Paper vs Vanilla vs Fabric vs Forge: Which Server Type to Pick
Quick answer: Paper for plugins and SMPs, Fabric for modern modded play with performance mods, Forge for the big modpacks like FTB or All The Mods, and Vanilla only if you specifically want zero changes from what Mojang ships. Most servers you see online run Paper. Most modded servers run Forge (older packs) or Fabric (newer or lighter packs). Pure Vanilla is rare in production because it chokes past a handful of players.
That's the short version. The rest of this article is what you actually need to know before picking, plus a few things people get wrong about each one.
At a glance
| Type | Plugins | Mods | Client install needed | Performance | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanilla | No | No | No | Poor | 1-3 players, devs testing |
| Paper | Yes | No | No | Excellent | Survival, SMPs, minigames |
| Spigot | Yes | No | No | Good | Legacy Bukkit setups |
| Fabric | No | Yes | Yes | Excellent | Curated modded with perf mods |
| Forge | No | Yes | Yes | Varies by pack | Large modpacks |
| NeoForge | No | Yes | Yes | Slightly better than Forge | Newer modpacks (1.20.4+) |
| Purpur | Yes | No | No | Excellent | Admins who like config knobs |
Vanilla
This is the .jar Mojang ships. No plugins, no mods, nothing custom. You start it with java -jar server.jar and you get exactly what's on the official launcher.
Pick Vanilla if:
- You're playing with one or two friends and you want zero setup
- You're a developer testing something against the reference implementation
- You're recording footage that has to be provably unmodified
For literally any other case, run Paper with zero plugins installed. Same gameplay, better TPS, free.
Paper
Paper is the most popular Minecraft server software in the world, and it's not close. It's a fork of Spigot, which was itself a fork of CraftBukkit. The Paper team rewrites the slow parts of the server to be faster and more configurable, without changing how the game actually plays.
What you get on Paper that you don't get on Vanilla:
- Async chunk loading, so the main thread isn't blocked when someone explores far out
- Configurable mob spawn caps, view distances, and entity activation ranges
- Watchdog that kills a frozen server cleanly instead of hanging forever
- Real permissions through LuckPerms
- All the Bukkit and Spigot plugins still work
The trade-off: Paper changes a few obscure edge cases (mostly redstone and entity collision timing) that 99% of players will never notice. If your community insists on bit-perfect vanilla behavior for some hyper-specific technical farm, this can matter. Otherwise Paper is strictly better.
The plugin ecosystem is what really makes Paper unbeatable for SMPs. The lineup you'll see on almost every server:
- LuckPerms for permissions
- EssentialsX for the standard commands (
/home,/tpa,/spawn, kits) - CoreProtect for rolling back griefing
- WorldEdit or FastAsyncWorldEdit for terrain editing
- ViaVersion and ViaBackwards so older clients can connect
If you're running a survival server, faction server, skyblock, or anything with more than a few friends, you want Paper. The community is enormous and almost every YouTube tutorial assumes you're on it.
Fabric
Fabric is a mod loader, not a plugin platform. The difference matters. Mods change the actual game (new blocks, mechanics, mobs) and must be installed on the server AND every client that connects. Plugins only run server-side and players don't install anything.
Fabric is the newer of the two big modding loaders. It's lightweight, fast to update to new Minecraft versions (often within a day of a snapshot drop), and has become the home base for the modern performance modding scene. With the right perf stack, a Fabric server can match or even beat Paper on certain workloads.
The Fabric performance lineup people actually run:
- Lithium rewrites game logic for speed
- Starlight replaces the lighting engine (don't combine with Phosphor)
- C2ME handles concurrent chunk loading
- FerriteCore drops memory usage
- LazyDFU skips the slow datafixer at startup
Pick Fabric if:
- You want a curated mod list, somewhere between 5 and 80 mods
- You care about getting new MC versions quickly
- You want server performance mods without touching gameplay
- You're playing a Fabric-native pack like Adrenaline, Simply Optimized, or Fabulously Optimized
Where Fabric loses: the mod catalog is smaller. The huge kitchen-sink modpacks like ATM9, Create Above and Beyond, and FTB Skies are Forge or NeoForge.
