2026 Transparency Report.

Hello everyone, it’s crazy to think it’s now been a year since we first put out our transparency report. Our goal is to issue one of these every year, to cover how we operate, our plans moving forward, and to just overall pull back the curtain on Kinetic as a whole.

Last year we rolled out our new SGP packages. This meant that we also had to issue a mid-term transparency report. We won’t normally do that, but the huge change in our packages made the original one a bit irrelevant.

Okay, so let’s dive into what changed from our last report.

Changes To Packages

So in our last report it was right at the start of our new packages. The goal was to slim down our over 50 package selection into a much smaller 2 package selection: the 8GB Budget and the 16GB Performance. As you’ll see on our site today, this has changed a little. Based on feedback over time we’ve added 4GB, 12GB, 21GB, 26GB, 32GB, 42GB, and 64GB options.

Looking back, I still love the idea of just offering 2 simple packages, but I also understand that people want options when it comes to ordering a server. I think we’ve come to a good middle ground here. We still have a slimmed down package set, but it’s nowhere near the 50 we had before.

More For Less

Another change we made was to no longer charge for storage. We launched the SGP packages with around 30GB of storage and would allow people to buy more if they needed it. We did this as we needed to offset our new much lower price with a few upgrades to keep the same level of profit rolling in. We did the same with split slots and advanced support, all of which got upped or removed a few months ago.

We also lowered our 8GB Performance plan by around $1/month to match our budget pricing.

We’ve been able to offer more in our packages, as our growth and pulled in the money needed to cover the extras we were charging for.

Changes To Team

From our last report, you’ve likely seen some new faces around. We’ve been working to grow our team to improve the experience for you guys and to help us manage our growing userbase. Kinetic is still a really small team. In our last report we were a team of 9, we are now a team of 12. With new people joining to help with support, marketing, and also our newest member joining for QA.

If you don’t know what QA is, it’s quality assurance. Basically every update to our platform is now checked by a professional bug finder before it goes live. It does mean we might slow a little on updates, but it should mean that fewer bugs slip into the live panel. No world-ending bug has ever made it into live before, but having QA in place means we can ship updates with that extra level of polish.

Updates

One thing no doubt you’ve noticed is our panel updates. We’ve launched 21 major panel updates in the last 6 months, including Panel 6 ,  our biggest ever update.

The goal of Panel 6 was to clear up some tech debt and improve the panel to allow for faster updates. Panel 6 allows us to design, build, and test features much faster than we could on Panel 5. This, teamed with some new backend features, has allowed us to full sprint on adding in features we’ve wanted to for years, but old tech debt or the limitations of Panel 5 were holding us back.

We’re not done yet. We still have a huge number of features planned for our panel.

Hardware

In the last 6 months we have been working to upgrade our hardware. Locations that had 5800X or 5900X CPUs have mostly been upgraded to 7950X or 9950X CPUs. We always list the oldest possible CPU on our website, so while locations like Singapore promote 5800X CPUs, most systems there are now 7950X or 9950X CPUs. Our goal is by the end of 2026 to have all systems on a 7950X or 9950X.

We have also been working on growing the number of 9950X CPUs in our lineup. Most new orders are now on 9950X CPUs. We have no plans to replace any of the 7950X CPUs. For game servers the performance jump from a 7950X CPU to a 9950X CPU is minimal. We’ll likely start rolling out the 7950X CPUs when the next gen Ryzens come in, if they offer a large performance upgrade.

Another CPU type you might have seen floating around is AMD EPYC 4564P. These CPUs are mostly the same as the 7950X. AMD’s EPYC line is mostly for servers, and when they saw how popular the 7950X was with servers, they rolled out the EPYC 4564P. Basically the same CPU, just another name. There are a few changes, but nothing that’s going to impact your performance.

I will add this: we’re always looking at other hosts, checking what hardware they’re offering and any new features they’re adding. We look at the big guys and the smaller guys. We have seen a trend of the new gen EPYCs being used. Some of these new gen EPYCs support a lot more RAM. We intentionally avoid extremely high RAM densities per CPU, as we prioritise consistent performance under load.

A host might promote X CPU, but that could run better or worse based on the number of customers they have using it at once. You can see the amount of RAM a node has with something like the Spark mod/plugin for Minecraft. If you’re having performance issues, always check this. Just because two hosts have the same CPUs, it doesn’t mean the performance will be the same.

