2026-09-19 · Rankings

Best Public SMP Servers Like Hermitcraft in 2026

You cannot join Hermitcraft. It is an invite-only vanilla SMP for a fixed group of creators, with no application form and no public address. The closest a public server gets is a small, long-lived, lightly modified survival world where the regulars build together, which on our list means OtterSMP at play.ottersmp.com, CivMC at play.civmc.net and CraftYourTown at play.craftyourtown.com, with our number one, TalonMC SMP at play.talonmc.net, as the moderated option if you want the community without the vanilla purism. This post defines what "Hermitcraft-like" means in checkable terms, says which entries on the Minecraft SMP server ranking meet which parts of it, and covers how to apply to a whitelisted server if you decide you want one.

Can you join Hermitcraft? No, and here is the source

BlockMyth's SMP explainer describes Hermitcraft as "a long-running, invite-only vanilla SMP full of popular creators known as Hermits", and that sentence is the whole answer. New members join by invitation from the existing group. There is no waiting list you can put your name on, and any server advertising itself as "the Hermitcraft IP" is not Hermitcraft.

It is also still running. SuperJump's feature on the new season, published in February 2026, covers the Hermits talking about the season that began in November 2025, and quotes Welsknight saying that "Countless other people learned how to play the game from watching" the Hermits. That influence is why the search exists. People who learned Minecraft from Hermitcraft videos want to play the game the way it looks in them, and the honest version of this article is about finding that, not about getting on the server itself.

The demand has been there for years. A 2021 thread on the Hypixel forums asked for "a hermitcraft-like smp I could join" and got pointed off to other communities, because a minigame network is not where you find one. The rest of this post is the answer that thread did not get.

What "Hermitcraft-like" actually means

Strip the name off and the phrase carries four traits, each of which you can check on a server listing.

Whitelisted, or at least small. The invite-only model means everyone on the server knows everyone. The public equivalent is a low player cap or a small regular population, where you learn names within a week. A server with thousands online cannot have this quality whatever its rules say.

Vanilla or near-vanilla. The BlockMyth description says "vanilla SMP", and that is the trait most players mean first. No custom enchants, no crates, no shop plugin selling diamonds for a currency. Where a server adds anything, it is quality-of-life: a way to see who is online, a teleport to spawn, perhaps a way to claim a small area. Progression is the game's own.

A long-lived world. Hermitcraft runs seasons that last a long time rather than a few weeks, and the SuperJump piece is about a new one starting after years of previous ones. The public equivalent is a server that either never resets or runs seasons measured in many months, so that a megabase is a rational thing to start.

Community projects. The shopping district, the shared farms, the group events, the running jokes. This is the trait that the name really stands for and the one that cannot be installed. It comes from a stable group of players who trust each other enough to leave a chest unlocked, and it is why the first trait matters more than the second: a small server with a few plugins can have it, a huge vanilla server almost never does.

What is a Minecraft SMP covers the wider vocabulary, including where vanilla ends and semi-vanilla begins.

The catch: our list has no whitelisted servers on it

We should say this before listing anything. Every server on our ranking was open to a direct connection when we pinged it, and whitelisted or application-only SMPs are excluded on purpose, because a list you cannot join is not useful as a list. That means the first trait, whitelisting, is not met by any entry here, and if a whitelist is non-negotiable for you the section on applications below is the useful part. What the list can offer is the other three traits in varying degrees, and the entries below are the ones that come closest according to what we actually verified about each. The small SMP servers page is the live version of the same filter: the quieter half of the list, smallest first.

Public servers on our list that get closest

OtterSMP - play.ottersmp.com

The nearest thing to a Hermitcraft feel on the ranking. OtterSMP is a dedicated SMP rather than a network lane, so every player its status reply reports is in the same survival world as you, and it sits at the small, know-the-regulars end of the list. It runs a current client at 26.2 only, which tells you the server updates promptly rather than holding a wide legacy range, and it had just shipped a birthday update when we pinged it, which is the kind of thing a server does when it expects to be around for the next one. It answered a Bedrock ping, so friends on console can join. Where it is not Hermitcraft: we have not verified that it is vanilla, so check the rules page for what is added.

