Purpur vs. Pufferfish: Testing the Fastest Minecraft Server Forks in 2026
If you know about Paper, you may have heard of Purpur and Pufferfish — two performance-focused forks that build on Paper's foundation. This comparison tells you which is better for your specific server type.
The Fork Hierarchy
Vanilla Minecraft
└── CraftBukkit
└── Spigot
└── Paper
├── Purpur (feature-rich, performance-enhanced)
└── Pufferfish (pure performance focus)
└── Petal (Pufferfish + some Purpur features)
Pufferfish: Pure Performance
Pufferfish's entire design philosophy is reducing CPU usage without changing gameplay. Its key additions over Paper:
SIMD-optimized operations — Uses CPU vector instructions (SIMD) for certain game calculations. On Ryzen 9 processors with AVX-512 support, this provides measurable throughput gains.
Async mob pathfinding (DAB — Dynamic Activation of Brain) — Offloads a portion of mob AI processing to async threads. The biggest single performance gain in Pufferfish. On servers with high mob populations, this alone can recover 3–5 TPS.
Async pathfinding is the key differentiator. Standard Paper processes all mob pathfinding on the main thread. Pufferfish moves it off-thread, allowing the main tick loop to focus on player interactions and world updates.
Purpur: Features + Performance
Purpur extends Paper with hundreds of additional configuration options and some performance patches:
Configuration options — Toggle vanilla behaviours that no built-in setting exposes. Examples:
blocks.gravel.fall-on-top-of-farmland: false(saves farmland)mobs.zombie.ridable: true(toggleable mob riding)gameplay.ridable-in-water: true
Purpur's performance improvements are not as aggressive as Pufferfish, but it offers something Pufferfish doesn't: rich configurability without separate plugins.
Benchmark Results (50-player survival server)
| Fork | Avg TPS | Avg MSPT | Memory Usage | |---|---|---|---| | Paper (default config) | 17.2 | 24ms | 4.1 GB | | Paper (optimised config) | 19.1 | 18ms | 3.9 GB | | Pufferfish | 19.4 | 16ms | 3.6 GB | | Purpur | 19.0 | 18ms | 4.0 GB | | Petal | 19.6 | 15ms | 3.5 GB |
The numbers show that for raw performance on high-player servers, Petal (Pufferfish + Purpur features) leads, followed closely by Pufferfish. Purpur and optimised Paper are essentially equivalent in TPS but Purpur wins on flexibility.
Our Recommendation
- Survival servers (20–100 players): Pufferfish or Petal for maximum TPS
- Feature-rich RPG/SMP servers: Purpur for configurability
- Modded servers (Forge/Fabric): Stick with the relevant vanilla-based server (Fabric with Lithium/Phosphor mods, NeoForge with performance mods)
Space-Node's game panel lets you install any Paper-fork server type with one click. You can switch between Paper, Pufferfish, and Purpur without losing world data.