Best Minecraft Server Settings for Maximum Performance
JVM Flags — The Foundation of Performance
Your server's Java startup flags are the single most impactful configuration for performance. Use Aikar's flags — the community standard: '-Xms4G -Xmx4G -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200 -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+AlwaysPreTouch -XX:G1NewSizePercent=30 -XX:G1MaxNewSizePercent=40 -XX:G1HeapRegionSize=8M -XX:G1ReservePercent=20 -XX:G1HeapWastePercent=5 -XX:G1MixedGCCountTarget=4 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=15 -XX:G1MixedGCLiveThresholdPercent=90 -XX:G1RSetUpdatingPauseTimePercent=5 -XX:SurvivorRatio=32 -XX:+PerfDisableSharedMem -XX:MaxTenuringThreshold=1'. Set these in your control panel's Startup tab.
server.properties — Core Gameplay Settings
view-distance: 8-10 for most servers. Higher values exponentially increase chunk loading. simulation-distance: 6-8 — controls entity and block tick distance. max-players: Match your plan's capacity. network-compression-threshold: 256 (default) — lower values compress more but use more CPU. Set to -1 to disable compression on high-CPU plans. online-mode: true (always — prevents cracked clients). spawn-protection: 16 blocks minimum. allow-flight: false unless your server needs it for abilities.
bukkit.yml — Tick and Entity Management
spawn-limits: Reduce monsters from 70 to 50, animals from 10 to 8, water-animals from 5 to 3 to cut entity processing by 30%. ticks-per: Set monster-spawns to 10 (default is 1 — this drastically reduces spawn frequency). autosave: Increase interval to 6000 ticks (5 minutes) from default 6000 to reduce IO spikes. chunk-gc.period-in-ticks: 400 (unloads unused chunks faster). Set 'period-in-ticks' to 400 so chunks not near players get unloaded quickly.
spigot.yml — Optimizing Entity Behavior
entity-activation-range: Increase these to reduce mob AI processing only near players. Recommended: animals: 32, monsters: 32, raiders: 48, misc: 16, water: 16, villagers: 32, flying-monsters: 32. entity-tracking-range: players: 64, animals: 48, monsters: 48, misc: 32, other: 64. ticks-per: hopper-transfer: 16 (reduces hopper lag dramatically), hopper-check: 16. merge-radius: item: 4.0, exp: 6.0 — this merges nearby dropped items to reduce entity count.
paper-world.yml — Advanced Optimization
delay-chunk-unloads-by: 10s — keeps chunks in memory briefly after players leave for smoother returns. max-auto-save-chunks-per-tick: 24 — reduces save spikes. prevent-moving-into-unloaded-chunks: true. use-faster-eigencraft-redstone: true — faster redstone processing. fix-climbing-bypassing-cramming-rule: true. arm-stand-entity-lookups: false — reduces arm stand lag. all-chunks-are-slime-chunks: false. disable-teleportation-suffocation-check: true. per-player-mob-spawns: true — distributes mob caps per player for more natural spawns.
Timings and Monitoring
Run '/timings paste' after your server has been running for at least 30 minutes with players online. This generates a report showing exactly what's consuming tick time. Look for: plugins using >5% of tick, tile entities (hoppers) consuming >10%, and chunk loads >50/second. Install Spark profiler for deeper analysis — '/spark profiler --timeout 300' captures a 5-minute performance profile. Review reports after every plugin addition or player count increase.
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