How to host a Minecraft server on Starlink

Starlink puts you behind CGNAT, so port forwarding is not an option. What that means for hosting, and what the jitter does to everyone else.

The short version

Starlink assigns residential customers CGNAT addresses, so port forwarding is unavailable and a tunnel or mesh VPN is required. The larger question is jitter: satellite handovers and obstructions cause brief spikes that hit every player at once when your machine is the server, not just you.

Starlink puts residential customers behind carrier-grade NAT. There is no public IPv4 address to forward a port to, and no router setting changes that. It is a design choice rather than a fault.

That answers the connectivity half. The half people ask about less, and regret more, is whether Starlink is a good connection to host on at all.

#Confirming it yourself

Check the WAN address the Starlink router reports and compare it with any "what is my IP" site. They will not match, and the router's address will typically sit in the 100.64.0.0 to 100.127.255.255 range reserved for carrier-grade NAT.

Starlink has at times offered public IPv4 addressing on business tiers and in some markets. Availability changes, so check current options in your own account rather than trusting any guide, this one included.

Average latency on Starlink is usually fine for Minecraft. It is a survival game with forgiving netcode rather than a competitive shooter.

The problem is not the average. It is the variance.

Starlink hands your connection between satellites periodically, and a handover can produce a brief spike or a lost packet. Obstructions do the same: a tree at the edge of the dish's view causes short, repeating interruptions as satellites pass behind it.

When your machine is a client, a spike affects you. When your machine is the server, a spike affects everyone simultaneously. Every player rubber-bands at once, and to them it looks like an unstable server rather than one person's connection hiccupping.

The tell: everyone stutters at the same instant, in short bursts, on a rough cadence, while the server console reports healthy TPS. If TPS is sitting at 20 and everybody lagged together, the server did its job and the network did not.

#Reducing the damage

If you are hosting on Starlink regardless, these are the things that measurably help.

  • Clear the dish's view properly. Use the obstruction map in the Starlink app and take it seriously. Intermittent obstructions produce exactly the periodic stutter described above.
  • Wire the server machine to the router. Adding wifi variance on top of satellite variance compounds it.
  • Do not run large uploads while playing. Upload capacity is more constrained than download, and a server sends to every player continuously.
  • Keep the group geographically sensible. Starlink variance plus a transatlantic hop is a different proposition from Starlink alone.

Be realistic. Move it if any of these are true:

  • You run PvP, minigames, or anything where a half-second stall decides an outcome
  • Your group plays to a schedule and cannot have sessions spoiled by weather
  • You have more than a handful of players, since upload demand scales with player count
  • Your obstruction map shows anything meaningful and you cannot reposition the dish

Move it to hosting rather than to another home connection, unless that connection is wired.

Since port forwarding is unavailable, your options are a tunnel or a mesh VPN, exactly as with any CGNAT connection. Both work by making outbound connections, which Starlink handles normally.

A tunnel is usually the better fit, because it asks nothing of your players, and players on a Starlink-hosted server already have enough to put up with.

#Where Self Hostd fits

We build a tunnel, so read this with that in mind. Self Hostd gives the server on your machine a fixed public address without router changes, which solves the CGNAT half of the problem completely.

It does not solve the jitter half, and nothing on your side can. If satellite handovers are spoiling sessions for your group, the world needs to live somewhere with a wired connection. We would rather say that than sell you a tunnel that cannot fix it.

#Frequently asked questions

Not on a standard residential plan. Starlink places residential customers behind carrier-grade NAT, so there is no public IPv4 address to forward from. Public addressing has been available on some business tiers and in some markets, so check your own account.

For casual survival with a few friends, usually yes. Average latency is playable. The weakness is jitter from satellite handovers and obstructions, which causes brief stalls that hit every player at once because your machine is the server.

Because the interruption is on the server's connection rather than any individual player's. Check the server's TPS: if it reads 20 while everyone stuttered together, the server kept up and the network dropped out, which on Starlink usually means a handover or an obstruction.

Business tiers have offered public IP addressing in some markets, which solves the port forwarding problem. They do not remove satellite handovers, so the jitter characteristics remain broadly the same.

A tunnel is usually better, because players connect to a normal address and install nothing. A mesh VPN also works around CGNAT but asks every player to install a client, which is extra friction on top of a connection that already has some.

Written and maintained by the Hostd engineering team. Last updated 2026-08-11. Notice a mistake? Tell us.

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