Port forwarding, or a host?

A Minecraft server is a program; anyone can run it. The question is whether people can reach it and whether it stays up.

Running it at home

Port forwarding: your router must send TCP 25565 to the PC running the server, and some ISPs (mobile, carrier-grade NAT) do not allow inbound connections at all. Players connect to your public IP, which changes unless you pay for a static one or run a dynamic DNS name.
The PC stays on and the server takes a few GB of its RAM and one CPU core while friends play. Playing on the same machine you host on doubles the load.
Upload speed is the limit: each player uses a few hundred kilobits, more with a big view distance.
Backups, updates and restarts are yours to do.

It is a fine way to play with two friends on an evening, and a poor way to run a server people expect to be online.

A hosted server

The server runs on a machine in a data centre with its own address, 24/7, backed up, with the panel doing the updates. On FadeHost a friends server sleeps when empty and wakes on the next join, so a small group pays for a small server: pricing. The free trial needs no card.

Tunnels

Tunnelling tools expose a home server through a relay without port forwarding. They work, add latency, and put you back to a PC that has to stay on. They are also the tool of choice for the proxy kits we ban on free servers, so on FadeHost a server never needs one: every server has its own public address.

Good to know

Moving a home server to a host is one import: Move from another host.
Bedrock players on consoles cannot type an address at all; a hosted Java server with crossplay on, or a Bedrock server, solves that. See Bedrock crossplay.