> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Paper vs Purpur for a Minecraft server - URL: https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/paper-vs-purpur/ - Published: 2026-08-20T10:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-30T12:20:34.000Z - Description: Purpur is Paper with a far bigger settings file. What it adds, where performance really comes from on a dedicated box, and which to pick. - Author: Mark E - Tags: Comparison, Minecraft, Performance Paper is the sensible default for a Minecraft server, and it has been for years. It is fast, well maintained, and every plugin you are likely to want already runs on it. Purpur is the fork people most often weigh it against, so this post covers what Purpur adds on top, what it costs, and where the real performance on a dedicated box actually comes from. The short answer: Purpur is Paper with a much bigger settings file. Pick it for control. Performance is decided by the CPU underneath and the config you set, and on that front the two start in the same place. ## The tick is single-thread bound A Minecraft server runs on a loop called the tick. Twenty times a second, one thread walks through the world and does the work: move entities, run redstone, grow crops, handle mob AI. Everything in that list has to finish inside 50 milliseconds, because that is the budget for one tick at the target 20 TPS. Go over, and the server falls behind (TPS drops) or each tick takes longer (MSPT climbs). Almost all of this happens on one thread. Paper has already moved the jobs that can safely leave that thread, such as chunk loading, generation and lighting, onto worker threads, but the core of the tick still runs in order on a single core. That is why per-core clock and cache decide how a server feels, and why raw core count does very little for one instance. We cover the hardware side in [choosing a CPU for Minecraft](https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/choosing-a-cpu-for-minecraft). ## What Paper gives you Paper forked Spigot and went much further on performance and bug fixes. Out of the box it fixes a long list of vanilla and Spigot exploits and inefficiencies, adds its own extended plugin API, and ships a deep configuration split across `paper-global.yml` and `paper-world-defaults.yml`. View distance, mob behaviour, entity limits, item despawn, redstone implementation, explosion maths: a lot of what people install extra software for, Paper can already do from its config. It is also where the plugin ecosystem points first. If a plugin supports one server, it supports Paper. ## What Purpur adds Purpur is built on top of Paper and keeps the whole Paper API, so every Paper plugin runs on it unchanged. What it adds is `purpur.yml`, a very large file of extra settings that Paper does not expose. Some are performance related. Most are about gameplay: - Per-mob toggles and tweaks, including making mobs ridable or controllable. - Mechanics vanilla hardcodes, from how crops and blocks behave to small quality-of-life rules. - Villager lobotomize (`world-settings.default.mobs.villager.lobotomize.enabled`), which skips the brain for villagers that cannot reach a job site or bed. In a penned trading hall that removes most of the POI-scan cost, and it is one of the most useful single settings for an SMP. If you want to change how the game behaves without writing or installing a plugin for each change, that is what Purpur is for. ## Performance: closer than the forum threads suggest Because Purpur tracks Paper, the baseline performance is effectively the same. Purpur does not make the tick thread faster on its own. What it gives you is more levers, and a couple of those levers, lobotomize in particular, can save real tick time on the servers that need them. So the honest comparison runs like this. On an identical config, expect the same MSPT. With Purpur's extra settings applied where your server is actually hurting, Purpur can come out ahead, because you have switched off work that Paper gives you no setting for. Our [SMP tuning guide](https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/smp-tuning-guide) sets out both the Paper and Purpur settings by tier. ## Where the real headroom comes from on a dedicated box Server software matters less than people expect, and the machine matters more. On a dedicated server, where you are not sharing the chip, you can have a large-cache X3D part. Minecraft spends much of each tick waiting on memory, so keeping the hot working set resident in cache cuts MSPT more than extra clock does. Owning the whole chip also means the worker threads Paper uses for chunk work have cores that are genuinely free, so world loading does not contend with someone else's server. Put plainly: a well-configured Paper or Purpur server on a fast, dedicated core will beat any fork on a contended one. ## The caveat with Purpur Purpur's extra settings are powerful, and some of them change gameplay in ways players notice. Toggle something because a guide said so and you can quietly break a farm, a mob behaviour your players rely on, or a redstone build. Treat `purpur.yml` the way you treat any config: change one thing at a time, tell players when mechanics change, and profile with spark before and after. Purpur also sits one step further from upstream. New Minecraft versions land on Paper first and on Purpur shortly after. If you need to be on a new version on day one, Paper gets there first. ## Pick this if - **Paper:** you want the sensible default, the fastest path to new versions, and a server that behaves like vanilla with the exploits and inefficiencies fixed. Start here. - **Purpur:** you want gameplay control from config, or you need specific settings like villager lobotomize, and you are happy to trail Paper slightly on new versions. Moving from Paper to Purpur is a drop-in swap of the server jar, and your plugins and Paper configs carry over. Moving back is just as easy, so there is little risk in trying it. For the wider family tree, see [Vanilla vs Paper vs Purpur](https://dedicatedmc.io/blog/vanilla-paper-purpur). [Browse Minecraft hosting](https://dedicatedmc.io/minecraft-server-hosting?ref=dedicatedmc.io)