Palworld's dedicated server has leaked memory since launch in 2024, and — let's clear this up first — the 1.0 update did not fix it. Pocketpair's performance work has softened it over the years, but the fundamental behavior remains: the longer a server process runs, the more RAM it holds, until players feel it.
Here's how to recognize it and what actually works, from running a fleet of Palworld servers.
The symptoms
The leak follows a predictable arc:
- Fresh restart: the server sits at its baseline — snappy, responsive.
- Day 2–3: RAM has crept up noticeably. Players start reporting rubber-banding — moving forward and snapping back — and delayed Pal actions.
- Day 4–6: lag spikes during busy moments; base automation stutters.
- Eventually: on a machine without spare memory, the process gets killed or crashes outright. Unmitigated servers commonly die within about a week.
If your server "gets worse the longer it's up" and a restart makes everything instantly fine — that's the leak, not your hardware.
Fix 1: A scheduled daily restart (the one that matters)
The leak resets completely when the process restarts. A clean daily restart keeps the server permanently in that fresh-baseline zone, and no amount of RAM headroom achieves the same thing — bigger hardware just makes the arc take longer.
Two things make restarts safe rather than disruptive:
- Save before stopping. Trigger a world save, then stop. A hard kill mid-save is how you corrupt a world.
- Pick a quiet hour. Restart when your region sleeps, not mid-raid. The downtime is seconds.
If you self-host, cron this. On Connect Hosting every Palworld server gets this automatically — one restart a day, scheduled in your region's quiet hours, world saved first.
Fix 2: Turn off invader raids
The setting bEnableInvaderEnemy (the "hostile invaders" raid toggle) is strongly associated with the leak's growth rate — server operators consistently report RAM climbing at roughly half the speed with invaders disabled. If your group doesn't care about base raid events, this is the single best settings-level mitigation. It's a normal option in PalWorldSettings.ini; on our panel it's the "Hostile Pals & Enemies" toggle in world settings.
Fix 3: Trim what your bases are simulating
Even with nobody online, your bases keep simulating — every working Pal runs pathfinding, hunger and task logic, so servers with many large bases and packed worker crews carry a heavier load that compounds the leak. Two levers in PalWorldSettings.ini help: BaseCampWorkerMaxNum caps how many Pals work a single base (max 50 — keeping it moderate eases the per-base load), and BaseCampMaxNum caps the total number of bases across the server. Trimming these won't stop the leak, but it slows how fast a busy world fills memory between restarts.
Fix 4: Sensible headroom
Mitigations reduce the slope; they don't make memory static. Size the server so between-restart drift never touches your ceiling — our RAM guide has concrete numbers per group size. The short version: 16GB for most groups, 24GB for packed 32-player worlds.
What doesn't work
- "Just add more RAM." Delays the symptoms, changes nothing structurally.
- Community "leak fix" mods. Nothing mod-side can fix a server-process leak; at best they mask symptoms, at worst they break on every patch (1.0 broke a wave of stale early-access mods exactly this way).
- Waiting for the patch that fixes it. People have been doing that since 2024. Run restarts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Palworld still have a memory leak in 1.0?
Yes. 1.0's optimization work softened it, but dedicated servers still accumulate RAM the longer they run, until rubber-banding and eventually crashes set in. A scheduled restart remains the standard, reliable fix.
How often should I restart a Palworld server?
Once a day is enough for most servers — scheduled in your region's quiet hours, with the world saved first. Very busy 32-player worlds, or smaller boxes, may want it more often. On Connect Hosting this runs automatically on every plan.
Will more RAM fix the Palworld memory leak?
No — it delays it. The leak grows to fill whatever memory is available, so extra RAM just lengthens the time between restarts. The restart is what actually resets it to baseline.
What does bEnableInvaderEnemy do for the leak?
Disabling invader raids (bEnableInvaderEnemy=False) is the single most effective settings-level mitigation — operators report RAM climbing at roughly half the rate with raids off. It's the "Hostile Pals & Enemies" toggle on our panel.
Why is my Palworld server rubber-banding?
On a long-running server the usual cause is the memory leak — RAM builds up until movement desyncs, and a restart clears it instantly. If rubber-banding happens right after a fresh restart, it's more likely network (region distance or Wi-Fi) than the leak.
Does the memory leak corrupt my world?
Not by itself — but a crash, or a hard kill mid-save, can. Always save before stopping. Our automated restarts save the world cleanly first, which is the safe way to reset the leak.
The zero-effort version
This is one of those problems that's genuinely boring to solve — a saved world and a nightly restart — but only if something reliably does it every single day. That's exactly what our Palworld hosting automates: daily leak-protection restarts on every plan, with the world saved cleanly first, plus the full 32 player slots included whichever plan size you pick.
