Vanilla, Paper, Purpur, Fabric or Forge: which Minecraft server software?

Before you upload your first world to a Minecraft server, you need to decide which server software it will run. That choice determines whether you can use plugins or mods, how quickly you get new game versions and how the server behaves with more players. We go through the main options — Vanilla, Paper, Spigot, Purpur, Folia, Fabric, Forge and NeoForge — and at the end you will find a table to help you decide.

Plugins or mods? The main fork in the road

The most important question is not “which software is best” but what you want to run on the server.

• Plugins run only on the server. Players join with an ordinary client, without installing anything. Plugins add commands, economy, land protection, minigames or permission management, but they cannot add new blocks and items.
• Mods change the game itself — they add blocks, creatures, dimensions or entire technology systems. Usually every player has to install them too, typically as part of a modpack.

For plugins you reach for Paper or its derivatives; for mods, Fabric, Forge or NeoForge. Having both at once is only possible with compromises (see hybrids below).

Vanilla: the official server from Mojang

Vanilla is the official server, downloaded straight from Mojang. It behaves exactly like the game in singleplayer and supports data packs, but not plugins or mods. It gets new Minecraft versions first, on release day.

It suits a small group of friends who want the pure experience, or technical players who care about the exact behaviour of redstone and farms. For a public server, though, it is too limited — it lacks the player-management tools and optimisations that Paper offers. Details on versions and settings are on the Minecraft Wiki.

Paper: the default choice for plugins

Paper started as a performance fork of Spigot and is now developed independently. It supports the Bukkit and Spigot plugin API, so the vast majority of plugins you find on SpigotMC, Hangar or Modrinth work on it. On top of that it adds its own optimisations, bug fixes and a large number of settings in paper-global.yml and paper-world-defaults.yml.

For most servers with plugins, Paper is a sensible starting point. One thing worth knowing: by default Paper fixes some game bugs that technical farms rely on (TNT duplication, for example). Some of this can be re-enabled in the configuration — check the Paper documentation if your community depends on it.

Spigot

Spigot is the older project Paper grew out of. It still works, and plugins written for it run on Paper too. For a new server, though, there is little reason to choose Spigot over Paper — Paper offers the same plugin compatibility and more performance tuning options.

Purpur: Paper with more options

Purpur is a fork of Paper that adds a large number of extra configuration options — such as riding mobs, or tweaks to animal behaviour and game mechanics. Paper and Spigot plugins run on it. It is useful when you want to fine-tune gameplay without writing your own plugins. It usually gets new Minecraft versions after Paper, because it builds on it.

Folia: for specific large servers

Folia is a PaperMC project that splits the world into regions and processes them in parallel on multiple threads (regionized multithreading). It can help servers with many players spread across the map. The catch is compatibility: plugins must explicitly support Folia, and a large share of common plugins do not work on it. For a typical server it is therefore not a good fit — if you are considering it, start by checking whether your key plugins support Folia.

Fabric: a lightweight mod loader

Fabric is a lightweight mod loader that tends to be ready for new Minecraft versions very quickly, often already for snapshots. Most mods require the Fabric API library. Besides content mods, Fabric has a strong set of optimisation mods that run only on the server, so players do not need to install them — for example Lithium (game logic optimisation) or FerriteCore (lower memory usage).

Fabric is a good choice for small and medium modpacks, for servers on the latest version and for anyone who wants a near-vanilla experience with better performance.

Forge and NeoForge: large modpacks

Forge is the oldest major mod loader. Most classic modpacks were built on it, and for older versions such as 1.12.2 or 1.16.5 it is often the only option.

NeoForge was forked from Forge in 2023, when a large part of its developers moved over. Many new mods and modpacks for newer Minecraft versions target NeoForge. On 1.20.1 the two projects are still very close; on newer versions a Forge mod will generally not run on NeoForge and vice versa. So always use the loader the modpack was released for.

We describe how to install a modpack on a server in the Minecraft modpacks guide.

Hybrids: mods and plugins together

There are also hybrid servers that combine a mod loader with the Bukkit plugin API (Mohist or Arclight, for example). They are tempting, because you get both mods and plugins. In practice, though, both plugins and mods run in a different environment from the one they were written for, so you are more likely to hit bugs, crashes and unexpected behaviour. Mod and plugin authors usually do not support them. If you use a hybrid, test thoroughly and back up regularly. It is often better to find a mod that covers the feature you need (there are server-side permission mods for Fabric and NeoForge, for instance).

Proxies: Velocity for server networks

If you want to link several servers (lobby, survival, minigames) under one address, you need a proxy. The recommended choice is Velocity from the PaperMC team. The older alternative is BungeeCord; its fork Waterfall is no longer developed by PaperMC, which points users to Velocity. A proxy is not a game server by itself — backends run behind it, typically on Paper.

How to decide

How it works at BlazeHost

On BlazeHost Minecraft hosting, the Pterodactyl panel has an installer for Paper, Forge, Fabric and Vanilla. Other software, such as Purpur or NeoForge, you upload as a custom JAR through the file manager or SFTP. Servers run on our own hardware with AMD Ryzen 9 5900X CPUs and NVMe SSDs in Frankfurt am Main.

Performance tuning tips are in the Minecraft server performance guide, and advice on choosing plugins in the Minecraft plugins guide. If you are not sure, get in touch.

Summary

• First decide between plugins (server only) and mods (server and client).
• For plugins, Paper is the default; Purpur adds more settings; Folia is only for specific cases.
• For mods, choose Fabric, Forge or NeoForge depending on which loader the modpack was released for.
• Hybrids work, but with stability trade-offs.
• For a server network, use the Velocity proxy with Paper backends.