Purpur, Folia, Pufferfish or Leaf: Better than Paper for Your Minecraft Server?

What they are: they all come from Paper

Paper is the reference plugin server: it started as an improvement on Spigot, fixes game bugs, performs far better than Mojang's standard server and loads Spigot and Bukkit plugins. The others in this guide are “forks” of Paper: they copy its code and add their own on top.

That has a practical consequence: a fork always reaches each new Minecraft version after Paper, because Paper has to come out first and then they have to redo their changes on top. And when something breaks, the Paper team doesn't support forks: they'll ask you to try it on Paper.

Purpur: Paper with hundreds of gameplay options

Purpur presents itself as a drop-in replacement for Paper designed so you can configure everything. Paper plugins work the same and its performance is Paper's; what it adds is one more file, purpur.yml, in the server folder, with things you can't change on Paper without plugins.

Some real examples from its purpur.yml: riding almost any mob (a ridable option per mob, under mobs.<mob>), picking up spawners with silk touch (gameplay-mechanics.silk-touch), marking players who stand still as AFK instead of kicking them (gameplay-mechanics.player.idle-timeout) or making the totem of undying work from the inventory. They all come off by default: a fresh Purpur plays like Paper. It also brings commands such as /tpsbar and /rambar, which show TPS and memory in a bar.

It's worth it if you want to change how the game plays (an SMP with odd mounts, house rules) without filling the server with small plugins. It doesn't make it run smoother: for that, better to tune Paper.

Folia: real multithreading, but for huge servers

Folia comes from the Paper team itself. It splits the world into regions of nearby chunks and each region runs on its own thread, in parallel, instead of everything on one main thread. With hundreds of players spread across the map, it scales much better than Paper.

They put the small print on their own GitHub page: they recommend at least 16 cores (not threads), they say you should expect plugin compatibility to be “0”, and Folia only loads plugins their author has marked as compatible (folia-supported: true in their plugin.yml). EssentialsX, many economy plugins, minigames and almost all small ones aren't.

For a server for friends, 5 to 30 people, Folia adds nothing: multithreading only shows with many cores and lots of people spread out, and in exchange you lose half your plugins.

Pufferfish and Leaf: the “more performance” ones

Pufferfish is a Paper fork made by a host of the same name, with optimisations for entities, hoppers and maps, and compatible with Paper plugins. Watch the version: as of October 2026, the free Pufferfish on its GitHub stopped at 1.21.x and has no version for Minecraft 26.

Leaf is a Paper fork with bits of Purpur and Pufferfish, plus its own: pathfinding, mob spawning and entity tracking off the main thread, and a region format that takes up less space. It's up to date (it has a version for 26.3) and claims compatibility with Spigot and Paper plugins. Its own page warns you to make a backup before switching to it, and rightly so: the more a fork changes under the hood, the easier it is for a plugin or a farm to behave differently.

For a small server, the difference from a well-tuned Paper is usually small. Where they show is on big servers with lots of entities, and there what matters is measuring first with spark.

What really gets rid of lag (on any of them)

Changing software won't fix a farm with 400 cows or a world that isn't pre-generated. Before looking at forks, measure: spark tells you what eats up each tick. What usually comes up: too many entities, chunks being generated while someone explores, and high view distances.

For that, the usual: pre-generate the world with Chunky, lower view-distance and simulation-distance in server.properties and Paper's settings from the Paper optimisation guide. With that, Paper handles a group of friends without trouble; if it still struggles, it's usually short of RAM or has too many mods, not missing a fork.

The Purpur features you can also get on Paper

A lot of what people look for in Purpur is already on Paper with a game rule or a well-known plugin:

1. Make it day with one player sleeping

   gamerule players_sleeping_percentage 1 in the console. Works on any server, no plugins (the other rules are in the gamerules guide).

2. Get rid of phantoms

   gamerule spawn_phantoms false. No Purpur needed either.

3. Mark AFK players

   EssentialsX brings /afk and marks anyone who's been still for a while on its own (the EssentialsX guide).

4. Spawners with silk touch

   With a plugin such as SilkSpawners. It's one of the few things where Purpur saves you a plugin.

5. Riding mobs

   This one really is Purpur's own; on Paper you'd need a mounts plugin, and there isn't one as complete.

How it works at NapNodes

Minecraft servers are delivered on Paper, on the latest version. In the panel, inside your server, “Mods & plugins” → “Server type” switches between Paper, Fabric, Forge and NeoForge with your world inside: whatever doesn't work on the new type is set aside without being deleted and, if there's room, a backup is made first.

Purpur, Folia, Pufferfish and Leaf aren't installed from “Server type”. If you really need Purpur (for the mounts, say), ask in “Help” and we'll look at it with you. Folia, with the cores it asks for, makes no sense on plans with 1.5 or 2 vCPU like ours.

Your plan's RAM is yours alone (it isn't shared with other customers), so what you see in “Performance” is what your server uses. If it's tight, RAM can be added without moving server: “Buy RAM” in “My servers” and then “Adjust” on your server's card (how much RAM you need).

Frequently asked questions