Operations5 min read
Paper, Fabric or vanilla: which server software to run
What each one is actually for, what you give up moving between them, and why almost every public server ends up on Paper.
These are not three versions of the same thing. Vanilla is the game's own server. Paper is a rewrite of it for performance and plugins. Fabric is a mod loader. Picking between them is really picking what you want to be able to add later.
Vanilla
Exactly the game, no additions. Correct behaviour down to the redstone quirks, which matters if your players build machines that depend on them. It is also the slowest of the three at scale, because none of the optimisations that break edge-case behaviour have been applied.
Paper
Vanilla with the hot paths rewritten and a plugin API attached. Several times faster with the same players and world, and it is what almost every public server runs. The trade is that a handful of exotic redstone and mob-farm behaviours differ from vanilla - documented, deliberate, and irrelevant to most servers.
Fabric
A loader for mods that change the game itself, which means clients need the same mods. That is the real dividing line: plugins are server-side and players join with an unmodified client, mods are not. If you want people to join by typing an address and nothing else, you want plugins, which means Paper.
- Want a survival server friends can join with the normal launcher - Paper.
- Want new blocks, dimensions or machines - Fabric or Forge, and everyone installs the pack.
- Want to test something against the game's real behaviour - vanilla.
Switching from vanilla to Paper is a jar swap and keeps the world. Switching to Fabric is not - the world survives, but anything the mods add did not exist before, and anything they remove takes its blocks with it.