Icarus hosting that doesn’t switch itself off.
Icarus ships with two shutdown timers set to five minutes — empty your server, walk away, and a stock host hands you what looks like an outage. We set both to never, and we tell you they exist. On a Ryzen 9 9950X, from $22/mo for 8 GB of guaranteed dedicated RAM, measured at 3.50 GB with a real Olympus world loaded before we priced it. The game caps co-op at 8 players, so nobody here sells you slots.
Icarus premium dedicated server hosting: from $22/mo · 8 GB dedicated RAM · AMD Ryzen 9 9950X · never oversold
Measured on our own node,
including the parts that make us look worse.
The memory floor, the shutdown defaults and the gaps in what we support were all decided on our own server — and the reasoning is published.
Both shutdown timers, set to never.
Icarus has ShutdownIfEmptyFor and ShutdownIfNotJoinedFor, and the game defaults both to 300 seconds. Five minutes after the last player leaves, a stock Icarus server turns itself off — which reads as a dead server to everyone who paid for it. We ship both at -1 so it stays up, we put both on the Settings tab as labeled fields with what each value does, and we would rather explain the trap than quietly paper over it and take the support ticket later.
3.50 GB with a world — so we sell 8.
Every host will tell you Icarus needs 8 GB. We can tell you what we read off the kernel on our own booted server: an Olympus open world with nobody on holds 3.50 GB unreclaimable, the same world with a player on it 3.71 GB. So the world is the cost and a player is about 200 MB. We also publish the number that would flatter us and mislead you — an Icarus server idling in its lobby with no world loaded reads 1.01 GB — because pricing off a lobby is how a 4 GB plan gets sold for a game that cannot run one.
No mods, no console — said plainly.
Icarus has no RCON, so admin commands are typed in-game after /AdminLogin, and we generate a unique admin password per server rather than shipping a shared one. We have not wired mod support for this game yet either. Both of those are worth more to you stated up front than discovered after you pay — you get the live log, power, backups, the file manager, a player count from the game’s own query port, and every documented server setting as a labeled field.
How much RAM does a Icarus server need?
An Olympus open world with nobody on holds 3.50 GB of unreclaimable working set on our own node, and 3.71 GB with a player on it — the world is the cost, a player adds roughly 200 MB. So the plan starts at 8 GB at $22, which is a full 8-player session with room to build. 12 GB is the rung for a long-running open world you intend to keep, or Icarus plus a second game in the same pool. ⚠ The number you will not see us price off: an Icarus server sitting in its lobby with no prospect loaded reads just 1.01 GB. That is the cost of the process, not the cost of hosting a world, and it is exactly how an undersized plan gets sold.
And if you would rather not choose: your RAM is a pool. Size up once and run Icarus and something else side by side on the same plan, with no second bill.
Straight answers, no pitch
How much does an Icarus server cost?
From $22/mo for 8 GB of guaranteed dedicated RAM, $32 for 12 GB, $41 for 16 GB or $59 for 24 GB. No setup fee, and no slot pricing — which matters more on this game than most, because Icarus itself caps co-op at 8 players. A host charging you per slot is charging you for a limit the developer already set.
How much RAM does an Icarus server need?
We measured our own, off the kernel rather than a padded dashboard figure. An Olympus open world with nobody on: 3.50 GB unreclaimable working set. The same world with a player on it: 3.71 GB — so the world is the cost and a player adds roughly 200 MB. An Icarus server sitting in its lobby with no world loaded holds only 1.01 GB, and we publish that number here rather than quietly pricing off it, because a lobby is not a game. 8 GB is the honest floor.
Why does my Icarus server keep shutting itself down?
Because Icarus ships that way, and almost nobody tells you. The game has two settings — ShutdownIfEmptyFor and ShutdownIfNotJoinedFor — and both default to 300 seconds. On a stock server that means five minutes after the last person leaves, the server switches itself off. It looks exactly like an outage and it is not one. We ship both at -1 (never) so your server stays up, and both are labeled fields in the panel if you would rather have the original behaviour back.
How do I start a world — open world or a mission?
You pick it in-game, on the first join. Your server boots to the Server Lobby, you connect, and you choose the prospect — an open world like Olympus or Styx, or one of the timed missions — along with its difficulty. That is Icarus’s own design, not a limitation of ours, and it means nobody has to upload a save or ask support to generate a world. We leave anyone can start a prospect switched on by default; turn it off in Settings if you want that to be admin-only.
Can I play the DLC maps — Styx, Prometheus, Elysium?