Price and Cost Breakdown

So last year a typical system looked like:
Ryzen 7950X CPU
192GB DDR5 Memory
1TB NVMe storage

This is still mostly the same. We do still have more 7950X CPUs than 9950X CPUs, so on average every node has a 7950X CPU, so we’ll use this as our example. The system listed here will cost us around $170/month. Our most popular package is the 16GB Performance, so we’ll be using that as our example.

How Much Does This Node Generate

This is dependent on the node. If a server has had no activity for 3 weeks, we wrap it up in a little blanket and put it to sleep. This allows us to use the hardware it was on for another server. When the user of the sleeping server comes back, it will spring back to life like you never left it. Nothing changes. You likely have woken your server up before and never known it was sleeping.

No activity means no one joining the server, no one editing the server in any way, or no one using power actions.

Depending on the node, we’ve found that up to 80% of systems can be sleeping.

But What If Everyone Powers Their Server Back Online?

Then they’ll be powered up on another node, without even knowing they’ve moved. We already know we can handle users coming back, as we just did it with the Hytale launch.

Lots of users when Hytale launched returned to their servers, swapped game, and powered their server back online.

It’s important that we strike a good balance between being able to keep our prices low at a profit, and also making sure the service you’re paying for is always there when you need it.

Other hosts will use the same kind of systems, they just don’t pass the savings on to you. You can also see when doing this irresponsibly falls apart ,  like when lots of hosts struggled with crashing nodes and outages when Palworld launched in 2023.

So Profit Per Node

At base we can fit 12 servers on a node if all are 16GB Performance servers. So that means the node has made $179.88/month. If on average 50% of the servers on a node are sleeping, then that means 6 more servers can run on this hardware. Making the turnover of this node $269.82. This gives us a profit margin of around 37% per node.

Now there are other fees outside of hardware to operate a node:

Automatic offsite backups
We back up every server a number of times a day to our offsite backup systems. This allows us to restore a system in the event of hardware failure, data centre catching fire, etc. This allows us to restore a full server quickly if there is a problem.

Client Backups
The backups you make in the panel are separate from our offsite backup system. Your client backups are also hosted offsite, but they’re not a full snapshot of the system ,  only your server files. These are for you to restore if you have issues, not for system failures.

Database Systems
Some of you will also make use of our database systems to store plugin data, etc.

Networking Costs
This is IPs, extra DDoS protection, etc.

This all comes to around $6 a node. This takes the overall cost per node to $263.82, giving us an average 35% profit on each node.

Other Costs

Outside of the fees to run a node, we do have some other costs. Clearly we have a staff team to pay, we also have gateway fees and tax.

Tax

Kinetic has a few taxes it has to pay:

VAT or Sales Tax
In some locations we have to charge VAT or Sales Tax to the end user. We don’t eat this cost ,  it is passed onto you. It’s why in places like the UK the price of a 16GB Performance is £13.99 ,  it covers the additional tax fees of that location.

Corporation Tax
This eats into end of year profits. Any profit we have sitting at the end of the year, as a UK based company, we get charged 20% corporation tax on it. However, this only impacts profit ,  so that’s after everyone has been paid, debts paid, etc.

Payroll Tax, NI, etc
The other large part of tax we have to pay is on our employees. Most of our team are UK based, so are on what’s called PAYE. This means we have to pay payroll tax, National Insurance contributions, and pension funds.

Staff

Because we’ve scaled efficiently, staff costs now represent around 25% of our margin, down from 40% last year. While we don’t want to give out staff wages for personal reasons, every member of our team is paid over minimum wage. It’s important to us that we can pay our team the best we can.

External Contractors

In our last report, we reported a number of external contractors. A large part of this is now internal. Stuff like graphic design and SEO services are now fully in-house.

We do still use external contractors for:
Accounting (ensuring VAT and tax compliance globally)
Security audits

Service Fees

We do also pay for a number of services. Things like Trustpilot, Slack, Google Workspace, etc. But we also pay for extra tools, such as antivirus tools and VPNs so we make sure our staff are following best practices.

Market Research

Another small fee we spend money on is market research. This is mostly ordering servers from other providers. Seeing what they’re doing better than us, seeing any good idea or feature they might have, then thinking of ways to bring that to our platform.

Investment

Kinetic still has 0 investors and is still solely owned by the company founders. 

Growth

In our last report we had around 400 nodes on our network. We’re now sniffing close to 1000 nodes on our network. We just passed 50,000 servers ordered, and now have over 14,000 servers active.