Forge
Forge is the old guard of Minecraft modding. If you've ever played a 200-mod CurseForge pack, it was probably Forge. The ecosystem is massive but the loader itself is heavier than Fabric and slower to support new MC versions.
Use Forge if you're running:
- Any All The Mods pack (ATM7, ATM8, ATM9)
- FTB packs (Skies, Inferno, Skyfactory)
- Most Create-based packs
- Older modpacks for 1.7.10 or 1.12.2 (huge nostalgia scene)
Performance on Forge depends almost entirely on the pack. A well-built pack with Rubidium and Embeddium can run smoothly on a 6 GB server with 80 mods. A bad pack with conflicting tile entities and laggy worldgen will struggle on 16 GB. Always check the pack's recommended RAM, then add 2 GB on top for the server itself.
NeoForge
NeoForge is a fork of Forge that split off in mid-2023 after governance disputes in the Forge project. It's API-compatible with most Forge mods, ships updates faster, and has become the default for many new packs on 1.20.4 and up. If you're picking between Forge and NeoForge for a modern pack, check what the pack declares it needs. They're not interchangeable, and mixing breaks things.
Spigot, Purpur, and the rest
You'll see these names floating around. Quick rundown:
- Spigot: the older fork that Paper is built on. No real reason to run it in 2026 unless one specific old plugin refuses to load on Paper.
- Purpur: a fork of Paper with extra config options and some optional features (rideable mobs, configurable mob AI). Fully compatible with Paper plugins. Pick this if you like tweaking things.
- Pufferfish and Folia: experimental forks chasing extreme performance. Folia splits regions across CPU threads, which is amazing for huge servers but breaks any plugin assuming a single main thread. Don't run Folia unless you know what you're doing.
How to actually decide
Most people don't need a 2,000-word essay. Use this:
- Do you want mods? If no, run Paper. Done.
- Are you playing a specific modpack? If yes, use whatever loader that pack requires. The pack page tells you.
- Building your own mod list from scratch? Small and curated with great perf, go Fabric. Huge kitchen-sink, go Forge or NeoForge.
That's it. The "best" server jar is whatever runs the gameplay you want.
Performance: what actually changes
A common question: does Paper really help my TPS? Yes, and the difference is bigger than people expect. On a 16-player Vanilla survival server during peak activity (mob farms running, players in different chunks), TPS often sits at 14-17. The same world on Paper with no plugins runs at 19.8-20. If you've ever played on a server that "feels laggy", that's almost always what you're feeling.
For modded, Fabric with Lithium and Starlight tends to outperform Forge running similar mods, mostly because Forge does more work at runtime. Once you're inside a 200-mod kitchen-sink pack though, the mods themselves dominate performance and the loader matters less.
FAQ
Can I switch from Vanilla to Paper without losing my world?
Yes. Paper reads the same world format. Stop the server, swap the .jar, restart. Worlds, players, and inventories carry over. Make a backup first anyway.
Can I switch from Paper to Fabric or Forge?
The world will load, but anything stored by plugins (LuckPerms groups, Essentials homes, McMMO stats, ShopGUI data) lives in plugin files that mods won't read. You'll lose all of that. Plan the migration before you commit.
Do players need to install anything to join a Paper server?
No. Paper looks like a Vanilla server to the client. Anyone with regular Minecraft can join.
Do players need to install Fabric or Forge to join those servers?
Yes. Same loader, same mods, same versions on both sides. This is why modded server admins almost always publish a CurseForge or Modrinth pack link so players can install everything in one click.
Will Mojang ban me for running Paper?
No. Server software is invisible to Mojang. They don't track or care what jar you run.
What about Bedrock?
Bedrock uses a completely different ecosystem (BDS, PocketMine, Nukkit). Java server jars don't work for Bedrock. If you want cross-play, you run Paper plus Geyser and Floodgate, which lets Bedrock players connect to a Java server. That's a separate guide.
Which one does Server Heron support?
All of them. When you create a server in the panel, you pick the jar at install time. You can switch later from the same panel without reinstalling Minecraft itself.
Bottom line
Paper for nearly everything. Fabric for modern, curated modded play. Forge or NeoForge for the big modpacks. Vanilla almost never.