Paper, Purpur, Folia or Velocity: what servers really run

Most public Minecraft servers run Paper, or a fork of Paper, behind a Velocity proxy. At 00:24 UTC on 18 October 2026, 114 servers on our list answered our pinger: 52 identified as Velocity or a Velocity fork, 27 named their backend software, and every one of those 27 was Paper or built on Paper.

For a new server, that settles the default. Start with Paper, choose Purpur if you want more gameplay settings, try Leaf only when you are CPU-bound and willing to test, keep Folia for huge worlds on very large machines, and put Velocity in front as soon as you run more than one server.

What the servers we track run

The live chart counts every server answering our pinger right now, by the software name in its answer.

1. Velocity family4742%
2. Paper2018%
3. Custom text1816%
4. Version number only98%
5. No version text87.1%
6. Purpur43.6%
7. Leaf32.7%
8. BungeeCord family21.8%
9. Folia10.9%

Version text of the 112 servers that answered the latest ping. 49 answer through a proxy, so their text describes the proxy and not the game server behind it.

Measured 19 Oct 2026, 22:55 UTCHow we measure

The snapshot this guide was written from, taken at 00:24 UTC on 18 October 2026, a quiet hour on the list:

Three things stand out. Nearly half of the servers answer as a proxy: networks are built that way, and many single servers want one front door for Geyser or DDoS protection. Not one server announced Spigot or CraftBukkit, which tells you how completely Paper has replaced its parent on public servers. And 7 of the 20 Paper servers still ran 1.21.11, the last version PaperMC lists for Java 21. Minecraft 26.1 moved to Java 25, so updating those servers means updating Java and checking every plugin at the same time.

1. 26.33535%
2. 26.22626%
3. 26.177%
4. 1.21.x1414%
5. Older66%
6. No version number1212%

35 of 100 playable servers advertise 26.3, the newest Java release.

Measured 19 Oct 2026, 22:55 UTCHow we measure

Right now, 47 of 112 answering servers identify as a Velocity-family proxy, 28 as Paper or a Paper fork, and 0 as Spigot.

How we know, and what we cannot see

When a client, or our pinger, asks a Java server for its status, the answer is a small block of JSON with a version name and a protocol number. Paper writes its name and version ("Paper 26.3"), Velocity its name and the range of versions it speaks ("Velocity 1.7.2-26.3"), vanilla and Fabric only the number. That text is all we read, and it has blind spots:

• A proxy answers for the whole network. Velocity can pass parts of a backend's answer through with its ping-passthrough setting, but that is off by default, so the backends behind the 54 proxies in that snapshot are invisible to us. The true share of Paper is almost certainly higher than the table shows, by an amount we cannot prove.
• Proxy ranges describe the proxy. 50 of the 52 Velocity-family answers advertised a range starting at 1.7.2, which is simply Velocity's own minimum. Whether a 1.8 client can really play depends on the backend and on plugins from the ViaVersion family. 1.8 PvP against modern combat goes into why PvP servers care.
• Text can be anything. Server list plugins can replace the version text with a server name or a made-up player counter. We saw both in this snapshot.
• A bare number hides the software. It can be vanilla, Fabric, NeoForge, or a server set up to hide its name.

What we can see is change over time. Between 3 September and 16 October 2026 our pinger logged 71 changes of version text across the list (live, for the last 42 days: 70 changes, 26 of them software switches). Of the 71, 36 were updates to 26.3 on the same software, and 27 were switches to another software family, in every direction: Paper to Leaf, Leaf to Paper, Purpur to Paper, a proxy appearing in front of a Paper server and, on other servers, disappearing again. One address answered as Leaf instead of Velocity for less than a day, then went back. Not every switch sticks. Your listing's public stats page shows the changes we saw on your server, and our versions report tracks how fast servers adopt each release.

Backend software: Paper, Purpur, Leaf, Folia, Spigot

The backend is the server that actually runs the world. Everything in this section runs Bukkit-style plugins, which players do not need to install.

Paper

Paper is the default for good reasons. It began as a fork of Spigot and became a hard fork with 1.21.4, so it no longer waits for Spigot's changes, and it still runs Bukkit, Spigot and Paper plugins. Since 1.21 it bundles the spark profiler, which is the first tool to reach for when something lags (our lag guide walks through it).

Paper switches off several vanilla exploits by default: piston duplication of TNT, carpets and rails, breaking bedrock and end portal frames, and headless pistons. They stay off unless you enable them under unsupported-settings in config/paper-global.yml. If your SMP lives on TNT duplicators, read that section before you move.

PaperMC's requirements table lists Java 21 for 1.20 to 1.21.11 and Java 25 for 26.1 and later.

Purpur

Purpur is a fork of Paper with a large purpur.yml of gameplay options: rideable mobs, per-mob behavior tweaks and many small toggles that would otherwise take a pile of plugins. It runs Paper plugins, and with purpur.yml untouched it behaves like Paper. Because it builds on Paper, its builds for a new Minecraft version can arrive after Paper's.

