Valheim Start Server vs Community Server: what is the difference?
This is one of the most common points of confusion in Valheim, and the reason is that the game presents the two as if they were alternatives. They are not. They are two separate checkboxes on the same screen, and the second one only matters if the first one is already ticked.
Last verified: August 2, 2026.
The short answer
Start Server makes the world you are about to play joinable by other people. Community Server additionally advertises that world in the in-game public server browser so strangers can find it.
The single most important thing to understand: neither option is a dedicated server. In both cases the world runs on your own computer, inside your own game session. When you close Valheim, the world goes offline and nobody can play. That one fact is what sends most groups looking for a real server eventually.
The three ways to host, side by side
| Start Server only | Start Server + Community Server | Dedicated server | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the world runs | Your PC, inside your game | Your PC, inside your game | A separate machine, on its own |
| Who can join | People you give the password to | Anyone who finds you in the browser and has the password | Whoever you choose to share it with |
| Listed publicly | No | Yes, in the Community browser | Optional, you decide |
| Runs when you are offline | No | No | Yes |
| Your PC's performance affects everyone | Yes | Yes | No |
| Password required | Yes | Yes | Yes |
What Start Server actually does
Tick Start Server on the Start Game screen and Valheim opens your session to other players. In technical terms this is a listen server: your game client is simultaneously the host and one of the players. Friends connect to you.
You set a password when you start the world. Anyone with the password, and a way to reach you, can join. This is genuinely fine for a small group that plays together at the same time, and it costs nothing.
The limits are the ones you would expect from hosting inside a game client:
- The world only exists while you have Valheim open. If you go to bed, the server goes to bed.
- Your frame rate, your background downloads, and your upload bandwidth are now everyone's problem.
- You are the single point of failure. If your connection drops, everybody drops.
- You cannot play on a different world without taking the shared one offline.
What Community Server actually does
Community Server is an extra flag on top of Start Server. It publishes your session to the in-game community browser, the public list players see when they look for somewhere to play. You still need to be running the game, and joiners still need the password.
Two practical notes that catch people out:
- The list is slow. It can take roughly 10 to 15 minutes for a newly started server to show up in the Community browser. If yours is missing immediately after launch, that is usually normal rather than broken. See server not showing in the list if it never appears.
- A password is still mandatory. Public listing does not mean open access. Every online Valheim server requires a password, so "public" means discoverable, not passwordless.
Because the listing is public, expect join attempts from strangers. If you want to actually play with the wider community that is the point. If you only wanted your four friends, leave Community Server unticked, because the only thing it adds is visibility to people you did not invite.
Where crossplay fits in
Crossplay is a separate axis from both checkboxes. A crossplay session routes traffic through Microsoft's PlayFab relay rather than a direct connection, which is how players on other platforms reach you without port forwarding. That convenience costs you an extra network hop, so crossplay sessions are generally more prone to latency and timeouts than a direct Steam connection.
If everyone in your group is on Steam, you get a more stable session by leaving crossplay off. If you have friends on Xbox, PS5, or Switch 2, you need it. From September 9, 2026, when Valheim 1.0 launches simultaneously on PC, PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch 2 with full crossplay, far more groups will be mixed-platform, so this trade-off is about to matter to a lot more people. Setup detail lives in the crossplay setup guide.
When you should stop using both and get a real server
Neither checkbox is wrong. They are the right answer for a couple of friends doing a weekend run. Move to a dedicated server when any of these become true:
- People want to play when you are not around. This is the number one reason. A shared world that only opens when one specific person is online stops being fun quickly.
- Your group crossed roughly five or six regular players. Valheim caps at 10 players, and hosting inside a game client gets noticeably worse as you approach that.
- You are the host and you are also dying a lot. Hosting costs your machine performance in exactly the moments combat needs it.
- Your builds got big. Large bases are the main driver of server load in Valheim, more than player count.
- Players are spread across time zones or continents. Latency to a single home connection is a lottery. See desync fixes for what that feels like in practice.
Hardware needs are modest. Valheim is far more sensitive to single-core clock speed and network latency than to core count, and 4GB of RAM covers 2 to 10 players. Full numbers are in dedicated server requirements.
Common mistakes
- Thinking Community Server is the "better" option. It is not an upgrade, it is a visibility setting. Ticking it does not improve performance or persistence.
- Expecting a Community Server to stay up. It closes the moment you quit the game, same as any listen server.
- Assuming public means no password. It does not.
- Blaming the game when the list is empty. Give it 15 minutes before troubleshooting.
- Turning on crossplay when nobody needs it. You are adding a relay hop and its failure modes for nothing.
Related articles
- Dedicated server setup guide
- Dedicated server requirements
- Server not showing in the community list
- Are Valheim servers down?
- What a Valheim server costs
- Server settings reference
If you have reached the point where the world needs to stay up without you, a managed Valheim server runs on AMD EPYC hardware with a region picker, so you are not hosting the group off your own desktop.