Minecraft Server Rules: Templates to Copy and How to Enforce Them

Minecraft Server Rules: A Template You Can Use Tonight, and How to Enforce It

Below are ten rules you can paste into your server tonight, then variants for a friends server, a public survival community and a PvP server. Each rule names one observable behaviour and says what counts, which is what makes it enforceable with the ladder and commands further down.

SERVER RULES (last changed 4 October 2026)

1. Do not break, move or build on anything another player made unless they gave you
   permission in writing (chat log, sign or Discord). "I thought it was abandoned" is
   not permission.
2. Do not take items from containers, item frames or animals you did not place or breed.
   Unlocked is not unowned.
3. No slurs, harassment, threats, sexual content or sharing of anyone's personal
   information. This applies to signs, books, item names and nicknames as well as chat.
4. Do not send more than three messages in a row without a reply from someone else, and
   do not write whole messages in capitals.
5. Do not advertise other servers, Discords or stores anywhere on this server, including
   in private messages and on signs.
6. Do not use clients or mods that give you information or abilities other players do
   not have: x-ray, kill aura, reach, auto-clicker, freecam, pathfinding bots. Shaders,
   performance mods and minimaps without cave or player radar are fine.
7. Do not build machines whose purpose or effect is to lag the server: clock-driven
   entity farms, chunk-loading networks, redstone clocks left running. Staff remove
   them without a rollback when TPS drops.
8. Do not use AFK pools, AFK fishing or anti-AFK devices. Idle players are kicked after
   30 minutes, automatically.
9. One account per person. A second account is banned on sight, and the main account
   with it.
10. Do not use bugs or exploits. If you find a duplication glitch, a way through a claim
    or a way to load chunks you should not, report it. Using it is a ban.

Breaking a rule gets the next step on the published punishment ladder. Appeals go in a
ticket within 7 days, not in chat, and are answered by a staff member who did not issue
the punishment.

Change the 30-minute idle time, the alt policy and the 7-day appeal window to yours, and keep the date on the first line: you will need it when a player says a rule did not exist when they joined.

Three variants

A private server for friends

Few rules, mostly about shared builds and trust, written as agreements because nobody here is a moderator or wants to be one.

HOUSE RULES (one world, eight of us, no staff)

1. Ask before touching anything someone else built. A sign with a name on it is a claim.
2. The chests at spawn are shared. Everything else is personal unless the chest is
   labelled "take".
3. We do the End, the dragon and the Wither together. Do not start them alone.
4. Keep the land within 300 blocks of spawn looking like land: no surface strip mines,
   no floating cobble pillars, no lava casts.
5. If you borrow something, leave a sign saying what you took and when it comes back.
6. Death loot belongs to the dead player. You do not have to fetch it for them, and you
   do not take it.
7. Farms stay under 50 mobs per chunk. When the server lags, the biggest farm is the
   first thing we switch off.
8. Only the owner has op. Ask for server changes in the group chat, not in game.

A public survival community

Strangers, claims and a staff team that has to apply the same rule to a hundred people. Headings help here: nobody reads a dozen rules, but everyone reads the heading that matches what they are about to do.

SURVIVAL RULES (last changed 4 October 2026)

Griefing and theft
1. Do not modify, damage or build within 50 blocks of another player's build without
   written permission from that player. Claimed land is protected by the plugin.
   Unclaimed land is still protected by this rule.
2. Do not take from containers, item frames, decorated pots or animals you did not
   place or breed. Unlocked is not unowned.
3. Do not kill another player's named, leashed or penned animals, pets or villagers.

Claims
4. Claim what you use. Claims whose owner has not logged in for 60 days may be removed
   to free the land.
5. Do not claim land around another player's build to enclose it or cut it off.

Chat
6. No slurs, harassment, threats, sexual content or sharing of anyone's personal
   information. This covers signs, books, item names and nicknames as well as chat.
7. No spam (more than three messages in a row without a reply, or whole messages in
   capitals) and no advertising of other servers, Discords or stores.
8. English in global chat. Any language in private messages and in your own claim.

