What is the Best Minecraft Server Jar?

Recommended Software

Purpur

"Purpur is a drop-in replacement for Paper servers designed for configurability and new, fun, exciting gameplay features."

Purpur aims to make your server more configurable — it adds a lot of fun or useful (all off by default) configuration options to your server, on top of Paper and Pufferfish improvements.

Paper

Paper is a fork of Spigot and aims to have better performance and stability. It also has an expanded API, allowing plugins to become even faster.

This jar is highly recommended as it fixes exploits, bugs, and more as well as it greatly improves performance and stability of any Minecraft server. Paper works with Bukkit and Spigot plugins and is the recommended default jar.

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Modded Minecraft

Forge

Forge is a jar that adds a modding API for developers to tap into. It is much more expansive than Bukkit, as players also have to install mods on their end. Recommended for mods and modpacks. Mostly used for older versions (pre-1.12).

Fabric

Fabric is a jar that makes modding easier and smoother than Forge. Considered superior to Forge due to a better, more documented API. Mostly used for more modern versions of the game.

Fabric, with a few performance mods added, is recommended if you want to run a modern technical MC server.

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Other Popular Options

Vanilla

The jar provided by Mojang. No plugin API or modding API. Not optimized — only recommended for small groups of friends who want to play plain vanilla.

Spigot

A fork of Bukkit that began in 2012. No longer recommended as Paper has far surpassed it in performance and options.

Pufferfish

"A highly optimized Paper fork designed for large servers requiring maximum performance, stability, and enterprise features." Includes every change that Airplane used to have.

Sponge

An API designed to be an overhaul of the Bukkit API. Also allows you to run Forge mods together with Sponge plugins. Recommended if you want modpacks and plugins together as smoothly as possible.

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Deprecated Server Software

> DANGER: The server software mentioned below are no longer updated and are not recommended for use on your servers.

Airplane

A fork of Paper that aims to add more performance optimizations. No longer being updated to modern versions of the game. Use Purpur or Pufferfish instead.

Tuinity

A high performance fork of Paper that has now been merged into Paper with all of its improvements. Tuinity as a separate jar is now obsolete.