How the three relate
These are not three competing projects; they are a chain. Paper is a fork of Spigot focused on performance, bug fixes and configurability, and it is what the overwhelming majority of servers run. Purpur is a fork of Paper — it takes everything Paper does and layers on a far larger configuration surface plus optional gameplay tweaks. Folia is a fork of Paper too, but a fundamentally different one: it rebuilds how the server ticks so that separate regions of the world can run on separate threads at the same time.
So Paper → Purpur is a small, safe step sideways. Paper → Folia is an architectural change that your plugins have to agree to.
Side by side
| Paper | The default. Strong performance, huge plugin ecosystem, sane configuration, the best-documented option |
| Purpur | Paper plus a much bigger config file and gameplay toggles. Same plugins, same worlds, more knobs |
| Folia | Regionised multithreading. Scales across cores for spread-out worlds, but needs Folia-specific plugins |
| Plugin compatibility | Paper and Purpur: interchangeable. Folia: separate ecosystem, far smaller |
| Best fit | Paper: almost everyone. Purpur: admins who want the knobs. Folia: large, sparsely-populated worlds |
| Risk | Paper: lowest. Purpur: low. Folia: real — verify every plugin before committing |
Why Paper is the right default
Paper gives you the performance patches and configuration that make a server tunable at all — entity activation ranges, chunk-loading behaviour, redstone and hopper settings, and a long list of fixes that vanilla and Spigot leave on the table. Just as importantly, it is what everyone else runs, which means the plugin you want was tested against it, the guide you are reading assumes it, and the person answering your question in Discord has hit your problem before. That last factor is worth more than a few percent of tick time.
Paper's configuration is also where most real optimisation lives. Before reaching for different software, most struggling servers get more from tuning what they already have — see finding the source of lag with spark and how much RAM you actually need.
What Purpur adds
Purpur's pitch is control. It exposes a great deal that Paper leaves fixed — per-mob behaviour and settings, gameplay rules you can toggle, and additional performance-related options. For an admin who wants to tune mob behaviour precisely, or who wants a specific gameplay tweak without writing a plugin for it, that is genuinely useful.
The honest caveat: more options is not the same as more performance. Purpur inherits Paper's speed rather than multiplying it, and an untouched Purpur config behaves much like Paper. If you are switching because you expect free TPS, you will be disappointed. If you are switching because you read the config and want three specific things in it, go ahead — the migration is close to free.
What Folia actually changes
Minecraft's server has traditionally ticked the whole world on one thread, which is why single-thread CPU speed matters more than core count for most servers, and why a 32-core machine does not make a busy spawn any smoother. Folia changes that model: it divides the world into regions and ticks independent regions in parallel across threads.
The consequences follow directly from that design. If your players are spread across a large world — a big survival map, a sprawling anarchy server — Folia can use hardware that Paper simply cannot. If your players are concentrated in one place, that place is still one region on one thread, and you gain very little. And because plugins now run in a world where different regions tick concurrently, ordinary Bukkit and Paper plugins are not merely untested on Folia; they are unsafe on it and have to be written for the model.
- Consider Folia if your world is large, your players are genuinely dispersed, and you have the cores to use.
- Do not consider Folia if you depend on a broad plugin set — the ecosystem is much smaller by design.
- Never treat Folia as a drop-in upgrade for a lagging Paper server. Diagnose the lag first; it is usually one plugin, one farm, or chunk generation.
- If most of your load is one crowded area, look at splitting game modes across multiple backend servers behind a proxy instead.
None of them filter traffic
Whichever you pick, the server software's job starts after a connection has already arrived, been accepted and been turned into a player. A join-flood does not care whether the tick loop is single- or multi-threaded — Folia's extra threads are just more capacity to exhaust. Bot filtering has to happen upstream of the server entirely, which is why the software choice and the protection choice are separate decisions that do not trade off against each other.
Common questions
Should I use Paper or Purpur for my Minecraft server?+
Use Paper unless you have looked at Purpur's configuration options and specifically want some of them. Purpur is built on Paper, so it inherits Paper's performance work and plugin compatibility, and adds a large set of extra configuration and gameplay toggles. If you will never open that config file, the two are effectively the same server and Paper is the more conservative choice.
Is Folia faster than Paper?+
For the right workload, dramatically — and for the wrong one, not at all. Folia splits the world into regions that tick independently across multiple threads, so it scales with cores when players are spread out. A server whose players all stand in one busy area gets very little benefit, because that area is still one region on one thread. The catch is that ordinary Bukkit and Paper plugins do not work on Folia; they must be written for its threading model.
Do Paper plugins work on Purpur?+
Yes. Purpur is a fork of Paper, so anything that runs on Paper — including Spigot and Bukkit plugins — runs on Purpur unchanged. This is exactly why moving between the two is low-risk, and why Folia is the odd one out: it is the only one of the three that breaks plugin compatibility.
Can I switch from Paper to Purpur without losing my world?+
Yes. Both read the same world format and the same plugin data, so swapping the server JAR is normally enough — Purpur simply generates its own additional configuration file on first start. Back up your world before any server software change regardless, and be aware that going back down the chain later is not always as clean as going up it.
Which server software is best for a large network?+
Large networks typically run Paper on each backend server behind a proxy, rather than trying to make one enormous server handle everything. Splitting load across several Paper instances is more predictable than any single-server optimisation, and it lets you scale a busy game mode independently. Folia is worth evaluating for genuinely spread-out worlds where players are not concentrated in one place.
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