How To Optimize Your Minecraft Server Performance

In this guide, you will learn how to fix common lag sources on your Minecraft server and configure settings to improve performance. While Minecraft has various performance pitfalls, even just changing a few default settings can significantly reduce lag.

Daily Restarts

The first thing you’ll want to do is create an automatic daily restart schedule; this serves to keep your resource usage under control while ensuring your server has a fresh load once every 24 hours.

To create a schedule follow this guide.

Optimizing Server Properties

The most effective way to reduce lag on any Minecraft server is to optimize your server.properties file.

1. Access the Game Host Bros Panel and stop your Minecraft server.
2. In the sidebar, go to File Manager and open server.properties.
3. Set sync-chunk-writes=false (1.16+ only).
4. Update simulation-distance and view-distance based on your player count using the table below.
5. Start your server.

Recommended Settings

Player Count	Simulation Distance	View Distance
1-5 Players	8	10 - 14
6-10 Players	6	8 - 10
10-20 Players	5	5 - 7
20+ Players	3 - 4	5

Tip

If you lower the server view distance, players can still see further by installing client-side mods such as Distant Horizons or Bobby. Modded servers should use a lower simulation distance such as 5.

As an additional recommendation, consider enabling Aikars Flags from the Startup Parameters page of the game panel. Aikars Flags were created to help optimize performance, and are especially effective for older versions of Minecraft.

Picking the Right Server Type

Running a completely Vanilla Minecraft server (the official jar from Mojang) is often performance-intensive. Unless you need 100% mechanical parity with Vanilla, switching your server software is the most effective solution to lag.

• Paper: The best choice for most server admins. It offers a wide range of plugins, high configurability, and excellent performance optimizations.
• Fabric: A good choice if you want very lightweight mods, but requires specific performance mods (like Lithium) to match Paper’s optimization.

Note

To change your server software, please refer to our guide on how to select the correct version for your server.

Do not change your version if you are running a pre-configured modpack.

For platform-specific settings or mods to boost performance beyond Vanilla capabilities, check out the following guides from us: NeoForge, Forge, Fabric.

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As always, if you get stuck or have any questions, just reach out to a bro on Discord.