Machines and lag
9. No machines designed to lag the server: clock-driven entity cramming, redstone
   clocks left running, chunk-loading networks. Every farm must have an off switch and
   must stop when you leave.
10. No AFK pools, AFK fishing or anti-AFK devices. Idle time is 30 minutes, then a kick.

Accounts, clients and exploits
11. One account per person. A second account is banned on sight, and the main with it.
12. Hacked clients, x-ray texture packs and freecam are a permanent ban on the first
    offence. There is no warning for this one.
13. Report duplication glitches, claim bypasses and other exploits; do not use them.
    Using one is a ban.

Punishments follow the published ladder. Appeals go in a ticket within 7 days.

A PvP or factions server

Almost everything is allowed, so the rules have to say exactly where the allowed part ends. The two arguments a PvP server has every week are "that was combat logging" and "that is an exploit, not a mechanic", and rules 4, 5 and 7 settle both in advance.

PVP RULES (last changed 4 October 2026)

What is fair
1. Killing, raiding and stealing are allowed everywhere outside spawn and the market.
   If you are outside those zones, you are a target. Do not report being killed.
2. Spawn and the market are safe zones. Attacking, trapping or luring players at the
   edge of a safe zone counts as spawn killing and is not allowed.
3. Insiding (betraying your own faction) is allowed. Choose who you trust.
4. Game mechanics are fair, including TNT cannons and pearling through a gap. Anything
   rule 7 lists is an exploit even if it has not been patched yet; if you are not sure
   which side something falls on, ask staff before you use it.

What is not fair
5. No combat logging. Logging out within 15 seconds of taking or dealing player damage
   kills your character where it stands and drops your inventory.
6. No hacked clients or combat mods: kill aura, reach, velocity, auto-totem,
   auto-clicker, x-ray, freecam. First offence is a permanent ban.
7. No bugs or exploits: duplication, phasing through blocks, chunk-border glitches,
   piston or TNT tricks that break into protected land. Report them. Using them is a ban.

Teams and alts
8. Ten members per faction at most, alt accounts included. An alt shares every
   punishment with its main.
9. Truces and trades are between players. Staff do not enforce them and do not refund
   scams.

Chat
10. Trash talk is allowed. Slurs, threats that refer to real life, and anyone's personal
    information are not, in chat, kill messages, faction names or item names.

Punishments follow the published ladder. Appeals go in a ticket within 7 days.

Rules that fail, and what to write instead

A vague rule fails the first time a player breaks it and argues, because a player about to be banned will defend any meaning that saves them. The enforceable version moves the argument to a fact: did you type this, did you place that, did you log out at this second. Facts have logs.

The rule that fails	What to write instead	Why it survives the argument
Be respectful.	No slurs, harassment, threats, sexual content or sharing of anyone's personal information, in chat, signs, books, item names or nicknames.	It lists acts that can be checked. The only question left is whether the words were typed, and chat is logged.
No cheating.	No clients or mods that give you information or abilities others do not have: x-ray, kill aura, reach, auto-clicker, freecam, pathfinding bots. Shaders, performance mods and radar-free minimaps are fine.	It settles "is a minimap cheating" before anyone asks, and a staff member can point at the name on the list rather than at an opinion.
No griefing.	Do not break, move or place blocks within 50 blocks of another player's build without written permission from that player.	A distance and a permission standard. The block log shows who placed what and where; "I was helping" and "it looked abandoned" are answered by the rule text.
No stealing.	Do not take from containers, item frames or animals you did not place or breed. Unlocked is not unowned.	It answers the most common theft defence in survival, "the chest was not locked", and container logs show the removal.
Do not be toxic.	Split into two rules: the conduct rule above, and a spam rule with a number (no more than three messages in a row, no messages in all capitals).	"Toxic" means whatever the complainant wants. Three messages is a count.
No lag machines.	No machines designed to lag the server: clock-driven entity cramming, redstone clocks left running, chunk-loading networks. Staff remove them without a rollback when TPS drops.	It names the designs and ties the action to a measurement. Nobody can argue with a TPS reading taken while their farm was running.
No AFK.	No AFK pools, AFK fishing or anti-AFK devices. Idle players are kicked after 30 minutes.	The server enforces the number itself through player-idle-timeout, so the rule never depends on a staff member being awake.
No alts.	One account per person. A second account is banned on sight, and the main account with it.	The old version invites "my brother plays from this house". The new one tells the player what will happen to the main, which is the part they care about.
Use common sense.	Delete it.	It is an admission that you did not write the rule. Players read it as "staff decide later", and staff read it as permission to improvise, which is how two moderators give two punishments for the same act.
Staff have the final say.	Appeals go in a ticket within 7 days and are answered by a staff member who did not issue the punishment.	Asserting authority starts the argument; a process ends it. It also protects you from your own moderators.
No swearing.	Either allow it, or list the words the filter blocks.	A rule you will not enforce every time teaches players that the other rules are optional too. Most survival communities allow swearing and forbid slurs, and say so.

