Free SA-MP Hosting
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The SA-MP server software — SAMP, as most people search for it — has always been free, and so is open.mp, its maintained successor. So it is a fair question why anyone pays to host one. The answer is that the software was never the expensive part: the expensive part is a machine that stays online, on a connection that survives a flood, every hour your players might turn up.
This guide goes through every free option people actually use — free game-server hosts, free VPS trials, a friend's box and your own PC — and says plainly which of them hold up and what gives out first. It describes how each one behaves rather than quoting anyone's plan limits, because those change and a wrong number would be worse than none.
The short answer
Yes, you can run a SA-MP server for nothing. No, you will rarely find free hosting that keeps one online reliably for a community. The one free option that genuinely works is your own computer, left on — and even that costs you in electricity, your home connection and your attention.
| Option | Free? | Stays online unattended? | What gives out first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your own PC | Yes | While it is on and your connection holds | A reboot, a power cut, your home IP being flooded |
| A free game-server host | Yes | Rarely | Shared CPU, player caps, idle shutdowns, no flood filtering |
| A free VPS trial | For a while | Until the trial ends | The end date, then a bill or a wipe |
| A friend's server | Yes | As long as the friendship does | Their priorities, not yours |
| A paid slot plan | From €2.58/mo | Yes | Nothing you have to manage |
If you are writing a gamemode and testing it with two friends, free is exactly right — stay on your own PC. If people are joining who you do not know personally, read on: the failure modes below are the ones that empty a server.
Skip the trade-offs: a HytHost SA-MP server with MySQL, DDoS filtering and a fixed IP and port starts at €2.58/mo.
See SA-MP plansWhat free hosting actually costs you
Free hosts are not free to run, so they recover the cost somewhere. It is worth knowing where, because each one shows up in your server in a specific way.
Shared CPU shows up as lag
A SA-MP server does its work on a single thread. When a free host packs many servers onto one machine — which is how it can afford to give them away — the busiest neighbour decides how fast your server ticks. Players do not see "CPU contention"; they see rubber-banding and delayed hits, and they blame your gamemode.
Caps that arrive the day you grow
Free plans usually cap players, scripts or storage. It does not matter while you are testing. It matters the evening your server fills up, because that is exactly when the cap turns people away.
No flood filtering
SA-MP runs over UDP, and UDP servers attract floods — sometimes from a rival community, sometimes just because the server is listed. Filtering that traffic costs the host real money, so a free host has no reason to do it for you. The usual outcome is not an error message; it is your server silently vanishing from the list for an hour.
Idle shutdowns and missing pieces
Some free hosts stop a server nobody is on, and it stays down until you log in and start it again. Others leave out the parts a real server needs: a MySQL database for accounts and houses, backups, or the ability to install the plugins your gamemode depends on.
The host's name on your server
Ads in the hostname, a forced prefix, a banner on join — this is often the actual business model, and it is a fair trade for a test server. It is also the first thing a new player notices.
SA-MP or open.mp: what you would be hosting
Before comparing hosts, it helps to be clear about the software, because "SA-MP" now means two things.
- SA-MP 0.3.7 is the original server. Its last Linux build, 0.3.7-R2, dates from July 2015, and it has not been updated since. It still runs, it runs every classic gamemode, and it is what most long-lived communities are on.
- open.mp is the actively maintained, open-source successor. It is backward-compatible with SA-MP scripts, so existing gamemodes generally carry over, and it keeps getting releases and fixes — the current release line is 1.5.8, published in December 2025, with Linux and Windows builds.
Both are free, and both listen on UDP port 7777 by default. What costs money is never the server program — it is where it runs. So when a host offers "free SA-MP", it is offering you its machine and its bandwidth, and everything in the previous section is about how that machine behaves.
HytHost SA-MP plans run SA-MP 0.3.7, with R2 as the default version and older versions selectable for gamemodes that need them.
The free option that works: your own PC
Running the server on your own computer is genuinely free, and for development it is the best setup there is: instant restarts, every file in reach, no upload step. It is also the option that actually keeps its promise — nothing idles it and nothing caps it.
What you pay instead:
- The machine has to stay on. A Windows update, a power cut or simply shutting the PC down takes the server with it, and you find out when someone mentions it.
- Your home IP is the server's IP. Anyone who can join can see it — and anyone annoyed enough can flood it, which takes your whole home connection down, not just the game.
