using the Minecraft protocol (TCP for Java, UDP/RakNet for Bedrock).
2. Records whether the server responded (online: true/false).
3. Captures the current player count, max players, latency, version, and MOTD.
4. Stores the result with a timestamp.

The 7-Day Calculation

The 7-day uptime percentage is calculated as follows:

• We collect all ping results from the past 7 days.
• Results are deduplicated per region to avoid over-counting.
• Uptime = (number of successful pings / total number of pings) × 100

For example, if there were 1,000 ping attempts in the past week and 980 were successful, the 7-day uptime is 98%.

Multi-Region

Pings come from multiple regions. If any region reports the server as online, that ping is counted as successful. This means a server that’s reachable from at least one of our pinging locations is considered online for that check.
This is an important measure we take to reduce false-positives.

What Good Uptime Looks Like

Uptime is color-coded on the site to help you assess reliability at a glance:

For context, 95% uptime over 7 days means the server was down for roughly 8.4 hours total. 99% uptime means about 1.7 hours of downtime.

Where Uptime Appears

Server Cards

Every server card on the browse page, gamemode pages, and other listings shows the 7-day uptime percentage.

Server Detail Page

The detail page shows uptime alongside players, latency, and votes in the stats section.

Status Page

Each server has a dedicated status page accessible from the detail page. It shows:

• Stat tiles: players, uptime 7d, latency, best region (unless the owner has hidden it), address, and (for Crossplay) Bedrock address.
• 24-hour player chart: a graph of player count over the past 24 hours.
• Daily uptime table: a 7-day breakdown showing, for each day, the number of successful pings, total pings, and a progress bar with the percentage.

Compare Tool

The compare tool shows 7-day uptime for each server, color-coded so you can spot the most reliable option at a glance.

Dashboard

Server owners can see uptime for all their servers in the dashboard and monitor trends over time.

How Uptime Affects Rankings

Uptime doesn’t directly determine sort order, but it affects your listing in several ways:

• Browse sorting: the default sort is by player count, and servers that are offline have zero players, so they sink to the bottom naturally.
• Online filter: players can toggle “Online only” on the browse page, filtering out offline servers entirely.
• Player trust: players are more likely to join and vote for servers with high uptime. More votes mean better ranking on the top page and voting leaderboard.

Improving Your Server’s Uptime (for Server Owners)

If you’re a server owner and your uptime is lower than you’d like:

1. Check your hosting - make sure your server has adequate resources (CPU, RAM) and isn’t being killed by your host for resource limits.
2. Monitor crash logs - frequent crashes tank your uptime. Fix plugin issues, update software, and watch for memory leaks.
3. Use a restart script - set up automatic restarts on crash so downtime is minimized if the server does go down.
4. Verify your firewall - make sure the game port is open for inbound connections from all regions, not just your local area.
5. Use the status checker - periodically check your server with the status checker from different regions to verify reachability.
6. Keep your server updated - outdated server software can cause instability. Stay on a stable build.

Common Questions

My server was down briefly but uptime dropped a lot - why?

If the downtime happened during a period when pings were frequent, a short outage can still account for many missed pings. The 7-day window means even brief outages have a measurable impact. As time passes and the outage falls outside the 7-day window, your uptime will recover.

Why is my uptime different from what I see in my hosting panel?

Your hosting panel may only track whether the server process is running, not whether it’s reachable from the internet. Our pingers check from external locations, so a server that’s running but unreachable (e.g. due to a firewall or network issue) will show as offline in our system.

Can I see individual ping results?

The status page shows daily aggregates. For real-time checks, use the status checker to ping your server on demand from a specific region.