What is Spigot?
Spigot is a high-performance fork of CraftBukkit, the original Minecraft modding API. When CraftBukkit was abandoned in 2014, Spigot picked up the torch and has been the foundation of the Bukkit plugin ecosystem ever since.
How Spigot relates to Paper
Paper is itself a fork of Spigot. Both share the same plugin API, so any plugin written for Spigot also works on Paper. The difference is that Paper adds significant performance improvements and additional configuration on top of Spigot. For most servers, Paper is the better choice — but Spigot remains a stable, well-known option.
Spigot's strengths
- Full Bukkit/Spigot plugin compatibility
- Well-documented configuration in
spigot.yml - Long-term stability — 10+ years of continuous releases
- Familiar to nearly every Minecraft server admin
Performance characteristics
Spigot is faster than Vanilla but slower than Paper. It uses synchronous chunk loading, which can cause noticeable hitches when many players load new areas at once. For small to medium-sized servers (under 10 players) the difference vs Paper is minor; for larger servers, Paper's optimizations matter more.
Common Spigot use cases
- Small friend-group servers wanting basic plugin support
- Plugin developers testing against the canonical Bukkit API
- Servers where a specific old plugin requires Spigot exactly