Leaf

Leaf is a Paper fork from Winds-Studio aimed at performance. Its README lists asynchronous pathfinding, mob spawning and entity tracking plus patches gathered from other forks, and it is plain about the risk: "Make sure to take backups before switching to it." Moving work off the main thread can change timings that farms and redstone depend on, so test what your players built on a copy first. Leaf can also store worlds in the Linear region file format to save disk space. If you turn that on, know how you would convert back before you need to.

Folia

Folia is PaperMC's fork with regionized multithreading. It splits the loaded world into regions that tick in parallel, the most direct way past the one-core limit of a single server. The Folia README sets the bar clearly:

• It suits "server types that naturally spread players out, like skyblock or SMP", with a sizeable player count.
• It wants "ideally, at least 16 cores (not threads)".
• Its author expects "basically zero plugins that are compatible with Paper to be compatible with Folia", and Folia only loads plugins that declare folia-supported: true.

Folia is not a fix for a lagging 30-player server. It is a different platform for very large worlds, and one server in our snapshot ran it.

Spigot and vanilla

Paper runs most Spigot plugins, so there is little reason left to pick Spigot for a new public server. Mojang's vanilla server jar is the right choice for a pure vanilla world with no plugins.

Proxies: Velocity, BungeeCord, Waterfall

A proxy sits in front of your backends. Players connect once and move between lobby, survival and minigames, and you get one front door for Geyser and protection.

Velocity is PaperMC's proxy and the most common software of any kind on our list. Its modern forwarding passes each player's real IP, name, UUID and skin to the backends, signed with a shared secret, and needs 1.13 or newer on the backends. The setup in short:

1. In velocity.toml, set player-info-forwarding-mode = "modern". Velocity generates the secret in forwarding.secret on first start.
2. On every Paper backend, set online-mode=false in server.properties, because the proxy now handles login, and leave settings.bungeecord at false in spigot.yml.
3. In each backend's config/paper-global.yml, set proxies.velocity.enabled: true, copy the secret into proxies.velocity.secret, and make proxies.velocity.online-mode match the online-mode in velocity.toml.

With modern forwarding, a backend refuses players who did not come through the proxy. With legacy BungeeCord forwarding it cannot tell the difference, so a firewall that blocks the backend ports from the outside is mandatory.

Velocity forks such as Velocity-CTD and VeloFlame add features on top. Nine servers in our snapshot ran one.

BungeeCord is the original proxy, still maintained by SpigotMC, and forks such as FlameCord build on it. It uses legacy forwarding, so the firewall rule above applies. Two servers in our snapshot ran the BungeeCord family.

Waterfall is PaperMC's former BungeeCord fork. PaperMC announced its end of life on 26 March 2024: old builds stay downloadable, but you should not count on updates for new Minecraft versions. If you still run it, plan the move to Velocity, and check each BungeeCord plugin for a Velocity version, because the two plugin systems are not compatible.

Fabric and NeoForge for modded servers

A plugin runs only on the server. A mod usually changes the game on both sides, so the server and every player need the same mod loader and the same mods, apart from mods made to run on the server alone.

• Fabric is a light loader that updates quickly after each Minecraft release. It is popular for vanilla-faithful servers that add server-side mods such as Lithium, which speeds up game logic without changing vanilla behavior, and FerriteCore, which reduces memory use. Players do not need either.
• NeoForge started as a fork of Forge on 12 July 2023, when most of the Forge team moved to the new project. Large content modpacks for recent versions mostly run on NeoForge or Fabric, while many packs for older versions stay on Forge.

Hybrid servers that load plugins and mods together exist, but they tend to break when either side updates. For a public server, pick one. From outside, modded servers usually answer with a plain version number, so they hide in the "version number only" row above. Our modded server list shows the ones that tag themselves.

Which one for your server

If the CPU is the real limit, no software saves you, and choosing hosting explains why single-core speed matters most.

Switching safely

1. Back up everything. World folders, the plugins folder and every config file, copied off the machine.
2. Read the requirements. Java version (25 for 26.1 and later on Paper), plugin support (the folia-supported flag for Folia), and the target's own notes.
3. Test on a copy. Start the new jar against a copy of the world. Paper forks add their own config files and keep the existing ones.
4. Profile before and after. Run /spark profiler start --timeout 600 at a similar player count on both, so you know whether the switch helped instead of guessing.
5. Test what players built. Mob farms, redstone clocks, hopper sorters and duplicators are where forks and settings show their differences.
6. Do not open a world in an older Minecraft version. Moving from Paper to a fork on the same version is routine. Going back a game version is not supported, and PaperMC's 26.1 notes say it plainly: after upgrading a world to 26.1 "you cannot downgrade back to a lower version".
7. Keep the old jar and the backup for a week. Plenty of owners switch back.