Why Your Minecraft Server Is Lagging and How to Fix It

1. Is it the server or your connection?

If blocks take a while to break, animals move in jumps and it happens to everyone at once, it's the server. If it only happens to you and everyone else is playing fine, it's your connection or your computer.

On the server, the number that matters is TPS (ticks per second): 20 is perfect; below 15 you notice it. On Paper, the /tps command tells you.

To find out what's causing it without guessing, spark (included in Paper) measures where the time goes and points to the plugin, mod or farm to blame: it's step by step in the spark guide.

2. Memory

If the server's memory is always at the limit, Java spends all its time cleaning up and everything freezes now and then. In “Home”, your server's screen in the panel, you can see how much it uses against your plan's maximum. With mods or lots of players, more RAM makes a difference; on NapNodes you can add it without reinstalling anything.

3. Generating the world is expensive

Exploring new areas forces the server to generate them, and that's the heaviest load of all. That's why on NapNodes a new server's world comes already generated around the spawn. If you explore a lot, pregenerating with Chunky and setting a world border (/worldborder) help.

4. Farms, entities and redstone

Hundreds of animals in a farm, piles of items on the ground or redstone circuits that never stop weigh more than lots of players. Paper limits some of this on its own; the rest is a matter of not overdoing it, plus a few settings in its files that lighten the load without anyone noticing in game (optimising a Paper server).

5. Mods

With mods, performance depends a lot on which ones. If it's been slow since you added one, remove it and check. Some mods exist just to make things run more smoothly (Lithium and FerriteCore on Fabric, for example).

Frequently asked questions