Paper vs Purpur: differences and which one to choose

⚡ The short answer

Purpur is Paper with more options. It is built on top of Paper, loads the same plugins and, as long as you leave its config file alone, behaves the same way. That makes the choice simple:

• Paper if you want a server with plugins and nothing else. It is the usual starting point.
• Purpur if you want to change details of the game (rideable mobs, AFK players, how blocks and mobs behave) with a setting instead of a plugin.

Neither of them loads Forge or Fabric mods; if that is what you need, see Forge vs Fabric vs NeoForge.

📄 What Paper is

Paper is a Minecraft server based on Spigot, designed to perform better than the original server (Vanilla) and to give plugins more to work with. Among its optimisations, the project itself lists asynchronous chunk loading and improvements to the light engine, hoppers and entities. It extends the Bukkit and Spigot APIs, so it runs plugins written for them, and it has its own plugin repository, Hangar.

🟣 What Purpur adds

Purpur describes itself as a drop-in replacement for Paper with a focus on configurability. It inherits everything Paper has and adds one file, purpur.yml, with a very long list of options. A few examples:

• Mobs you can ride and steer: every mob has its own ridable and controllable options.
• Chat broadcasts and tab-list tags for players who are AFK.
• Six-row ender chests and colours in the anvil.
• The /tpsbar and /rambar commands, which show the server's TPS and memory in a bar on screen.

The key point: none of it switches on by itself. Purpur's documentation puts it plainly: if you don't edit anything in purpur.yml, running Purpur is no different from running Paper. So Purpur does not outperform Paper on its own; the difference is in what it lets you configure.

🔌 Do the same plugins work?

Yes. Purpur supports plugins made for Bukkit, Spigot and Paper. According to its documentation, the only incompatibilities come from plugin authors hard-coding support for CraftBukkit or Spigot specifically. Plugins are installed the same way on both, in the plugins folder: see how to install plugins on Paper and Purpur.

🧨 What both change compared with Vanilla

Paper turns off, by default, several game glitches that some farms rely on, and Purpur inherits that. The two that most often surprise people coming from Vanilla:

• TNT, carpet and rail duplication with pistons doesn't work (allow-piston-duplication).
• Unbreakable blocks such as bedrock and end portal frames can't be broken (allow-permanent-block-break-exploits).

Both settings live in config/paper-global.yml, under unsupported-settings. You can enable them, but Paper warns that they are not officially supported. If your world has technical farms, check this before you migrate.

🔁 Switching from one to the other

Going from Paper to Purpur needs no conversion: since it is a drop-in replacement, you swap the server file (the .jar) for the Purpur one for the same Minecraft version and start the server. Your world, plugins and configuration stay where they were, and Purpur adds its purpur.yml.

The way back, from Purpur to Paper, is not covered in Purpur's documentation. Take a backup first, and keep in mind that anything you enabled in purpur.yml will stop applying.

On ZentexNode you don't touch any files: in the panel, under «Tipo de servidor y versión» (server type and version), you pick Paper or Purpur and the version, and the server is reinstalled with your worlds and files kept. Even so, have a backup before you switch: how to create and restore backups.

📋 Summary

	Paper	Purpur
Based on	Spigot	Paper
Bukkit, Spigot and Paper plugins	Yes	Yes
Forge or Fabric mods	No	No
Extra gameplay options	No	Yes, in purpur.yml
With the config untouched	—	Behaves like Paper
Pick it if	You want plugins and nothing else	You want to tweak the game without plugins