Paper vs Purpur: Which Minecraft Server Software is Better?

Paper and Purpur run the same plugins and share the same performance work, because Purpur is built on top of Paper. The real difference is scope: Paper stays close to Vanilla and adds performance and exploit fixes, while Purpur adds hundreds of extra configuration and gameplay options on top. For most survival and SMP servers Paper is the simpler default; pick Purpur when you want options that Paper deliberately does not include.

If you are deciding between Paper vs Purpur, or wondering whether Purpur is "faster" than Paper, this guide answers the practical questions first and then goes through performance, compatibility, configuration, customization, plugins and stability in detail.

Paper vs Purpur: the short answer

• Which is faster? Neither is faster in a way you can count on. Purpur inherits Paper's optimizations and does not undo them. Any measurable difference comes from your plugins, world, entity counts and configuration, not from the jar you picked.
• Which is more stable? Both are stable for production servers. Paper is the base project with the larger user base and the fewest moving parts; Purpur adds a layer of patches and options on top, which is one more thing to keep updated and configured.
• Which has more configuration options? Purpur, by a wide margin. It adds purpur.yml with per-world toggles for mob behaviour, item mechanics, rideable mobs and dozens of quality-of-life settings.
• Which should a normal survival server choose? Paper. It matches most tutorials, gets updates first and leaves fewer settings to misconfigure.
• When should you use Paper? When you want a Vanilla-like experience with good performance, day-one updates and the standard plugin ecosystem.
• When should you use Purpur? When you want to change gameplay rules (ride mobs, tweak villager or phantom behaviour, adjust mechanics) without stacking plugins for each change, and you are comfortable reading a large config file.

Comparison table

What is Paper?

Paper (PaperMC) is a fork of Spigot and the most widely used server software for Minecraft Java plugin servers. It keeps Vanilla gameplay while removing wasted work on every tick: asynchronous chunk loading, optimized entity ticking, better hopper and redstone handling, and fixes for duplication exploits. It exposes these behaviours in paper-global.yml and paper-world-defaults.yml, and recent builds bundle the spark profiler so you can see which plugin, entity or chunk is using your tick time.

If you are coming from Spigot, read Paper vs Spigot first; the step from Spigot to Paper is where most of the performance difference lives.

What is Purpur?

Purpur is a drop-in replacement for Paper. It takes Paper and adds a large set of configuration options that the Paper team chose not to include because they change Vanilla behaviour or are too niche. For a period Purpur was based on Pufferfish, a Paper fork with additional optimizations; current Purpur builds track Paper directly, so check the Purpur release notes for the version you run.

Everything Purpur adds lives in purpur.yml, and almost all of it ships disabled. A fresh Purpur server behaves like a fresh Paper server until you start turning options on.

Performance: is Purpur faster than Paper?

Not in a way you should plan around. Purpur contains Paper's optimizations, so a Purpur server will not be slower than Paper with the same settings, and it will not be meaningfully faster either. Server performance in Minecraft is dominated by what runs on the main thread each tick:

• entities and mob AI (farms, item drops, villagers)
• chunk loading and world generation when players explore
• redstone and hoppers
• plugin event handlers and scheduled tasks
• garbage collection pauses when the heap is undersized or oversized

Changing from Paper to Purpur does not change any of these. Lowering simulation-distance, pre-generating the world, fixing a heavy plugin or sizing memory correctly changes them a lot. Measure before you switch: run /mspt and /tps, drop the numbers into the Minecraft TPS and MSPT calculator to see how much headroom you have, and follow the Minecraft server lag guide if ticks are over the 50 ms budget. If garbage collection pauses show up in a profiler, the Java startup flags generator builds Aikar's flags for your memory size.

Purpur does include a few options that can help specific workloads (for example its alternate keepalive handling for players on unstable connections, or per-world mob-spawning tweaks), but they are targeted fixes you enable deliberately, not a general speed-up.

Compatibility

Plugins. Both run Bukkit, Spigot and Paper plugins. Purpur adds its own API, so a small number of plugins are Purpur-only, but you never need Purpur-specific plugins to run a normal server. Plugins that use internal server code (NMS) need a build for your exact Minecraft version on either platform.

Worlds. Paper and Purpur use the same world format as Vanilla. You can move a world between them in either direction. Take a backup first anyway.

Minecraft versions. Both support the current Minecraft version and a few recent ones. Paper publishes builds for a new Minecraft release first; Purpur follows once its patches are rebased. If being on a new version on release day matters to your community, that gap favours Paper.

Bedrock players. Both work with Geyser and Floodgate. Our Geyser setup guide covers the plugin installation and port setup on a Paper or Purpur server.

Configuration

Paper's configuration is split by scope: paper-global.yml for server-wide settings and paper-world-defaults.yml for per-world defaults, with an optional paper-world.yml inside each world folder to override them. This is where you tune entity limits, despawn ranges, chunk settings and exploit toggles. spigot.yml and bukkit.yml still exist underneath.

