What a FiveM server really costs: three budgets for three kinds of server

The honest answer to "how much does a FiveM server cost?" is: between zero and several thousand euros a year, depending on what you plan. That helps nobody. So this article works out three concrete servers, with prices as they are in 2026, and counts the items most overviews leave out: time, anti-cheat, backups, voice.

The items

Budget 1: friends-only server, up to 16 players

Your own PC or the smallest game server host, Qbox with free scripts, pma-voice, a few free vehicles, Discord without bots. One-off 0 to 50 euros, monthly 0 to 10 euros. This is the server most people start with, and for friends it is enough. What is missing: anti-cheat (irrelevant among friends), support (you are the support) and time: expect 30 to 50 hours until it runs smoothly.

Budget 2: open server, 32 to 64 players

VPS with a fast core (20 to 40 euros), anti-cheat from day one, a framework with maintained systems. With an open framework and purchased scripts: one-off 400 to 1,000 euros, monthly 30 to 60 euros. With the 5MCustoms Pro subscription: one-off 0 to 300 euros for content, monthly 70 to 90 euros including anti-cheat and updates. Both routes land at 800 to 1,500 euros in the first year. The difference is time: on the open route 100 to 200 hours of setup are realistic, on the closed one 30 to 60.

Budget 3: whitelist project, 64 to 128 players

Dedicated server or large VPS (40 to 60 euros), custom vehicles, clothing and at least one custom police station as an MLO, website with applications, bots for tickets and whitelist, external voice server. One-off 1,500 to 4,000 euros, mostly for custom content, monthly 100 to 180 euros. Here a framework with vendor support pays off, because an outage on a Saturday evening costs 100 players, not five. And here time is the largest item: a project of this size needs a team of three to five people.

The items nobody thinks of

• Updates. A 40-euro script without updates costs either 40 euros for the new version after the next FiveM update or hours of repair.
• The second server. Anyone developing seriously needs a test server. That doubles hosting costs or the number of nights the live server is broken.
• Legal. Cars with real brand logos or music on the radio are free until the first cease-and-desist letter.
• Donations are not revenue. The Cfx.re rules allow cosmetic perks, not gameplay ones. Anyone wanting to fund the server through donations needs 100 active players before it works out.
• Your time. 100 hours of setup are the most expensive item on the list at any hourly rate.

Where saving makes sense and where it does not

Saving makes sense on content: ten good vehicles beat fifty mediocre ones, one custom police station is enough to start, clothing can grow. Saving does not make sense on hosting (a shared CPU core makes every server slow), on anti-cheat (one evening of mod menus costs more players than a year of subscription) and on backups (a lost database is the end of the project). How the server is then set up is in how to make a GTA RP server.

Justin Beil

Founder of 5MCustoms

Justin has been building FiveM servers, vehicles and scripts for years. 5MCustoms is the framework that grew out of it. What you read here comes from practice, not from a product sheet.

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