- You have to open the port. Players reach you through UDP 7777 forwarded on your router, which does not work at all on some connections. The port forwarding guide explains how to tell, and it applies to SA-MP the same way.
The full walkthrough — downloading the server, the config file, gamemodes and filterscripts — is in the guide on how to make a SA-MP server. Use it to build and test locally; that is what the free option is best at.
Free VPS trials and "free forever" hosts
Two more routes come up constantly.
Free VPS trials
Cloud providers hand out trial credit or a trial period, and a SA-MP server fits comfortably on a small virtual machine. It works — for exactly as long as the trial does. When it ends, you either start paying the provider's normal price or the machine is removed along with your server, your database and your players' accounts. If you go this way, keep a backup somewhere else from day one.
Some providers also offer small machines that stay free permanently. Those are real, but getting capacity is often the hard part, and you become the administrator: the operating system, the firewall, the 32-bit runtime the SA-MP binary needs, restarts after a crash and your own backups are all yours to handle.
"Free forever" game-server hosts
These fall into two groups. Some are ordinary free tiers with clear rules and honest limits — fine for a test server, as long as you read those limits. Others promise a free server with no specifics at all, and that vagueness is the tell: if a host will not state in writing what CPU, memory, player limit and network protection you get, the answer is "not much". An oversold box does not fail loudly; it just gets slow, and you never find out why.
When a paid slot plan is worth it
The line is not the size of your server. It is whether people who are not your friends depend on it being there. Up to that point, downtime costs you nothing. After it, every hour offline costs you players who do not come back.
Four signs you have crossed it:
- Players you have never met are asking why the server was down last night.
- Your gamemode stores accounts, houses or money in MySQL, and losing them would end the server.
- You have already been flooded once.
- You spend more time restarting the server than working on the gamemode.
The reason it is an easy decision is the price. HytHost SA-MP hosting starts at €2.58/mo for 50 players, with plans for 100, 200 and 400. Every plan includes a MySQL database, Voxility DDoS filtering in front of the server, a fixed IP and port, a web panel with the file manager and console, and a 99.9% Uptime SLA. If you get stuck, live chat support runs from 8 AM to 11 PM (Chișinău time).
HytHost SA-MP hosting starts at €2.58/mo — MySQL, DDoS filtering and a fixed IP and port included, online in minutes.
See SA-MP plansFrequently asked questions
Free hosting exists, but free hosting that keeps a server online reliably for a community is rare. Free hosts recover their costs through shared hardware, player caps, idle shutdowns, missing flood filtering or ads in the hostname. The one free option that genuinely stays up is your own PC, left switched on, with UDP port 7777 forwarded on your router.
Usually for one of three reasons. The server shares a CPU with many others, and SA-MP works on a single thread, so a busy neighbour slows every tick. The host stops idle servers until someone starts them again. Or the server is being flooded over UDP and nothing is filtering the traffic. The server console and the host's status page normally show which one it is.
Yes. The SA-MP and open.mp server programs are free, and running one on your own computer costs nothing but electricity. Players connect to your public IP on UDP port 7777, which has to be forwarded on your router, and the server is only online while the PC is on. It is the best setup for building and testing a gamemode.
Yes. open.mp is free and open source, backward-compatible with SA-MP scripts, and still receives releases — the current line is 1.5.8, with Linux and Windows builds. SA-MP 0.3.7 is also free, but its last Linux build, 0.3.7-R2, dates from 2015. In both cases the cost of a server is the machine and connection it runs on, not the software.
UDP port 7777 by default, and it is UDP only. A self-hosted server needs that port forwarded on the router to the computer running it. A hosted server comes with the port already assigned and reachable, so there is nothing to forward.
On HytHost, SA-MP hosting starts at €2.58/mo for 50 players, with plans for 100, 200 and 400 players. Every plan includes a MySQL database, DDoS filtering and a fixed IP and port, so the price covers what a free host usually leaves out.
Yes. A SA-MP server is a set of files — the gamemode, filterscripts, plugins, scriptfiles and server.cfg — plus a MySQL database if the gamemode uses one. Download them from the old host, upload the files through the panel's file manager, import the database dump, and update the MySQL credentials in the gamemode's configuration.
Free until players depend on it
HytHost SA-MP hosting keeps your server online with MySQL, DDoS filtering and a fixed IP and port included — from €2.58/mo, set up in minutes.
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