Purpur keeps all of that and adds purpur.yml, which follows the same global/world-settings pattern. Expect a long file. That is the point of Purpur, but it also means more values to understand before changing them. The settings that matter most for performance (view-distance, simulation-distance, entity activation ranges) live in the shared Paper and Spigot files on both platforms; see view distance vs simulation distance for how to set those, and the server.properties generator for the base file.

Gameplay customization

This is where Purpur separates itself. Without installing a plugin you can:

• let players ride and control mobs such as dolphins, phantoms or horses in water
• change how specific mobs behave (phantom spawning rules, villager lobotomization for trading halls, creeper and enderman tweaks)
• enable infinite water sources in the Nether or adjust other block mechanics
• tweak item and tool behaviour (for example shears, totems, anvil and enchantment details)
• change many small defaults that Vanilla hard-codes

Paper offers far fewer of these on purpose. The Paper team keeps gameplay changes minimal so that a Paper server behaves like Vanilla unless a plugin changes it. If your wish list is short, a plugin or two on Paper covers it; if the list is long, Purpur removes a lot of plugin overhead and update churn.

Plugins

For plugin selection, the two are interchangeable. The usual stack (LuckPerms, EssentialsX, WorldEdit, WorldGuard, Vault, CoreProtect, Chunky, spark) runs on both. A few things to check:

• Some plugins read the server brand and print a warning on Purpur; most still run.
• If a plugin bundles its own version of a gameplay change (for example an anti-phantom plugin), you can drop it on Purpur and use the config option instead.
• Keep plugin builds matched to your Minecraft version. Version mismatches are a far more common source of crashes than the Paper vs Purpur choice.

Stability and updates

Both projects publish frequent builds and are used on large public servers. The differences are structural rather than quality-related:

• Paper is the upstream. Bugs are found and fixed by the largest user base, and there is no extra patch layer that could lag behind.
• Purpur carries Paper's fixes plus its own patches. Occasionally a Purpur build is a day or more behind a Paper fix, and a Purpur-specific option can interact with a plugin in ways nobody has tested yet.

Neither of these is a reason to avoid Purpur. They are a reason to keep backups, update deliberately and change one setting at a time.

Who should use Paper

• You want a Vanilla-like server with good performance and the standard plugin ecosystem.
• You update to new Minecraft versions as soon as builds are out.
• You prefer configuration that matches most tutorials and plugin documentation.
• You run a small to medium survival, SMP or minigame server and do not need unusual mechanics.

Who should use Purpur

• You want to change gameplay rules without a separate plugin for each change.
• You are comfortable reading and maintaining a large purpur.yml.
• Your community asks for things like rideable mobs, mob behaviour tweaks or mechanic toggles.
• You are already running Paper and want more knobs without changing plugins or worlds.

How to switch between Paper and Purpur

Because Purpur is a drop-in replacement for Paper, switching takes a few minutes in either direction.

1. Stop the server.
2. Back up the server folder, including worlds, plugins and configuration files.
3. Replace the server jar with the Purpur jar (or the Paper jar if you are going back) for the same Minecraft version, keeping the file name your startup command expects.
4. Start the server. Purpur generates purpur.yml next to the existing Paper files on first boot; Paper simply ignores purpur.yml if you switch back.
5. Watch the console for plugin warnings on the first start, then test with a couple of players.

On Paper and Purpur hosting at LuxuryNodes the server software is a dropdown in the panel, so the jar swap is done for you; the backup step still applies.

Frequently asked questions

Is Purpur better than Paper? Purpur is better if you want its configuration options. Paper is better if you want the simplest Vanilla-like server. For performance they are effectively equal with the same settings, because Purpur is built on Paper.

Does Purpur use more RAM than Paper? Not meaningfully. Memory use is driven by loaded chunks, entities and plugins, which are the same on both. If you are sizing a server, use the Minecraft RAM calculator and read the RAM requirements guide before assuming more memory fixes lag.

Will switching to Purpur corrupt my world? No. Both use the Vanilla world format. Always back up before changing server software.

Can I use Spigot plugins on Purpur? Yes. Purpur runs Bukkit, Spigot and Paper plugins, the same as Paper.

Does Purpur get updates as quickly as Paper? Paper publishes first; Purpur follows after rebasing its patches, usually shortly after. For most servers the gap does not matter.

Should a new server start on Paper or Purpur? Start on Paper unless you already know you want Purpur's options. You can switch later without touching your world or plugins.

Next step

Whichever you choose, the server underneath matters more than the jar: Minecraft's main thread depends on single-core CPU speed, and lag is almost always a workload or configuration issue rather than a Paper vs Purpur one. Paper and Purpur hosting plans at LuxuryNodes let you switch between both from the panel, and if you are running mods instead of plugins, compare modded Minecraft hosting and Fabric server hosting.