Escaping Realms: Backup Your Buildings, Bring Them Back

If you’re taking the usual Minecraft hiatus, you won’t want to keep being charged for Minecraft Realms, but you also won’t want to lose your world. Here’s how to unsubscribe from Minecraft Realms and keep your world for future use.

How to Unsubscribe from Minecraft Realms on Bedrock and Java Edition

In this guide, we’ll be using the Microsoft account to unsubscribe from Minecraft Realms. If you’re on a different platform on Bedrock Edition, you should still be able to find your subscription on your Microsoft account if you made the purchase with it. If you made the purchase using Google Play, PlayStation, Amazon, or iOS, you will need to find the subscription manangement settings on your respective platform.

1. Open Your Microsoft Order History

To get to your Microsoft account, you can open it from the Xbox app on PC. Click on your profile name on the upper left, then clickSettings > Account > View order history . This will open up your Microsoft order history .

Alternatively, you can head directly to Microsoft Services & Subscriptions which is where you’ll eventually end up.

2. Manage Your Minecraft Realms Subscriptions and Unsubscribe

If you’re on the order history page, find your Minecraft Realms order and click onManage Subscription . This will take you to the previously linked Services & Subscriptions page.

From there, click on the Minecraft Realms subscriptionManage button on the right side.

This will open up a new page where you can find theCancel subscription button.

What Happens After Unsubscribing from Minecraft Realms?

When you unsubscribe from Minecraft Realms, you won’t lose your access until the next billing cycle. You’ll be able to use your Realms until that date, but when it expires, you will lose a few things.

For both the Java and Bedrock Editions, your personal server will go offline, meaning neither you nor your friends will be able to join your Realm. On the Bedrock Edition, you’ll also lose access to the free Marketplace content from Realms Plus.

You won’t lose your Realms world immediately, and the backups will still exist. However, the Realms servers will only keep them for 18 months. We’ll be covering how to download your Minecraft Realms backups for offline play or on free Minecraft server hosting services .

How to Download Your Minecraft Realms Worlds After Unsubscribing

If you don’t want to lose your backups, you should download them locally. Here’s how to download your backups and find the files so you can use them elsewhere.

Downloading Your World on Minecraft Java Edition

To back up a Java Edition Realm world, select the Realm that contains the world you want to back up and clickConfigure .

Next, select the world in the Realm you want to back up and click onWorld Backups .

Finally, you can click onDownload latest or choose the specific backup you want to save.

Once it’s saved, it’ll show up in your single-player worlds with your username. In this case it’s Majikoeda. The file location can be found inAppData/Roaming/.minecraft/saves in case you want to move it to a different device, upload it to a server hosting service, or save it on Google Drive. That file location can also be used to add downloadable Minecraft maps .

Downloading Your World on Minecraft Bedrock Edition

To back up a Realm world on the Bedrock Edition, click Play. Then, on the Realms section, click thepencil icon on the Realm you want to back up.

In the edit Realm section, click on the world you want to back up and click onEdit World .

Click onBackups, then click on thedownload icon beside the backup of your choosing. In our case, we just have one backup for this test server.

Once you download your backup, it will be available in the single-player section for offline play.

Clicking on thepencil icon beside the single-player downloaded backup will allow you to clickPlay on Realm in the future if you re-subscribe. Instead of finding the file on your device, you can also scroll down to the very bottom and click onExport World . This is much quicker as the Bedrock Edition’s world files are harder to find.

Don’t Lose Your Minecraft Realm While Being Unsubscribed

There are probably plenty of large worlds we used to play with our friends in and wish we had saved them before they all disappeared. You never know when you’ll come back to Minecraft, but there’s always a chance that you and your friends will. Revisiting a world you haven’t seen in months or years is a unique feeling and we hope this guide will help you preserve your Minecraft Realms worlds for future use.