Where to put the rules so players see them

Players rarely go looking for rules. They read what is in front of them while they join, which means three places.

1. The server list, before they join. motd in server.properties is the line shown under your server's name in the multiplayer list. The default is "A Minecraft Server", formatting codes work, and the wiki warns that going past 59 characters can break the list entry, so keep it to one short line with the game mode and where the rules are, such as Survival | Claims | Rules: /rules. It is read at startup, so change it and restart.
2. The join screen, in vanilla, since 1.21.9. Java Edition added a server code of conduct in snapshot 25w34a: set enable-code-of-conduct=true in server.properties, create a folder named codeofconduct next to that file, and put the rules in en_us.txt inside it (one file per language code; the server shows the player's language if a file exists for it and falls back to en_us). A player joining for the first time sees the text in a dialog with an Acknowledge button and a Disconnect button, and cannot play without acknowledging. A checkbox lets them skip it on later joins, but the dialog returns for everyone when the text changes. Java only; Bedrock has no equivalent.
3. Spawn, in the world. Signs along the path out of spawn carry the three rules that matter most (usually griefing, theft and chat), one per sign, with the rule number so it matches the full list. A written book in a lectern or dropped into the starter kit holds the whole list. Both survive a player who clicked through the join dialog without reading it, and both are protected by spawn-protection, which by default stops non-operators editing blocks in a square of side 33 around world spawn (the value is 16, the side is 2x+1).

The fourth place is a /rules command, which vanilla does not have. Most servers use the one from EssentialsX: /rules [chapter] [page] (alias /erules) prints the contents of plugins/Essentials/rules.txt, a file that is created the first time someone runs the command and is then edited like any text file. A line starting with # followed by a name starts a chapter, so a #chat heading makes /rules chat show just that section, and a file named rules_<groupname>.txt shows a different text to a permission group. Players need the essentials.rules permission, a node EssentialsX builds from the command name. Its documentation notes that these text files take its keyword placeholders but do not yet support MiniMessage formatting. Setup for the plugin itself is in the EssentialsX guide.

The enforcement ladder

Players accept punishments they could have predicted. Publish the ladder next to the rules, and a 7-day ban called "too harsh" has an answer: it is the second step for that class, and the player already had the first. Adjust the durations, not the shape.

Offence class	First response	Repeat	Final
Chat spam, capitals, mild insults, advertising	Named warning in chat, or a kick with the rule number as the reason	Mute for 1 hour, then 24 hours (plugin), or a kick on each occurrence in vanilla	7-day ban
Slurs, harassment, threats, personal information	7-day ban, no warning, chat log saved	Permanent ban	IP ban if they return on another account
Griefing, theft	Rollback of their changes, 24-hour ban	7-day ban	Permanent ban
Lag machines, AFK devices	Machine removed, warning recorded	24-hour ban	7-day ban, and the machine is not rolled back
Hacked clients, x-ray, combat mods	Permanent ban once the evidence is saved	IP ban on the first alt	Nothing further; the account is gone
Exploits and duplication	Items removed, 7-day ban	Permanent ban	IP ban on the first alt
Ban evasion with a second account	Both accounts banned permanently, IP banned	Pardon of the IP only if someone else in the household appeals	Not applicable
Staff abusing commands	Deop or group removed the same day, logs reviewed	Removed from the team	Banned like anyone else

The vanilla commands that implement it

Every command below is Java Edition, needs operator permission level 3, and works from the console without the leading slash or from chat with it. Where Bedrock differs, the row says so. Syntax and levels are the ones documented on the Minecraft Wiki as of 4 October 2026; the full command table with permission levels is in the admin commands reference.

