BungeeCord vs Velocity vs Waterfall: Which Proxy is Best?

If you're building a Minecraft network—like a Hub server that connects to a Survival server and a Skyblock server—you need a proxy. A proxy acts as the front door, seamlessly teleporting players between different backend servers without them having to disconnect.

For years, BungeeCord was the only mainstream option. Today, there are several, and picking the right one is crucial for performance and security.

BungeeCord: The Original

BungeeCord, created by md_5, revolutionized Minecraft networks. It is still widely used and has the absolute largest ecosystem of plugins (like BungeeAdminTools, AdvancedBan, etc.).

The problem: BungeeCord's codebase is aging. It wasn't built for modern multi-threading and can struggle when player counts get extremely high. If you just need a very simple, 2-server setup, BungeeCord is still acceptable, but generally no longer recommended for new networks.

Waterfall: The Popular Fork

Waterfall was a fork of BungeeCord maintained by PaperMC (the same team behind the Paper server jar). Its goal was to improve performance, fix bugs faster than upstream BungeeCord, and add basic Forge mod support.

The problem: PaperMC recently announced the End of Life (EOL) for Waterfall. Because it relied on the old BungeeCord codebase, the developers decided it was too difficult to keep maintaining. You should avoid starting new projects on Waterfall.

Velocity: The Modern Standard

Velocity is the current king of Minecraft proxies. It was built from the ground up (not a Bungee fork) to be incredibly fast, highly scalable, and extremely secure. It uses "Player Info Forwarding" beautifully, ensuring your backend servers see real player IPs rather than the proxy's IP.

Velocity also features a modern plugin API. While older Bungee plugins won't work on it natively, almost every major network plugin (LuckPerms, Plan, LiteBans) has a native Velocity version available today.

The Verdict

If you are setting up a Minecraft network in 2026 or beyond, you should use Velocity. Its performance, security features, and active development by the PaperMC team make it the undisputed best choice.

Ready to create your Minecraft network? EnderGrid makes it incredibly easy to deploy Velocity proxy nodes alongside your backend Paper servers. Start building your network today.