Reduce Minecraft server lag

Lag usually comes from too much work per tick, not from the network. Check TPS with tps (Paper/Purpur) — 20 is healthy.

Quick wins

• Use Paper or Purpur instead of Vanilla or Spigot. See Install PaperMC.
• Lower view-distance to 6–8 and simulation-distance to 4–6 in server.properties.
• Pre-generate your world with a plugin such as Chunky so players don't trigger heavy chunk generation.
• Limit entities — mob farms, item frames and dropped items add up quickly.

Plugins

Run a profiler (for example the built-in /spark if installed) to see which plugin uses the most time, and remove or replace the worst offenders. More plugins is not better; twenty carefully chosen ones beat sixty overlapping ones.

Hardware

If TPS drops only when many players are online and the console shows you near your RAM limit, upgrade your plan. All our game servers run on NVMe storage, so slow disks are rarely the cause.

Restarts

A scheduled nightly restart clears memory leaks. Set one up in Schedules.