CivMC - play.civmc.net

CivMC scores highest on the long-lived world and the community traits, and lowest on vanilla. It belongs to the civ genre: no plugin-drawn claims, just player-built nations, treaties, prison mechanics and war fought through custom reinforcement rules. That is heavily modified survival, but the point of it is exactly the thing Hermitcraft fans want, a persistent world with real political history rather than throughput, and it sits at the quiet end of the list because of that. One caveat, stated plainly: the civ-genre characterisation comes from the server's own site rather than from the status message we captured, which just reads "Building with more than just blocks." Java only.

CraftYourTown - play.craftyourtown.com

Small, stable, running against a 500 slot cap, and Java only. CraftYourTown runs towny survival with Slimefun on top, which means machines, industry and resource chains rather than plain vanilla progression, so it fails the vanilla trait outright. It passes the small-and-stable test comfortably, and a town on a towny server is the closest packaged equivalent to a Hermitcraft shopping district: a shared area with plots, neighbours and a mayor. If you want to build next to the same people for months and do not mind machines, it fits.

EarthMC - join.earthmc.net

Included for one trait, longevity. EarthMC's own rotating server message dates it to 2016 and claims over a thousand years of combined playtime, and the count is one world rather than a network. It is not small and it is not vanilla; it plays out on a scale map of the real Earth with towns, nations and diplomacy on top of towny, and the game is political. Hermitcraft fans who liked the seasons where the Hermits split into factions will recognise something here. Everyone else should treat it as a different genre. Java only.

Where our number one fits

TalonMC SMP at play.talonmc.net is not a Hermitcraft-like server on the vanilla axis and we would rather say so than pretend. Its land claiming, economy, progression and trading are custom-built systems, with custom abilities, earnable titles and milestone rewards, and /freerank hands you a rank on your first join. That is the opposite of a vanilla world where progression is the game's own.

What it does offer is the trait that matters most to people who bounce off vanilla servers: a moderated, claims-based community where your base survives while you get to know people. If you watched Hermitcraft for the building and the neighbours rather than for the absence of plugins, a server where what you build stays yours is the practical route to that, and it is our number one on the SMP ranking for reasons laid out on the methodology page. Java and Bedrock join on one address, and the SMP is one of five gamemodes there.

How to write a whitelist application that gets accepted

If the whitelist trait is the one you will not give up, you are applying to servers off our list, and the application is where most people fail. The people reading it are volunteers filtering for one thing: will this person still be here in two months and will they be pleasant to share a world with. Write to that.

Give your exact Minecraft username in the format the server asks for, because a whitelist is case-sensitive and a wrong name means a rejected application even when everyone liked you. Say what you actually do in Minecraft in two or three specific sentences: redstone, farms, terraforming, a particular build style. Specific beats enthusiastic. Say roughly how often you play and in which timezone, because a server dead at your hours is a bad match for both sides. Read the rules first and, if a question in the form checks that you did, answer it precisely. Then wait; a day or two is normal, and chasing an application in Discord is the fastest way to lose it.

Building a shopping district with strangers

Whether you land on a public server above or a whitelisted one elsewhere, the thing that makes it feel like the videos is the shared project, and shared projects with strangers have rules the videos leave out. Ask before you build next to someone; on a public server that means checking the claim map, on a trust-based one it means asking in chat. Match the agreed theme and scale if the district has one. Price your shop against what exists rather than undercutting to zero, because a diamond economy only works if diamonds stay worth something. Restock, or take the shop down. And the one that ends more shared projects than griefing does: do not start a community build you cannot finish. An abandoned half-mall at the centre of a shopping district is the most demoralising block in Minecraft.

If you have never joined a public SMP, how to join an SMP server on Java and Bedrock covers the mechanics, and how to choose an SMP server covers the decision that comes before it.

See the current top 10 Minecraft SMP servers · How the ranking works