Command	What it does on the ladder	Notes
kick <targets> [<reason>]	First response for chat offences. Disconnects the player, who can rejoin at once.	If you leave the reason out they see "Kicked by an operator." Cannot be run from a command block. Bedrock: kick <name: target> [reason: message], and it needs only level 1 there.
ban <targets> [<reason>]	Every timed or permanent ban on the ladder.	Adds the player profile to the server blacklist, which the wiki describes as blocking connections from that profile's UUID, so a name change does not evade it; the list is banned-players.json. The default reason is "Banned by an operator." A vanilla ban has no duration, so a 7-day ban is a note in your staff log and a pardon a week later. Java only: Bedrock Dedicated Server has no ban command.
ban-ip <target> [<reason>]	The alt step. Blocks a connection address rather than an account.	The target is either the name of a player who is online right now, in which case their current address is banned, or an IP address typed out. It cannot ban an IPv6 address. It also blocks everyone else who shares that address, which is why it is the last step and not the first. Java only.
pardon <targets>	Ends a timed ban, or a ban the appeal overturned.	Takes the player name. Java only.
pardon-ip <target>	Lifts an IP ban, usually after a sibling or flatmate appeals.	Takes the address, not a name. Read it back from banlist ips first. Java only.
banlist [ips|players]	Your audit of who is currently banned.	ips or players picks the list. The address you need for pardon-ip comes from banlist ips. Java only.
whitelist on, whitelist off	Turns the join gate on or off while the server runs.	A whitelist is the friends-server rule set in one command: nobody who was not invited can join, so most of the rules above never come up. off stops checking the list without emptying it. Operators always get in, listed or not. Bedrock calls the whole thing allowlist, stores it in allowlist.json, has no on or off subcommand, and does not let operators bypass it.
whitelist add <targets>, whitelist remove <targets>	Admits a player, or removes one without banning them, which is the right tool for "you are not welcome here" when nothing was broken.	The player does not need to be online for either. Removing someone who is online does not disconnect them unless enforce-whitelist=true is set in server.properties. Bedrock: allowlist add <name: string> and allowlist remove <name: string>.
whitelist list, whitelist reload	Shows the loaded list; re-reads whitelist.json after a hand edit.	With enforce-whitelist=true, a reload kicks anyone who is online and no longer on the list. Bedrock has allowlist list and allowlist reload.
op <targets>	Makes a staff member able to run everything above.	The new operator gets the level set by op-permission-level in server.properties, 4 by default, and is recorded in ops.json. Level 3 is enough for the whole moderation set; level 4 adds stop and the save commands. Dedicated server only. Bedrock: op <player: target>, recorded in permissions.json.
deop <targets>	The first response to staff abuse, and routine when someone leaves the team.	Fails if the target is not an operator. If you deop yourself in chat, only the console can put you back. Bedrock: deop <player: target>.

Vanilla Java Edition has no mute and no timed ban: the command list has neither mute nor tempban, which is why the ladder says "plugin" in places. EssentialsX adds both, and its own plugin definition gives /mute <player> [datediff] [reason] (which also unmutes) and /tempban <playername> <datediff> [reason]. Once EssentialsX is installed it also owns /kick, /ban and /unban, so a moderator typing /ban is running the plugin's version; /minecraft:ban forces the vanilla one.

The AFK rule needs no plugin. player-idle-timeout in server.properties is a number of minutes, 0 means never, and the server kicks on its own when it is reached; setidletimeout <minutes> changes it live and is also a level 3 command. Setting it to 30 and writing "30 minutes" in the rules is the whole implementation.

