Paper vs Spigot vs Purpur: Which Minecraft Server Should You Run?

If you want plugins, you need Bukkit-based server software — and the three names you will keep seeing are Spigot, Paper, and Purpur. They are a family tree, not three unrelated projects. Here is what separates them and which one you should actually run.

The family tree

Each is a fork of the one before, adding performance and configuration on top:

• Spigot: the long-standing Bukkit fork. Plugin support, some optimisation, minimal extra config.
• Paper: a fork of Spigot focused on performance and bug fixes, with far deeper config (paper-world-defaults.yml). The de facto standard today.
• Purpur: a fork of Paper that adds hundreds of gameplay-tweak toggles (ridable mobs, custom mechanics) while keeping Paper's performance.

All three run the same Bukkit/Spigot plugins, so installing plugins works identically across them.

Performance

Paper is dramatically faster than Spigot on busy servers thanks to async chunk loading, better entity handling, and years of optimisation patches. Purpur inherits all of that and adds negligible overhead. In practice: Spigot is fine for a tiny private world, but for anything public, Paper or Purpur will hold a higher tick rate under load. Pair either with proper JVM flags and some config tuning for the best result.

Configuration depth

This is where they really diverge:

• Spigot: spigot.yml and bukkit.yml — a modest set of knobs.
• Paper: adds config/paper-global.yml and paper-world-defaults.yml with granular control over view distance, mob spawning, redstone, and anti-lag features.
• Purpur: adds purpur.yml on top, exposing gameplay toggles most servers never knew they wanted.

Compatibility

Because Purpur is downstream of Paper, and Paper is downstream of Spigot, a plugin written for Spigot generally runs on all three. Plugins that specifically target Paper's API run on Paper and Purpur but not plain Spigot. You will rarely hit a wall here.

Switching between them

They are largely drop-in. To move from Spigot to Paper, back up your world, swap the server jar, and restart:

# stop the server, then:
mv spigot.jar spigot.jar.old
wget -O server.jar "https://api.papermc.io/v2/projects/paper/versions/1.20.4/builds/499/downloads/paper-1.20.4-499.jar"
java -Xmx4G -Xms4G -jar server.jar nogui

Your world and plugins carry over. Always back up first.

The verdict

For almost everyone: run Paper. It is faster than Spigot, universally supported, and actively maintained. Choose Purpur if you want its gameplay toggles and do not mind a slightly smaller community. Choose plain Spigot only if a specific plugin demands it, which is rare in 2024+.

Where Bukkit and CraftBukkit fit

You'll sometimes see Bukkit and CraftBukkit mentioned too. Bukkit is the plugin API that all of these share; CraftBukkit is the original reference server that implements it. Spigot is a fork of CraftBukkit, and Paper is a fork of Spigot — so it's one continuous lineage. In practice nobody runs plain CraftBukkit anymore because Spigot and Paper are strictly better. When a plugin says "works with Bukkit," it means the API, and it'll run on all three.

What about running mods too?

None of Paper, Spigot, or Purpur can run Forge or Fabric mods — they're plugin servers, full stop. If you genuinely need *both* mods and plugins, hybrid servers like Mohist or Arclight exist, merging Forge with the Bukkit API. They're powerful but noticeably less stable, and many plugins misbehave on them. For most people the honest advice is: pick one world type. Run Paper for a plugin survival server, or run Forge/Fabric for a modded one.

Config files: what carries over when you switch

Because the forks are layered, switching keeps your existing config and adds new files rather than replacing them:

• Spigot to Paper: your spigot.yml, bukkit.yml, world, and plugins all carry over. Paper simply generates its extra config files on first boot.
• Paper to Purpur: identical — Purpur reads Paper's config and adds purpur.yml.

So there's no risky data migration involved. Back up, swap the jar, restart, and tune the new config files at your leisure. Combined with Aikar's JVM flags and the settings in our lag guide, Paper or Purpur will hold TPS far better than Spigot under load.

A note on Folia

For very large servers you may hear about Folia, PaperMC's experimental fork that spreads the world across multiple CPU cores using "regionised" multithreading. It's genuinely exciting because it breaks Minecraft's traditional single-thread ceiling — but it's aimed at servers with hundreds of spread-out players, requires plugins written specifically for it, and isn't a drop-in replacement for Paper. For the overwhelming majority of servers, plain Paper remains the right choice; Folia is worth watching, not switching to, unless you're running a large network and your plugins support it. If raw single-thread performance is your bottleneck today, the practical wins are good JVM flags, the settings in our lag guide, and fast per-core hardware — not a fork change.

FAQ

Is Paper better than Spigot?

For performance and configurability, yes — clearly. Paper is a superset of Spigot with major optimisations. There is little reason to run plain Spigot today.

Do Spigot plugins work on Paper and Purpur?

Yes. Both are downstream forks and maintain Spigot plugin compatibility. Paper- or Purpur-specific plugins are the only exception.

Is Purpur worth it over Paper?

If you want its extra gameplay toggles, yes. For raw performance the two are effectively identical, since Purpur is built on Paper.

Can I run mods on Paper?

No, Paper runs plugins, not Forge/Fabric mods. For mods you need a mod loader — see our Forge guide.

Whichever you pick, it wants fast single-thread CPU and NVMe disk. Nxeon's Minecraft hosting gives you root access to run Paper, Purpur, or anything else.