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.
Start your optimised Minecraft server on Space-Node
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