Chat floods need no plugin either. chat-spam-threshold-seconds and command-spam-threshold-seconds, both added in 26.2 with a default of 10, configure the server's own automatic kick for players who send too many chat messages or commands; 0 turns each off. Leave them on for a public server and raise them on a talkative one, and the server kicks floods before a moderator has to.

Evidence before punishment

A griefing ban without a block log is a guess, and the player and their friends will say so. Install a block logger on day one, not on the day of the first grief, so that every building punishment is provable and reversible.

On Paper, Spigot and Purpur that is CoreProtect. It records every block placed and broken, every container transaction, every chat line and every command, with the player and the time. A report takes three commands: /co i puts you in inspector mode, and clicking a block (or the air where one was) tells you who changed it and when; /co lookup with a player, a time window and a radius lists what they did; and /co rollback u:Name t:1h r:#global #preview shows what a rollback would undo before you commit to it. The griefer's work is reverted and nobody else's is touched. Inspect, preview, then act; the complete flag reference, the MySQL setup for bigger servers and the mistakes that cause a bad rollback are in the CoreProtect guide.

For chat offences, the server log has every chat line with a timestamp. Screenshot the log line, not the chat window, because the log carries the exact time. While log-ips in server.properties is true, which is the default, the log also records the address each player connected from; two accounts from one address in the same hour is how most alts are found.

Moderators without op

A chat moderator does not need op, and giving it to them means one angry evening can end with stop or a mass pardon. On Paper every vanilla command is exposed as a permission node named minecraft.command.<name>, none of which players hold by default, so a permissions plugin can hand out exactly the ladder: a moderator group gets minecraft.command.kick and the mute from EssentialsX, an admin group adds minecraft.command.ban, minecraft.command.ban-ip and minecraft.command.pardon, and only the owner keeps minecraft.command.op. How to build those groups, inherit them and test them as a non-op player (operators bypass every permission check, so testing as an op proves nothing) is in the LuckPerms guide.

Chat reports to Mojang

Since Java Edition 1.19.1 a player can report another player's chat messages to Mojang from the Social Interactions screen (the screen itself arrived in 1.16.4). The server owner is not part of that process: the wiki describes reports as reviewed manually by Mojang staff with the surrounding context, and the outcomes it lists are no action, a temporary or permanent ban from online play, and bans of a specific skin or name. You cannot see a report, approve it or cancel it. What you can decide is whether chat on your server is reportable at all.

That decision is enforce-secure-profile in server.properties, true by default, which the wiki describes as only allowing players with a Mojang-signed public key to join. With it on, chat messages are signed and a player can report them. With it off, messages are unsigned and cannot be reported, and clients get a warning when they connect. The usual reason to turn it off is the join error covered in cannot verify secure profile, typically on servers with Geyser, Floodgate or a proxy in front; that page's fix stands, and its cost is chat that cannot be reported. The wiki also notes that most public third-party servers do not have in-game reporting working, either because of the server software they run or because they disable it deliberately. On such a server your moderators are the only moderation, which is the case for the ladder above.

The rules the server itself must follow

The server is bound by two documents on minecraft.net, the Minecraft End User License Agreement and the Minecraft Usage Guidelines, and breaking them is the one offence on this page that can end the server rather than a player's account. What follows is a careful paraphrase of what those documents said when read on 4 October 2026, not legal advice; the guidelines themselves say Mojang will not advise whether a specific project complies and that you should ask a lawyer if unsure.

The EULA says you may install the server version of Java Edition on a server and host online play. It then says you must not distribute what Mojang has made, which it defines to include making commercial use of it, trying to make money from it, or letting people access it in a way that is unfair or unreasonable, and it points to the Usage Guidelines as the document that grants extra permissions beyond that, permissions it describes as something Mojang can change or withdraw. It also says Mojang would appreciate it if you did not use mods for griefing. Its community standards section states a zero-tolerance position on hate speech, bullying, harassment, threats and fraud, and reserves the right to suspend or permanently ban accounts that break them, which matters for your chat rules: a player's account, not just their place on your server, is at stake.

