Paper, Purpur, Fabric or NeoForge? Which Minecraft server software to pick

The first decision when setting up a server has nothing to do with the map or the plugins. It is about what the server is going to run on in the first place. The list in the panel can be intimidating, because Vanilla, Paper, Purpur, Spigot, Fabric, Forge and NeoForge all sound alike, and the choice you make at the start decides what you can put on the server later. Below we go through each of them the way we see them from the hosting side, where hundreds of servers run on them, and give a simple answer for the most common situations.

The short answer, if you have no time for the whole thing

If you want plugins, or you simply want to play with friends, go with Paper. If you want to play with mods, the modpack picks the software for you, and it will usually be NeoForge or Fabric. Everything else is a variant for more specific needs, which we cover below.

Plugins or mods, the split everything depends on

All the software on this list falls into two families that do not work with each other. The first one runs plugins. A plugin lives only on the server, so a player connects with the ordinary game and installs nothing. Paper, Purpur, Spigot and Bukkit belong here. The second family runs mods, which change the game itself and usually have to be installed by every player too. That is where Fabric, Forge and NeoForge sit.

This leads to the most important rule of the whole article. You cannot put a plugin on Fabric and you cannot put a mod on Paper. If you are just starting out and do not know yet what you need, have a look at our guides on how to install plugins and how to play mods with friends. After reading them the choice usually becomes obvious.

Vanilla, the server straight from the game makers

This is the original server file published by Mojang, with no changes at all. Its biggest advantage is a single one, but a real one: it works from release day of every new version, test versions included. You do not have to wait for anyone to rewrite anything.

That is where the advantages end. Vanilla takes neither plugins nor mods, has no extra performance settings, and with a dozen or so players it starts to struggle sooner than Paper on the same hardware. It works for testing snapshots, a short session for a few people, or when a new version came out this morning and the rest of the software has not caught up yet.

Paper, the default choice for most servers

Paper grew out of Spigot and over the years became what almost everyone starts with. It improves performance, patches plenty of game bugs and hands you configuration files for tuning the server to a given number of players. It runs plugins written for Bukkit and Spigot, and the authors of popular plugins mostly test them on Paper these days. If a plugin works anywhere, it almost certainly works on Paper.

There is one thing hardly anyone mentions, and it can catch you off guard. By default Paper fixes some bugs that technical players treat as regular mechanics, for example certain ways of duplicating items. On ordinary survival that is a plus, because nobody gets to pump up the economy with copied diamonds. On a server built around huge farms it can be annoying. Some of these behaviours can be switched back on in the configuration, which we cover in our guide to paper.yml and spigot.yml settings.

Purpur, Paper with extra dials

Purpur is built on Paper, so everything written above still applies. Same plugins, same performance. The difference is an extra purpur.yml file with a huge number of options that change gameplay. Riding creatures, different mob behaviour, small comforts for players. On Paper you would need to find a separate plugin for each of those, while here you switch them on with a single line.

The downside is that Purpur always waits for Paper. After a new game version comes out it arrives a little later, because the thing it is built on has to exist first. If you run a public server and want to stand out without adding yet more plugins, it is a good pick. If all you need is a stable server for friends, you will not notice the difference.

Spigot and Bukkit, history you no longer need to choose

Bukkit was the standard plugin system for years, and Spigot was for a long time the most popular server built on it. To this day plugins are often described as Spigot plugins. The thing is, Paper runs practically all of them and does it more efficiently. On a new server there is no reason to reach for Spigot, unless a specific plugin explicitly demands it, which is a real rarity nowadays.

Folia, software for genuinely huge servers

Folia is a variant of Paper that splits the world into regions and processes them in parallel on many processor cores. On paper it sounds like the answer to every performance problem. In practice most plugins do not work on it until their authors rewrite them, and the gain only shows up once hundreds of players are spread across the whole map. For a server for friends or a medium public server it is the wrong choice.

Fabric, light and quick to update

Fabric is a mod loader, the program that lets the game read mods at all. It is lightweight and usually the first of the modding options to catch up with a new game version. Its strong point on a server is performance mods such as Lithium, which speed the server up without changing the rules of the game.

The most interesting part, though, is that plenty of Fabric mods work on the server alone. Players then join with the ordinary game, without installing a thing. That is why Fabric is the favourite of technical servers, where what matters is that a farm built from a tutorial works exactly as it does in the tutorial. Its weaker side is administration. There are fewer tools for ranks, land protection or an economy than on Paper, although the most important ones, like LuckPerms, have Fabric versions.

Forge and NeoForge, the realm of big modpacks

Forge is the oldest loader and has the largest mod library in the history of the game. Most of the legendary packs people played for years were made for it, especially on older Minecraft versions. NeoForge split from Forge in 2023, and a large part of the team along with many mod authors moved over. On newer versions of the game NeoForge is now the most common choice for big new packs.

With these two the rule is simple. You do not choose, the pack does. The launcher you download a modpack from always shows which loader and game version it was built for, and you put exactly that on the server. Keep in mind as well that modpacks need far more resources than plugin servers. You will find concrete numbers in our article on how much RAM a Minecraft server needs.

All the options in one table

Can you switch software once the server is running

You can, and in many cases it is completely painless. The world is saved in the same format whether the server runs on Vanilla, Paper or Fabric, so as long as you keep the same game version, moving between them does not damage the map. The most common scenario is someone who started on Vanilla and a week later fancied some plugins.

1. 1

   Make a backup

   In the panel it takes one click. This is the one step you must never skip, even if everything else looks simple.
2. 2

   Change the software, but not the game version

   Pick the new software in the panel and keep the same Minecraft version. Switching software and updating the game at once is two risks in one, and if something breaks you will not know which caused it.
3. 3

   Check the dimension folders of an older Paper world

   On version 26.1 and newer every option saves dimensions the same way, so there is nothing to move. If, however, you have a Paper or Purpur world from the 1.21 days and want to run it on Vanilla or Fabric, use SFTP to move the DIM-1 folder from world_nether and DIM1 from world_the_end into the main world folder. Without that, the Nether and the End will be generated from scratch.
4. 4

   Start the server and read the console

   The first start after a switch takes longer. Before letting players in, walk around the map, pop into the Nether and check that no errors showed up in the console.

Quick FAQ

Which Minecraft server software is the fastest?

For a plugin server, Paper or Purpur, which perform practically the same in this respect. For a server where the mechanics must stay untouched, Fabric with performance mods. Plain Vanilla is the slowest. Folia can be the fastest, but only with a very large number of players and at the cost of plugin compatibility.

Can players on phones and consoles join a Paper server?

Yes, if you install the Geyser plugin, which translates connections from the Bedrock edition to the Java edition. Paired with the Floodgate add on, players on phones and consoles do not even need a Java account. Geyser also has versions for Fabric and NeoForge, but it is easiest to set up on Paper.

Which software should I pick for my first server?

Paper. It plays like the ordinary game, so none of the players will feel a difference, and at the same time it lets you add plugins whenever you want. If this is your first server, our guide on how to create a Minecraft server will come in handy too.

Does the software affect how much memory the server needs?

Yes, a lot. Paper with a dozen or so plugins is happy with a few gigabytes, while a large modpack on NeoForge can take a big share of memory at startup, before anyone connects. That is why you pick the software first and the package second.

Do I have to pay or set up a new server to switch software?

Not with us. You change the software and the game version in the panel within the same server, and your files and world stay where they are. The only thing to remember is a backup before the switch.