Yes, and there is nothing extra to buy from us. We checked our own server image rather than repeating what other hosts say: all four maps ship inside the base dedicated-server download, so our servers can already run Styx, Prometheus and Elysium and there is no DLC surcharge on any plan. The map is not a server setting at all — it lives inside the prospect, and the prospect is created in-game, so whoever starts it has to own that DLC on their own Steam account. ⚠ Assume everyone who wants to join needs to own it too. We have not tested a mixed group yet, and we would rather warn you and turn out to be wrong than have you buy a plan your friends cannot play on — when we have tested it, this answer will say what we found. One thing worth knowing either way: if the server owner does not own the DLC but a friend does, that friend can only start the prospect while Anyone can start or load a prospect is left on in your settings.
How do I join my server?
Two ways, and both work. Paste the address from your panel into Icarus’s direct-connect box — the game looks the server up, shows you its details, and you click Join. Or find it in the in-game Dedicated Servers browser (HAB → Join Session → toggle top-right). ⚠ One honest warning about this game: a first connection attempt failing and the second succeeding is normal Icarus behaviour, widely reported and not specific to any host. If it drops you once, try again before assuming the server is down — and check the panel, which shows a live player count read from the game’s own query port.
My server isn’t showing up in the in-game server browser — is it down?
Almost certainly not, and this one is the game, not the host: the in-game browser loads a few hundred entries out of 1,200+ live servers, so any given server appears on the list sometimes and not others. We have watched our own server vanish from the browser while people were playing on it. Use direct connect — paste the address from your panel and the game resolves your server through Steam every time. The browser is a shop window, not the door. And after a start or restart, give it about five minutes: the server registers with Steam right away — we have watched it appear in Steam’s own registry — but the listing and direct-connect resolution take a few minutes to propagate, and that lag is Steam’s, not the server’s. If direct connect still fails after that, check the panel: it shows a live player count read from the server itself, which settles “is it actually up” in one glance.
How do updates work? Icarus patches nearly every Wednesday.
This game enforces version lockstep: the moment Steam updates your client, a server on the old build refuses the join — which makes update discipline the single most important thing an Icarus host does, and the most common complaint about self-hosting. Ours are automatic: we detect the patch, build the new server image, boot it and prove it actually answers before it is allowed anywhere near your server, twice a day. Your world is snapshotted before every update touches it, so a bad patch day costs you nothing.
Does Icarus save automatically, and can I force a save?
It saves on its own — GameSaveFrequency and SaveGameOnExit are settings the game writes itself — and it writes the world when it shuts down cleanly, which is what the panel’s Stop button does. There is no force-save button for Icarus in the panel, and we would rather say that than imply one: the game exposes no admin channel we could send it through. Take a backup from the Backups tab if you want a point you can return to.
Why does an Icarus server stutter or lag sometimes?
Mostly the game, and it helps to know which part. Icarus writes its autosave on a timer — ten minutes by default, a labeled setting in your panel — and a heavily-built world hitches while that write happens, because the save tracks every stump you cleared and every rock you moved. The developer’s own issue tracker has an open report of busy worlds freezing briefly during saves. What genuinely helps: a longer save interval if the hitching bothers you, and an occasional restart, because Unreal servers slowly grow their memory use over days of uptime and a restart hands it back. What does not help is more RAM — our 8 GB floor already has measured headroom over a full server.
Where is my world actually stored, and can I download it?
One JSON file per prospect, in Saved/PlayerData/DedicatedServer/Prospects — open the file manager and you are looking at it, and you can download it whenever you like. Two warnings straight from the developer’s own documentation: never rename the file (the name is part of the save — renaming corrupts it), and never upload or edit while the server is running — stop it first. The Backups tab covers the same file automatically on a schedule, plus a snapshot before every game update.
Can I move my existing co-op world onto the server?
Yes — and if your group has hundreds of hours in a world someone hosts from their PC, this is the whole reason to rent: the world stops depending on one person’s computer being on. Your local prospect lives at %localappdata%\Icarus\Saved\PlayerData\<steam id>\Prospects on the host player’s PC — one JSON file named after the prospect. Stop your server, upload that file into Saved/PlayerData/DedicatedServer/Prospects with the file manager — keeping the filename exactly as it is — start the server and load it from the lobby, or set Always load this prospect in Settings. Characters, levels and talents live with each player’s account rather than in the world file, so everyone keeps their progress.
What ports does Icarus use?
Two UDP ports, and we allocate and publish both for you — a game port and a query port — so there is nothing to forward and nothing to configure. Worth knowing if you have read the setup guides, because it surprises people: Icarus never opens the game port for direct traffic — we watched a successful join land while that port carried literally zero packets. The address is a lookup, not a pipe: the game resolves your server through Steam from it and the play traffic goes over Steam’s own transport. That is why pasting the address works, why there is nothing for you to port-forward, and why a port checker pointed at the game port will tell you your server is down when it is fine.
Can I use Icarus mods?
