Vanilla vs Paper: Which Should You Use?
Short answer: use Paper. It runs the same game as Vanilla but faster, with better performance and plugin support.
What is Vanilla?
Vanilla is the official Minecraft server software from Mojang. No changes, no additions. Exactly what Mojang ships.
The problem: it is slow. Vanilla struggles past 10-15 players and has no support for plugins.
What is Paper?
Paper is a fork of Vanilla that rewrites the slow parts. The gameplay is identical. Your players will not notice a difference.
What you get with Paper:
- Significantly better TPS under load
- Support for plugins (EssentialsX, CoreProtect, LuckPerms, etc.)
- Better chunk loading
- More configuration options
Which should you pick?
Pick Paper if you want plugins, better performance, or more than a handful of players. That covers almost everyone.
Pick Vanilla only if you need bit-perfect Vanilla behavior for a technical farm or a specific redstone contraption that Paper's optimizations break.
How to switch in the panel
Open your server in the panel
- Go to Startup
- Change the server type to Paper
- Restart the server
- Your world carries over. Nothing is lost.