How to Fix a Laggy Minecraft Server

Few things ruin a multiplayer Minecraft experience faster than broken blocks reappearing, rubber-banding during combat, or the dreaded "Server closed" message. If you're experiencing a laggy Minecraft server, you're not alone. The default server software provided by Mojang (Vanilla) is notoriously unoptimized for larger player bases.

Before you blame your internet connection, here are the most effective steps to fix a laggy Minecraft server and achieve that buttery-smooth 20 TPS (Ticks Per Second).

1. Switch to an Optimized Server Jar (Paper, Purpur)

If you take nothing else away from this guide, take this: Stop using the Vanilla server jar if you care about performance.

Instead, switch to PaperMC or one of its forks (like Purpur or Pufferfish). These are heavily optimized versions of the Minecraft server software that maintain complete vanilla gameplay mechanics while drastically reducing the CPU resources needed to run the server. Here at EnderGrid, you can switch your server version to Paper with a single click in the control panel.

2. Pre-Generate Your World

When players explore new areas, the server has to generate the terrain on the fly. In newer Minecraft versions (1.18+), terrain generation is incredibly CPU-intensive due to the massive caves and mountains. If multiple players are flying in different directions with Elytras, your server will lag.

Use a plugin like Chunky to pre-generate the world within a specific radius (e.g., 5000x5000 blocks) while no players are online. When players explore later, the server simply loads the existing chunks from the disk, which requires almost zero CPU effort.

3. View Distance vs. Simulation Distance

Server admins often turn down view-distance (how many chunks a player can see) in server.properties to save resources. A better approach is to utilize simulation-distance.

• View Distance is how far the player can see chunks.
• Simulation Distance is how far out entities (like mobs and villagers) are actively ticked, crops grow, and redstone activates.

To reduce lag without making players feel like they're in a tiny fog box, keep view distance reasonable (around 8 or 10) but turn simulation-distance down to 4 or 5. EnderGrid plans provide enough resources to balance these effectively.

4. Limit Entities and Mob Farms

Entities—which include animals, hostile mobs, items lying on the ground, and minecarts—are a massive source of lag. If a player builds a giant cow crusher with 500 cows crammed into one block, your server CPU will struggle.

In Paper's configuration files (or bukkit/spigot config), you can lower the hostile and passive mob spawn limits. Better yet, enforce rules on massive automated mob farms, or use plugins to stack mobs.

5. You Might Need Better Hardware

If you've optimized everything and your TPS is still tanking when a few players log on, it might be your hosting provider. Many budget hosts oversell their nodes, cramming hundreds of servers onto old, slow Xeons. They advertise "Unlimited RAM", but Minecraft performance relies entirely on single-core CPU performance.

At EnderGrid, we use current-generation CPUs known for blazing-fast single-thread performance paired with NVMe storage. We don't artificially restrict critical resources. If you're tired of fighting with unoptimized hardware, it might be time for a change.