The Usage Guidelines have a section titled Servers and hosting, and it decides what your store may contain. Paraphrased:

• You may host a server, and you may charge for access to it, where a server means one connecting address.
• Access may only be granted to people with a genuine, paid-for copy of Minecraft, and may not be gated, directly or indirectly, on a player owning out-of-game content, products or services.
• If you charge for access, the price must be the same for everyone, everyone who pays must get every mod you have enabled (admin tools excepted), and you must own or control the server for the whole time you charge.
• Donations are fine as long as the donor does not get something only they can use. Server-wide rewards when a donation goal is met are explicitly fine.
• The sentence on ranks and perks, quoted exactly: "Selling entitlements that affect gameplay provided they don't ruin other players' experience or give a competitive advantage in the game".
• Cosmetics may be sold, except capes or anything that tries to look like a Minecraft player cape.
• In-game advertising is allowed if it does not hurt gameplay or give anyone a competitive advantage, and follows the guidelines' promotion rules.
• A server currency may be sold if it has no real-world value, cannot be cashed out, transferred to other servers or converted to real money, and does not look or sound like Minecoins or imply it comes from Mojang.
• Whatever you sell, the server and everything on it must be suitable for all ages; you are responsible for your players' data privacy; you may not hide or alter any of the game's own dialogs, including the EULA, warnings and error messages; anyone who pays you real money must be able to see a purchase history; content and pricing must be published before a person joins or signs up; and any influencer promoting the server has to disclose the relationship.
• Mojang reserves the right to decide whether the way you monetise is consistent with its brand.

Two more parts of the guidelines reach a server even if it never sells anything. The naming rules say the Minecraft name may appear only as a secondary part of your server's name or description, not the dominant part, and the document gives a server example in each direction. The essential guidelines ask for a prominent disclaimer that the product is not official and not approved by or associated with Mojang or Microsoft, naming servers among the things it applies to, along with a clear statement of who runs the server and how to contact them, where chat and forum links are not an accepted contact method. If your server has a website, a store or a vote page, that disclaimer and that contact belong on it.

Frequently asked questions

What are good rules for a Minecraft server?

Rules that each name one observable behaviour and say what counts. A public server needs about ten, covering griefing, theft, chat conduct, spam, advertising, named cheat clients, lag machines, AFK devices, alt accounts and exploits; the template at the top of this page is one such set.

How many rules should a Minecraft server have?

Between eight and twelve, one per enforceable behaviour. Past that, group them under headings, as the survival variant does, so a player finds the one that applies before acting. Merge rules that share a punishment and the evidence that proves them; split rules that do not.

How do you punish rule breakers on a Minecraft server?

Publish a ladder with a first, repeat and final response for each class of offence, save the evidence, then apply the step the ladder names rather than the one a moderator feels like. In vanilla Java that means kick for a warning, ban with the rule number as the reason, pardon when a timed ban ends, and ban-ip only for ban evasion, because it blocks everyone on that address. Mutes and bans that expire on their own need a plugin such as EssentialsX.

Can a Minecraft server sell ranks?

Yes, within Mojang's Usage Guidelines: cosmetics may be sold (not capes), and so may entitlements that affect gameplay, as long as they do not ruin other players' experience or give a competitive advantage in the game. If you charge for access, the price must be the same for everyone, a donation must not buy something only the donor can use, and content and pricing must be published before anyone joins. The guidelines do not define competitive advantage, so whether a given rank's perks cross that line is your judgement.

Related guides

• Server commands and permission levels for every command above with its level.
• server.properties reference for motd, enable-code-of-conduct, player-idle-timeout and the spam thresholds.
• CoreProtect for provable, reversible griefing bans.
• LuckPerms for moderator roles without op.
• EssentialsX for /rules, /mute and /tempban.
• WorldGuard and claims for protected spawn and safe zones that vanilla spawn protection does not cover.
• Cannot verify secure profile when enforce-secure-profile stops players joining.
• Server security for the attacks that are not rule breaking.
• RCON to run the moderation commands from outside the game.

Run these rules on Supercraft Minecraft hosting. Paper with CoreProtect, LuckPerms and EssentialsX installs from the panel, the console and server.properties are a click away for the ban list and the code of conduct folder, and daily backups mean a rollback that goes wrong is never the end of the world.