Migrating your world from Minecraft Realms to ServerPrism

Moving from Minecraft Realms (Java Edition) to your own ServerPrism server is a straightforward one-way copy — the Realms world folder is a standard Minecraft world folder, so it drops directly into a ServerPrism Paper or Vanilla server. Everyone's progress (inventory, XP, position, advancements) carries over automatically as long as you keep online-mode=true.

This guide covers the whole move end to end: what you can and can't bring across, exporting from Realms, ordering the right ServerPrism plan, uploading the world, rebuilding the permission lists Realms doesn't export, and pointing your players at the new address.

Before you start: what actually transfers

Realms was designed as a locked-down hosted world, so the export contains everything world-related but nothing platform-related.

Transfers cleanly:

• The world folder itself (all dimensions, chunks, level data)
• Every player's per-player save (playerdata/<uuid>.dat) — inventory, position, XP, ender chest, health
• Player statistics (stats/<uuid>.json) and advancements (advancements/<uuid>.json)
• Any datapacks you had installed in the world
• Structures, spawn point, world seed, and gamerules

Does not transfer (you'll rebuild it):

• The Realms member list — Realms uses Microsoft account invites, not the standard ops.json / whitelist.json / banned-players.json files
• Server settings — Realms doesn't expose a server.properties, so difficulty, PvP, spawn protection, view distance, etc. all get set fresh on your new server
• The Realm's IP — Realms uses ephemeral addresses; players will need your new ServerPrism address

Cannot exist on Realms in the first place (so nothing to migrate): plugins, mods, resource packs bundled server-side, or any Forge/Fabric loader. If you want any of that after the move, ServerPrism can run it.

Step 1: Pick the right ServerPrism plan

Realms Java caps you at 11 players (owner + 10) with no plugin/mod support. On ServerPrism you're free of both limits, so this is a good moment to pick what you actually want.

• Same as before (up to ~10 players, vanilla-style): a 2 GB or 4 GB plan is plenty. Pick Paper as the runtime — it's a drop-in vanilla replacement that runs the same world but performs better and supports plugins if you ever want them later.
• Bigger community or heavy world: 6 GB or 8 GB gives you comfortable headroom for 15 to 25 players.
• You want to add mods after moving: pick Forge, NeoForge, or use our Modpack Installer runtime. Your Realms world still drops in fine; mods can be added on top afterward.

Once you've ordered, note your server's IP:port from the panel dashboard — you'll give this to players at the end.

Step 2: Match the Minecraft version

Realms runs the latest stable release of Minecraft and does not let you pick a version. Your ServerPrism server needs to be on the same version or newer — a world can be upgraded to a newer MC version, but never downgraded.

On the ServerPrism panel, open your server, click Startup, and check the version variables (Minecraft Version for Paper, or the version you selected at order time). If it doesn't match the Realm's latest version, set it now and restart once so the server downloads the correct jar. You can always confirm what version your Realm was on by checking your Minecraft client — the Realms tab shows the version at the top.

Step 3: Export your world from Realms

Only the Realm owner can do this (invited members cannot download).

1. Launch Minecraft (same account you use to own the Realm).
2. From the main menu, click Minecraft Realms.
3. Select your Realm from the list, then click Configure Realm (the wrench/gear icon).
4. Open the Backups tab. You'll see a list of automatic backups plus the current world state.
5. Click Download World next to the version you want (usually the most recent).
6. Enter a name when prompted — this becomes the filename of the download.
7. Wait for the download to finish. You'll get a .zip file, typically saved to your Downloads folder.

Inside the zip you'll find a folder with your world name containing level.dat, region/, playerdata/, stats/, advancements/, dimensions/, and (if you had any) datapacks/. That's the whole world, and it's a standard Minecraft folder — no Realms-specific structure.

Watch for double-nesting. Some client versions produce a folder-inside-a-folder-with-the-same-name. If the first level of the zip contains just one folder that has the actual world files inside it, use that inner folder in the next steps.

