How to Change the Maximum Players on Your Palworld Server
Adjust your Palworld server's player cap via PalWorldSettings.ini, understand the hard limit of 32, and match your RAM to the player count you're targeting.
The Setting
Open Pal/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/PalWorldSettings.ini and find the OptionSettings line. The player cap setting is:
ServerPlayerMaxNum=32
Change the number to whatever you want, save the file while the server is stopped, then restart. The new cap takes effect immediately.
The Hard Cap
The base game limits Palworld dedicated servers to a maximum of 32 players. This is enforced by the game itself — setting ServerPlayerMaxNum above 32 won't crash anything, but the server won't actually allow more than 32 connections.
Unofficial mods exist that attempt to raise this cap, but they're unsupported, can cause instability, and are likely to break after any game update. Not recommended for servers you want running reliably.
RAM Requirements by Player Count
Palworld is one of the more memory-hungry survival servers. These are realistic minimums — plan for more due to the memory leak over time:
| Players | Minimum RAM | Recommended RAM |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 4 GB | 8 GB |
| 8 | 6 GB | 10 GB |
| 16 | 8 GB | 12–16 GB |
| 32 | 12 GB | 20–24 GB |
The "recommended" column accounts for the memory leak. Even a 4-player server will be sitting at 8–12 GB of RAM after 24–48 hours without a restart. Size your server accordingly and set up scheduled restarts regardless of your player count. See Palworld Server Hardware and Resource Requirements for more detail.
Limiting Access Without Lowering the Cap
If you're running a server for a specific group and want to keep randoms out rather than reducing the player cap, use a server password alongside the cap:
ServerPlayerMaxNum=32
ServerPassword=YourPasswordHere
Share the password with your group and leave the cap at its natural size. This way you're not accidentally locking out a valid player by hitting a capacity limit. See Palworld Server Settings Configuration for the full list of settings you can configure.
If Your Server Feels Full Below the Cap
Palworld performance degrades under heavy load before you hit the technical cap. If your server feels laggy with 15–20 players, the bottleneck is likely RAM or CPU rather than the player limit setting. Check your resource usage in the panel and consider either reducing the cap to match your actual hardware capacity or upgrading your plan.