This means from our last transparency report in mid 2025 to now, we have nearly 3x our users, nodes, and orders.

At the start of 2025 we had just over 2k active servers on the network. At the end we had 12k active servers. This was massive growth that we didn’t see coming. Our projected server count was 4k by the end of 2025 and 8k by the end of 2026. So it’s safe to say we smashed that.

I am proud of the way we’ve been able to scale without any impact to our clients, systems failing, or staff getting overworked. The goal with our panel updates is to cut down on tickets by giving you guys the tools to solve problems, and that seems to have worked ,  with our ticket volume only 2x last year.

In our eyes it’s best for you and for us if we give you the power to solve your own problems without needing to contact support.

Rising Cost of Hardware

As we move further into 2026 hardware costs are creeping up more and more. It’s now no longer just RAM that is rising in cost ,  it’s storage drives as well.

So far we’ve mostly been able to avoid the extra costs by working with our partners and having stock of systems in place before the cost increases.

However, it’s getting to the point where getting the hardware at any price is becoming difficult. When it does come up, it comes with a massive markup.

Our goal in 2026 is not to put our prices up. We will work as hard as we can with our partners to keep our prices low. However, if hardware prices keep rising and it becomes harder to get, we will reach a point where we can no longer eat or avoid the cost. This would mean sadly passing it on to you.

We’re hoping that if we ever have to put our prices up, it won’t have to be by much, and that we can keep all current customers on their current prices.

At Kinetic, we want to offer our customers the most affordable price. So we will do everything in our power to keep our current price point.

Looking Forward

Hardware issues aside, we have some amazing plans for Kinetic in 2026. We have a range of new panel updates, we have an all-new billing system, and something internally we’re calling Project Pyre, that could be a way ,  even with these hardware challenges ,  to offer even cheaper hosting.

Billing Panel

Finally this year we will be rolling out our custom billing system. With this will come unified logins. This means everything will be managed under your game panel account and from within the game panel. No need to have a separate panel and login.

Getting the billing panel right is very important, so this will be a very slow rollout as we test the system and make sure everything is running smoothly as we scale.

There is no ETA on when your account will be moved to the unified login system, but we do now plan to start rolling it out mid-March. It was planned for late February, but updates 6.9 and 6.10 were bigger than we planned.

We’ll put a blog post out in a few weeks covering all the new features coming with the new billing system. You can see some of them already if you check our sneak peeks channel on Discord.

Mobile

In our last report we spoke about our goal of rolling out a mobile app. Update 6.10 was the first step in that direction with a new built-from-the-ground-up dedicated mobile UI. It still has some improvements to go, but our goal is to get this turned into a mobile app for iOS and Android by the end of the year.

Games, Games, Games

We now support 44 games! We’ve had our heads down adding games to our lineup. Our goal with game support is simple ,  if we can run it, we will support it. So we’ll keep adding games to our lineup throughout 2026.

Web and VPS

I know, I know ,  you want us to also offer web and VPS hosting. It’s one of our most requested items. However, we would want to do web hosting and VPS hosting the Kinetic way. No third-party panel slapped on our site with limited staff support.

Our guess is you want us to offer these types of hosting because you want it done the Kinetic way.

Web hosting is now on our internal roadmap, but it is far out. Our main goal is to build the best game hosting, and we don’t want to be distracted from that mission. I’ve seen too many promising hosts stop updating as they go off down the web, VPS, or dedicated path. Kinetic won’t make the same mistake.

We know you want it. We will have it one day. But we are always a game host first.

Project Pyre

This is now in full dev in the background. We’re not able to talk about it yet, but it should be a way to offer even cheaper hosting. Crazy, right?

Our goal is to test it with a very small group of testers. We’ll put forms out about it after the billing rollout is in full swing ,  so likely around April/May. It will also come with some new features you might not be expecting.

This is one of our most exciting projects, and I can’t wait to get feedback on it.

Final Note

Wow, that was a long one ,  but then these reports always are. If you got to the end, thank you so much for reading all of that.

This transparency report went a little deeper on our plans and growth and covered a little less on hard numbers. That’s only because things are mostly the same from our mid-term report. So if you want to dig a little deeper into all of that, check out those reports too.

Let me know any feedback you have on this year’s report. Looking forward to updating you again in our 2027 report.

Thank you so much for all your support this year.

Chris
CEO @ Kinetic