Vanilla vs Paper: Which Should You Choose for Your Free Minecraft Server?

The two most common choices for a free Minecraft server are Vanilla (the official Mojang software) and Paper (a high-performance fork). Here's how they compare and which one to pick.

Quick comparison

• Vanilla — pure Minecraft, no plugins, slower under load, perfect for purists
• Paper — Vanilla-compatible gameplay + plugin support + dramatically better performance

Performance

Paper wins decisively. It includes hundreds of optimizations on top of Vanilla — chunk loading is faster, entity ticking is more efficient, and TPS holds up much better with 20 players online. On the same hardware, a Paper server will sustain 2–4× the player count of Vanilla before slowing down.

Plugin support

Paper supports the entire Bukkit/Spigot plugin ecosystem. That means thousands of plugins for permissions, anti-grief, economy, custom commands, mini-games, and more. Vanilla has zero plugin support — every feature has to come from the base game.

Gameplay compatibility

Paper is fully compatible with Vanilla clients and Vanilla gameplay mechanics. You won't notice any difference in survival, redstone, or PvP. The only differences are minor server-side fixes for known exploits and dupe bugs.

When Vanilla makes sense

• You're testing pre-release Minecraft snapshots (Paper sometimes lags by a few days)
• You want absolutely zero risk of plugin-induced bugs
• You're learning server admin and want to start with the basics

When Paper makes sense

• Anything bigger than a tiny friend group
• You want any kind of permissions, economy, or custom commands
• You care about server performance and TPS
• You want anti-grief or world protection

Verdict

For 95% of players, Paper is the better default. Pick Vanilla only if you have a specific reason to. You can always create both kinds of servers free on FreeMCServers.org and try them side by side.