Yes — one click. Your panel’s Mods tab lists the community’s pak mods ranked by their real download counts from the authors’ own GitHub releases; installing downloads the pak from the author’s release directly into your server’s mods folder — we host nothing and the credit stays theirs. Restart and it’s live: we verified the game mounting a pak through that exact folder in its own log before shipping the button. Your mods live in your save volume, so they survive game updates and ride your backups. One honest warning, said everywhere it matters: every player who joins needs the same pak files installed on their own PC. The full walkthrough — by hand, configuring, troubleshooting — is at Icarus server mods.
Does the panel have a console for Icarus?
No, and that is the game rather than us. Icarus has no RCON — its admin commands (/KickPlayer, /BanPlayer, /AdminSay) are typed into in-game chat after /AdminLogin, and we generate a unique admin password per server so that door is never left open. You get the live log, power controls, every setting as a field, the file manager, backups and a player count — but admin commands happen in-game on this title.
Can I whitelist players, or is a password the only gate?
A password is the only join gate Icarus offers — there is no join whitelist in the game, so if you don’t want strangers, set Join password in Settings; the in-game browser shows your server to everyone either way. What the game does have is the reverse: an admin allowlist. A file called AdminWhitelist.txt in the server’s Saved folder takes one Steam ID per line, and those players get admin automatically on join with no password typed in chat. Bans work the same file-shaped way — /BanPlayer writes to a saved ban list that survives restarts, and /UnbanPlayer is the way back out.
Which server settings can I actually change?
All of them that do anything. Icarus’s dedicated server reads sixteen keys from its config, and every one that is safe to touch is a labeled field in the panel: server name, join and admin passwords, player slots, both shutdown timers, prospect resume and load, who may start or delete prospects, fibre and stone regrowth, the autosave interval, and save-on-exit. The three we hold back have their reasons printed right next to them: one does nothing (SessionName — the name really travels on the command line), one would create a brand-new world on every boot (CreateProspect), and one is state the game writes for itself (LastProspectName). We diff our panel against the file the game itself writes, on every deploy, so this claim is checked by a machine rather than remembered by a person.
I found a cheaper Icarus server — why should I pay more?
Ask them how much RAM you get. Most of the time nobody can tell you, including their support, because the plan is sold in “slots” and a slot has no size. Then ask where their 8 GB figure came from. Every Icarus host quotes it — but RocketWerkz never published a dedicated-server requirement at all. The 16 GB on the Steam page is what the GAME needs on your own PC, not what a server needs. So 8 GB is a number the hosting industry copied from itself, and we could not find a source for it. We measured ours instead: an Olympus open world holds 3.50 GB with nobody on and 3.71 GB with a player, read off the kernel on our own node. That is why we sell 8 — the measured floor with real headroom on top, rather than a figure we inherited. They sell “slots” or “players” instead, and a slot price cannot be compared to anything: there is no number to divide. That is not an oversight, it is the design. We sell RAM by the gigabyte, we publish the floor we measured on our own server, and you can do the arithmetic on us — which also means you can do it on anyone else who is willing to show you the number. ⚠ And it matters after you buy, not just before: when a slot-priced server starts stuttering, there is no figure you can check and nothing you can hold anyone to.
Can PS5 or Xbox players join my server?
No — and we would rather tell you before you pay than after. Icarus: Console Edition (March 2026) has no crossplay with PC and no dedicated-server support at all: console sessions only exist while the host’s console is running. A rented Icarus server is for the Steam PC edition only. If RocketWerkz changes that, this answer changes the same week.
Is there free Icarus server hosting?
Not really, and the arithmetic says why: Icarus genuinely needs 8 GB of RAM and a rebuilt server image nearly every Wednesday, and nobody gives that away — “free” tiers pay for themselves by oversharing the hardware, which is exactly what this game cannot tolerate. If the budget is zero, the honest answer is self-hosting on a PC you already own: it works, it costs your electricity and your Wednesdays, and our sister site publishes a full self-hosting setup guide. When the update treadmill gets old, we are here.
Does my RAM get shared with other servers?
No. What you buy is yours, sitting idle if you are not using it — that is the part that costs us and the reason we are not the cheapest line on a comparison page. A box only holds so many gigabytes; a host that sells more than it has is betting your server and someone else’s will not get busy at the same time. That bet is invisible until the night it is wrong, which is usually the night everyone is playing.
Can I switch my server to another game later?
Yes, and your Icarus prospect stays put. Switching moves your plan’s RAM to a different game; switch back and the world is waiting. No second bill, no reinstall, and no extra charge — the plan is a pool of RAM, not a slot in a box.
Your Icarus server —
every setting in your panel.
The config tools we built for self-hosters — now built into the host. No files, no SSH.