Step 4: Prepare the world folder

Before uploading, do two small cleanups on your local machine:

1. Rename the folder to world (all lowercase). ServerPrism's Minecraft servers look for a folder called world by default. You can use a different name if you also set level-name=yourname in server.properties, but world is the path of least surprise.
2. Delete session.lock if it's present. That file is a lock marker for the previously running server; leaving it in can cause a "world already in use" error on first startup.

Step 5: Upload the world to ServerPrism

You have two options for getting the world onto your server. Both work — pick whichever suits your world size.

Option A — SFTP (best for anything over 100 MB)

1. On your server's panel dashboard, look for the SFTP section (usually sidebar or bottom). Note the host, port, and username shown there. Your password is your ServerPrism panel password.
2. Open an SFTP client — FileZilla or WinSCP on Windows, Cyberduck or Transmit on macOS, or any file manager that supports SFTP on Linux.
3. Connect with the credentials from the panel (not port 22 — ServerPrism SFTP uses a custom port shown on the dashboard).
4. Once connected, you'll see your server's file tree. If there's already a world folder from the fresh install, delete it first (or rename it as a backup).
5. Drag your world folder from your machine into the server root. Large worlds can take 5 to 30 minutes depending on your upload speed.
6. Once the transfer completes, close the SFTP client.

Option B — File Manager upload (for smaller worlds, up to ~500 MB)

1. In the panel, open your server and click File Manager.
2. Delete or rename the existing world folder in the root.
3. Click Upload and drag your world folder in, OR upload the original .zip and use Unarchive (right-click the file → Unarchive) to extract it in place.
4. If you uploaded the zip, delete the zip afterward to save disk space.

Step 6: Start the server and verify

1. On the panel, click Start on the Console tab.
2. Watch the console for a Done (X.XXXs)! For help, type "help" line — that means the world loaded and the server is accepting connections.
3. If you see errors mentioning DataVersion or "world is from a newer version", your server's MC version is older than what Realms was running. Update the server's Minecraft version in the Startup tab and restart.

Step 7: Rebuild ops, whitelist, and settings

Since Realms doesn't export these, set them up now.

• Give yourself admin. In the Console tab, run op YourMinecraftName. You can now use /gamemode, /tp, and every other admin command.
• Add your players back. If you want to keep the "only these people can join" behavior Realms had, enable a whitelist:

whitelist on
whitelist add PlayerName
whitelist add AnotherPlayer

• Tune server.properties. Open File Manager → server.properties and set motd, difficulty, pvp, view-distance, and other basics. See Server basics: server.properties, whitelist, and ops for the settings that actually matter.

Step 8: Send your players the new address

Give your friends the new connect address from the panel. It'll be a format like 123.45.67.89:25565 or a subdomain we assigned you. They add it under Multiplayer → Add Server in their Minecraft client and hit Join — everything they had on the Realm (inventory, position, XP, ender chest, advancements) is exactly as they left it, because their UUIDs match on the online-mode server side.

If a player shows up naked at spawn with no XP, your server is running in online-mode=false (offline mode). Their offline UUID doesn't match their Realms UUID, so their save file isn't being loaded. Set online-mode=true in server.properties and restart — this is the correct default and the one you almost certainly want.

Common gotchas

• "World is from a newer version": your server is on an older MC version than the Realm. Update the version in the Startup tab and restart.
• Datapacks not loading: confirm they're at world/datapacks/ (inside the world folder, not in the server root), then run /datapack list in the console to see if the server sees them. /datapack enable "file/mypack" will turn one on if it's disabled.
• Nether or End is empty: on newer MC versions those dimensions live at world/dimensions/minecraft/the_nether/ and world/dimensions/minecraft/the_end/. If they're missing from your upload, re-check the zip — Realms usually includes them.
• "World already in use — is another instance running?": you have a leftover session.lock in the world folder. Delete it and restart.
• Players still connecting to the old Realm: Realms subscriptions renew monthly. Cancel the Realm in your Minecraft account settings if you're done with it, otherwise you'll keep paying Mojang alongside ServerPrism.

Once you're comfortably running for a day or two on the new server, you can safely cancel your Realm subscription. If you ever want to move back the same folder path works in reverse (upload a zip via the Realms client), but you'd lose plugins and any customization ServerPrism enabled that Realms doesn't support.