Paper or Purpur for your Minecraft server?

If you run a Minecraft server with plugins, sooner or later you end up at the same question: Paper or Purpur? Both are free to download, both run your familiar plugins and both outperform Mojang's stock server software. Yet they are not the same — and the choice mainly determines how many knobs you'll have to turn later.

Good news up front: this is not a decision you're locked into for months. Because the two are interchangeable, you can pick one today and switch next month without any hassle. But picking the right one straight away saves you a migration evening.

How the two relate to each other

A quick look at the family tree. The official server software (vanilla) doesn't support plugins. That's why Bukkit was created, later continued as Spigot, which added a plugin API. Paper is in turn a further development of that, with many extra optimizations and bug fixes, and has become the default choice for servers with plugins. Purpur then builds on top of Paper: everything Paper can do, Purpur can do too, with a hefty stack of extra settings on top.

Important to remember: Purpur is a drop-in replacement. You can take your world and plugins from Paper to Purpur without any conversion, and back again. Always make a full backup first, though — that goes for any server switch.

There are more relatives in this family tree, such as forks focused purely on performance or on multithreading, but Paper and Purpur are the two flavours you'll encounter by far the most in practice. That's why we're sticking to those two here.

What made Paper's name

Paper didn't become this popular by accident. The main reasons at a glance:

• Performance: Paper optimizes chunk processing, mob behaviour and redstone handling compared to Spigot, among other things. On a busy server you'll notice that immediately in a more stable tick rate.
• Exploit fixes: many well-known ways to crash or abuse servers have been patched in Paper, which makes a big difference on a public server.
• Configuration: Paper has its own config files with dozens of extra options on top of Spigot's, for example to tune spawn behaviour and world settings per world.
• Ecosystem: virtually all plugin developers test against Paper, and documentation or help is everywhere. If you get stuck, there's always someone who has had the same problem before.
• Update speed: after a new Minecraft version, Paper is usually quick to publish usable builds, so your community doesn't have to wait for weeks.

One downside comes with the package: Paper also patches exploits that technical players actively use, such as certain duplication tricks. For an average survival server that's pure profit; for a technical community that relies on vanilla behaviour it can be a dealbreaker, although some of it can be re-enabled through the configuration.

What Purpur adds on top

Purpur is all about one thing: configurability. On top of all the Paper options you get an extra config file (purpur.yml) with hundreds of additional switches. A few examples of what you can do with it:

• make mobs rideable that normally aren't;
• tweak the behaviour of animals and monsters per type, from spawn behaviour to little quirks;
• “lobotomize” villagers so that walled-in trading halls eat less processing power;
• all kinds of small gameplay tweaks that vanilla and Paper simply don't offer, plus some extra tooling for admins.

There is a trade-off, and it's worth weighing. More options means more ways to make your server subtly “un-vanilla”; flip switches without thinking and you'll get players wondering why their farm suddenly broke. The team behind Purpur is also smaller than Paper's, and after a new Minecraft release Purpur logically lags a little behind, since it has to wait for the Paper update. For most servers that's easy to live with, but if you always want to be first on the newest version, keep it in mind.

Performance and plugin compatibility

The honest answer to the performance question: the difference is small. Purpur inherits Paper's optimizations, and the extra features are mostly disabled by default. If you switch purely for speed, you won't notice much. What really does make a difference is your settings (such as view distance and mob limits), your plugin list and the hardware your server runs on.

If your server is already struggling, don't expect miracles from a fork switch. First find out what's dragging your tick rate down, for example with a profiling plugin, and tackle the real culprit: often that's a heavy plugin, a farm that got out of hand, or simply too little memory for your player count.

You don't need to worry much about compatibility: Purpur exposes the full Paper API, so virtually every Bukkit, Spigot and Paper plugin runs on it unchanged. Conversely, plugins that specifically require Purpur are rare. In practice you can switch back and forth without any plugin hassle.

From Paper to Purpur in five steps

1. Make a full backup of your server, including worlds and plugin folders.
2. Download the Purpur build that matches your Minecraft version.
3. Replace your current server jar with the Purpur jar (or switch the server type in your hosting panel).
4. Start the server and check the logs for errors or grumbling plugins.
5. Then calmly work through purpur.yml and only enable things deliberately.

The same steps work in reverse. The only thing you lose when returning to Paper is the Purpur-specific settings; your world, player data and plugins stay fully intact.

Which one fits your server type?

• Survival with a group of friends: Paper. You probably don't need the extra options and management stays nice and simple.
• Public community server: Paper as the solid default; Purpur as soon as you notice you want to tweak gameplay that Paper doesn't offer.
• Creative servers and fun concepts: Purpur. Rideable mobs and the many gameplay switches give your concept that little extra.
• Technical community with big farms: be critical. Both forks deviate from vanilla behaviour in places; dig into the settings before choosing, and test your most important farms on a copy of the world.
• Minigames and networks: Paper is the safe choice that most tooling and documentation assume.

Not sure? Then start with Paper. If you later run into something that makes you think “if only I could change this”, check whether Purpur has an option for it — chances are it does, and as mentioned, switching takes no time at all.

Running it at MC-Node

Paper and Purpur both run great on MC-Node's Minecraft servers: our own hardware in the Previder data centre in Hengelo, with NVMe storage and DDoS protection included. How much you need mainly depends on your player count and plugin list; more players and heavier plugins simply call for a bigger plan. A selection of the line-up:

All plans can be cancelled monthly, so starting small and scaling up later costs you nothing extra. You'll find the full line-up, including the Premium range, in the MC-Node Minecraft store. After that, switching the server type between Paper and Purpur is something you simply do yourself — with that backup first, of course.