Understanding TeamSpeak Server Slots and Bandwidth
Slots cap your simultaneous connections. Bandwidth depends on how many people are actually talking. Here's how to calculate what your community needs and pick the right plan.
What Are Slots
A slot is one simultaneous client connection. If your server has 32 slots, a maximum of 32 users can be connected at the same time. The 33rd person trying to connect gets a "server is full" error.
Slots are what you're paying for when you choose a TS3 hosting plan. More slots = more concurrent users = higher cost. Choose based on how many people you realistically expect online at the same time, not your total community size.
How Bandwidth Works
TS3 bandwidth is not constant — it scales with how many users are actively talking at any given moment. Users who are connected but not transmitting voice use almost no bandwidth.
The bandwidth per talking user depends on your codec and quality setting:
| Codec | Quality Setting | Bandwidth per Talker |
|---|---|---|
| Opus Voice | 6 (default) | ~14 Kbps |
| Opus Voice | 8 | ~32 Kbps |
| Opus Voice | 10 | ~64 Kbps |
| Opus Music | 10 | ~128 Kbps |
Quality 6 is the default and sounds perfectly good for voice chat. Most people can't tell the difference between quality 6 and quality 10 during normal conversation. The difference becomes noticeable mostly with music bots.
Simultaneous Talker Reality
The key insight: not everyone talks at once. In a 32-slot server with 28 people connected, realistically 6–10 might be actively transmitting at any moment — the rest are listening, AFK, or in channels where nobody's speaking.
Rough bandwidth estimates (upstream from server, quality 6):
| Slots | Estimated Peak Talkers | Approximate Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 4–5 | ~65–70 Kbps |
| 32 | 8–10 | ~115–140 Kbps |
| 64 | 15–20 | ~210–280 Kbps |
| 128 | 25–35 | ~350–490 Kbps |
These are practical estimates — actual usage varies. Communities with lots of simultaneous group conversations will use more; casual servers with mostly lurkers will use less.
Opus Voice vs. Opus Music
Opus Voice is the right choice for 99% of servers. It's optimized for human speech, sounds natural at lower bitrates, and keeps bandwidth per-user low.
Opus Music is only worth using in channels where a music bot is playing. It preserves more of the audio frequency range that matters for music. Using it for regular voice channels wastes bandwidth without sounding better for speech.
Set the codec per channel — right-click a channel → Edit Channel → Codec tab. Your general voice channels should all use Opus Voice. If you have a dedicated music bot channel, set that one to Opus Music.
Choosing Your Slot Count
A reliable rule of thumb: buy 1.5× your expected peak simultaneous users.
Examples:
- 50-person Discord community that uses TS for gaming: expect 10–20 in TS at peak → 32 slots is comfortable
- 200-person active gaming clan: expect 40–60 in TS at peak → 64–100 slots
- Small friend group of 8: 10 slots is plenty with room to grow
You don't need to provision for your entire community being online at once — that essentially never happens. Plan for a realistic busy Saturday evening.
Quality Setting Recommendation
Leave codec quality at 6 unless you have a specific reason to change it. The bandwidth saving over quality 10 is significant (14 Kbps vs. 64 Kbps per talker), and voice clarity at quality 6 is already excellent. If users are complaining about audio quality, check their microphone settings and noise suppression before bumping codec quality.
If you do run a music bot, consider a dedicated channel set to Opus Music quality 8 or 10 for that bot only, and leave everything else on Opus Voice quality 6.