You spun up a Minecraft server on your gaming PC. The Valheim world your group has been playing lives on a laptop in your bedroom. The friend who hosts the Terraria save just bought a router whose admin password he no longer remembers. You all want the same thing: a stable address friends can paste into the game without anyone editing port forwards or learning what UPnP is.
That is the niche tunnels were born for, and it is where Nodetonet's pay-as-you-go model genuinely shines — because you only pay on the days you actually play. Read on to see exactly how the setup works, what it costs, and where the limits are.
The problem with self-hosted game servers
Hosting from your home connection runs into four predictable walls:
- CGNAT. Many ISPs — especially mobile-broadband and budget fiber providers — put you behind carrier-grade NAT. No router port forward can help; there is no public IP to forward from. This affects a significant portion of home internet users worldwide.
- Dynamic IPs. Even when you do have a public address, it changes whenever your modem reboots. Everyone's saved server entry breaks, someone posts the new IP in the group chat, and someone else misses it.
- Router complexity. Asking five friends to type your IP and "port 25565" works exactly once before someone fat-fingers it or an ISP line-blip changes the address again.
- Cost when idle. Renting a 24/7 VPS for a server you actually play six hours a week is wasteful. The server idles 95% of the time while you keep paying.
The textbook fix is a tunnel — same concept as ngrok or Playit.gg — but most alternatives charge a flat monthly fee whether or not you play. Nodetonet's model is different: prepaid credit, charged only on days the tunnel is active. Stop the proxy when nobody is connected; it costs nothing until you resume it.
How Nodetonet fits game-server hosting
Nodetonet today supports HTTP and raw TCP tunnels via its HTTP tunnel feature. Minecraft Java, Terraria, Valheim's dedicated server (TCP-style transport), TeamSpeak query ports, Mumble, and web admin panels all work today over a TCP tunnel.
UDP support is on the public roadmap. When it lands, Valheim's native UDP transport, Source-engine games, Minecraft Bedrock, and most voice servers will work automatically. Until then, purely-UDP games need an alternative (see the comparison table below).
The tunnel runs through one of Nodetonet's edge servers. You pick the region closest to your player group — EU, US-East, and others — to minimise added latency. The choosing the right edge server guide walks through the decision.
Nodetonet vs Playit.gg — side-by-side
| Feature | Nodetonet | Playit.gg |
|---|---|---|
| TCP tunnels | Yes | Yes |
| UDP tunnels | Roadmap | Yes |
| Custom domain | Yes, all plans | Premium only |
| Pause/resume billing | Yes — idle = $0 | Monthly subscription |
| Region choice | Multiple edge servers | Multiple regions |
| Pricing model | Prepaid credit, per-day-active | Free tier + monthly plan |
| REST API | Yes — start/stop/create tunnels programmatically | Limited |
| VPN included | Yes (same panel) | No |
Playit.gg is a solid choice when you primarily need UDP today and the free tier suits your volume. Nodetonet wins when you want a real custom domain without paying for a subscription, and especially when you want to auto-pause on empty days and save the difference. The REST API also lets you script pause/resume so you never forget to turn it off. See also how Nodetonet routes traffic for a deeper architectural picture.
Step-by-step setup (five minutes)
- Start your game server locally as you normally would — for example,
java -jar paper.jaron port 25565. - Sign up at nodetonet.com/register and top up a small credit balance. A tunnel active every day of the month costs roughly $1.
- Navigate to HTTP Tunnels in the panel and create a new TCP proxy pointing to
127.0.0.1:25565. Choose the edge region closest to your players. - Bind a custom domain — for example
mc.yourname.dev— by pointing a CNAME record atcname.nodetonet.com. The TLS certificate issues automatically in about 30 seconds. (The TCP passthrough layer uses raw port, not HTTPS; the cert applies to the web panel port if you add one.) - Share
mc.yourname.dev:25565in the group chat. Friends add it once and it never changes again, even if your home IP rotates.
For a full walkthrough including agent installation, see how to use Nodetonet. If you want an auto-renewing certificate on the subdomain, Let's Encrypt auto-renewal covers the setup.
Automate pause/resume with the REST API
The most powerful money-saving trick is auto-pausing when the last player disconnects. A short script that polls Minecraft via RCON and calls the Nodetonet REST API can cut costs by 70-80% on a server you only play on weekends:
#!/bin/bash
# pause-when-empty.sh — run every 5 minutes via cron
API="https://nodetonet.com/api/v1"
TOKEN="your_api_token_here"
PROXY_ID="prx_abc123"
# Ask Minecraft how many players are online via RCON
PLAYERS=$(mcrcon -H localhost -p secret "list" | grep -oP 'are Kd+')
if [ "$PLAYERS" = "0" ]; then
curl -s -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" "$API/proxies/$PROXY_ID/stop"
echo "$(date): empty, paused tunnel"
fi
Pair that with a Discord bot so a friend can type !mc-on — the bot POSTs to /proxies/<id>/start — and you have an on-demand server that costs almost nothing. The programmatic tunnel creation post shows equivalent Python examples, and your first REST API call explains authentication. You can also view monitoring your tunnel health to set up uptime alerts.
What this costs in practice
A single TCP tunnel costs a fixed daily rate while active. Three realistic scenarios:
- Always-on Minecraft for a friend group — tunnel active all 30 days: roughly $1 per month.
- Weekends-only Valheim — eight active days per month, auto-paused otherwise: under $0.30 per month.
- "We get together once a month" — one active day: a few cents per session, essentially free.
Compare that to renting a $4/month VPS just to run a tunnel (you still need to set up the server software, and it runs 24/7 whether you play or not), or a Playit.gg paid plan at $3-9/month with no per-day pause. The pay-as-you-go pricing post has a worked-out comparison for several workload shapes.
Latency: what to expect
Any tunnel adds a network hop between you and your players. Choosing the edge server in the same region as your player group keeps that overhead low — typically single-digit to low double-digit milliseconds extra. For casual co-op games like Minecraft, Terraria and Valheim this is invisible; most players will not notice a 10ms difference in a game where you are mining blocks or surviving the night together.
For competitive, reaction-speed-sensitive games (Source-engine PvP, shooters) where every millisecond matters, a tunnel is not the right tool regardless of provider. Host on a VPS in the same datacenter region as your players for those.
When Nodetonet is not the right fit
- Strictly UDP games today. Until our UDP launch, Valheim's native transport, Minecraft Bedrock, Source-engine games and Mumble will not tunnel. Playit.gg handles these cases today.
- High-population public servers. Fifty-plus concurrent players on a bedroom PC is a problem for both the tunnel and the machine. At that scale, dedicated game-hosting infrastructure is the right call.
- Zero-tolerance for any added latency. If your use case cannot absorb even 5ms of overhead, a tunnel of any kind is the wrong tool.
Beyond game servers: VPN and proxies in the same panel
Nodetonet is not only a tunnelling tool. The same account gives access to mobile proxies, rotating proxy pools, VPN, and HTTP tunnels — all managed from one panel on prepaid credit. If you also want to browse from a different country, verify geo-specific prices, or share one IP across a team, those features are already included. See how VPN vs proxy differ so you pick the right tool for each task.
Ready to give your game server a permanent address? Create an account and have your first tunnel running in five minutes. For questions, reach us at support@nodetonet.com or on Discord.