What is Waterfall?
Waterfall is an actively-maintained fork of BungeeCord, developed by the PaperMC team (the same group behind Paper). It's a drop-in replacement for BungeeCord with bug fixes, performance improvements, and additional configuration.
Why Waterfall over BungeeCord?
- Active development — Waterfall releases frequently. BungeeCord is mostly in maintenance mode.
- Performance — faster packet handling, better throttling under load
- Bug fixes — patches issues that BungeeCord hasn't addressed
- Same plugins — every BungeeCord plugin works on Waterfall
- Same configs — config.yml format is identical
How Waterfall fits in your network
Waterfall sits in front of your Minecraft backend servers (Paper, Spigot, Forge, etc.). Players connect to Waterfall, which routes them to whichever backend they want. It's the central traffic cop of your network.
Common Waterfall setups
- Lobby + multiple game-mode servers
- Separate survival, creative, and hardcore worlds
- Mini-game network (SkyWars, Bedwars, KitPvP, etc.)
- Multi-region setup with global authentication
Waterfall vs Velocity
Velocity is a newer proxy from the PaperMC team with a completely different (and faster) architecture. Velocity uses a different plugin API, so most BungeeCord plugins don't work on it. Waterfall is the right choice if you want BungeeCord plugin compatibility; Velocity is the choice if you're starting fresh.
Setup
Waterfall setup is identical to BungeeCord. See our Waterfall setup guide.