Playing alone? Stay in Single Player. The moment a second person wants in, the answer changes, and the cost of picking wrong is a world nobody else can join or a session that dies when the host logs off. Here is how to choose before you click Host.
Pick the mode by how many people play
| Your situation | Use this mode |
|---|---|
| One player, one world, full control over rates | Single Player |
| Two to eight friends on the same connection, playing at the same time | Non-Dedicated |
| A tribe that stays online or plays in different time zones | Dedicated or a paid host |
| You want the official ruleset and no server of your own to run | Official server |
So the choice is mostly a headcount and an uptime question. Non-Dedicated is the free, player-hosted option and it supports up to eight player slots, which covers a small friend group and nothing bigger. Everything past that means paying for a dedicated server or joining an official one. Mods work on the free option too, so “I want mods” alone is not a reason to rent a server.
What Non-Dedicated quietly takes away
The eight-slot cap is the smaller limitation. The bigger one is the tether: everyone is restricted to the host’s proximity, and players who wander too far risk being teleported back. You cannot split up to run separate errands across the map, and the whole session ends when the host quits because the world lives on their machine.
That makes Non-Dedicated a poor fit in three specific cases: friends in different households who want to play independently, anyone who needs the world up while the host is offline, and groups that plan to spread out. In all three, a dedicated or paid server is the fix — avoiding the tether is the main reason people pay. If none of those apply, the free mode is genuinely the right call.
When Single Player beats every other option
Single Player gives you a world nobody else can join, which is exactly what you want when tuning rates, testing a build, or leaving a long tame running on your own schedule. Pair it with the rate controls in our single-player settings guide and you can reshape XP, taming and harvest speed to your own pace.
The one trap is planning to add people later. A Single Player world is not a server that friends can drop into; if you expect company, start on Non-Dedicated or a dedicated server from day one rather than rebuilding the world. For PvP rule differences, see PvP settings.
Settle the version before the mode
Mode and version are separate decisions, and the version one is worth making first: ARK: Survival Ascended and the older ARK: Survival Evolved do not share the same server setup. Our Ascended vs Evolved comparison covers which game to install; this page only answers how to host it once you have picked.
Default to Single Player for a solo run, Non-Dedicated for a same-room group, and a dedicated server for anything that needs to stay online without you.