How to Fix Lag in Minecraft

What causes Minecraft lag?

Lag in Minecraft comes in two forms: client-side lag (your computer struggling to render the game) and server-side lag (the server not processing game ticks fast enough). Server lag is the most common issue for multiplayer servers and is measured in TPS (ticks per second). A healthy server runs at 20 TPS. Anything below 15 TPS and players will notice rubber-banding and chunk loading delays.

1. Check your server's TPS

Before fixing anything, measure the problem. Install the Spark profiler plugin and run:

This shows your current TPS and highlights which plugins or processes are dragging it down. Always profile before optimising — guessing wastes time.

2. Allocate the right amount of RAM

Running too little RAM is the #1 cause of lag on budget servers. Here are rough minimums:

• Vanilla server, 5–10 players: 2–3 GB RAM
• Spigot/Paper, 10–20 players: 4–6 GB RAM
• Modpack (Forge/Fabric), 5–15 players: 6–10 GB RAM
• Large community (30+ players): 10–16 GB RAM

3. Switch from Vanilla to Paper

Paper is a high-performance Minecraft server software that fixes hundreds of vanilla bugs and adds async chunk loading, entity culling, and tick rate optimisation. Switching from vanilla to Paper typically improves TPS by 20–40% with no gameplay changes.

Download Paper at papermc.io and swap your server JAR — that's it. Your world and plugins carry over unchanged.

4. Optimise your server.properties and paper.yml

These settings have the biggest impact on TPS:

• view-distance — set to 6–8 instead of the default 10. Lower = fewer chunks to process.
• simulation-distance — set to 4–6. This controls how far mobs and redstone tick.
• max-tick-time — set to -1 in paper.yml to prevent the watchdog from killing the server on spikes.
• entity-tracking-range — reduce mob tracking distance in paper.yml to cut network load.
• mob-spawn-range — reduce from 8 to 4–6 to cut entity count.

5. Remove or replace laggy plugins

A single poorly coded plugin can tank your TPS from 20 to 10. Use Spark to identify the culprit:

Let it run for 2–3 minutes, then run /spark profiler stop and open the report URL. Look for plugins consuming more than 5% of tick time and replace them with optimised alternatives.

Common offenders: dynmap (use BlueMap instead), Citizens (limit NPC count), and WorldGuard (enable chunk-based caching).

6. Control mob spawning

Entities are the biggest TPS killer on busy servers. Install ClearLag or use Paper's built-in entity limits. In paper.yml, set per-category spawn limits:

• Reduce spawn-limits.monsters from 70 to 30–40
• Reduce spawn-limits.animals from 10 to 5–8
• Enable per-player-mob-spawns: true to distribute load evenly

7. Upgrade your hosting hardware

Minecraft is highly single-threaded. The metric that matters most is single-core clock speed, not total core count. AMD Ryzen 9 processors (used in XyleHosting Premium plans) excel here — their high per-core performance keeps TPS stable even under load.

If you're on a budget plan and have tried all the software fixes above, upgrading to a Premium plan with a Ryzen processor is the most reliable solution.

Still lagging after all of this?

Open a support ticket with XyleHosting and share your Spark profile URL. Our team will review your server configuration and recommend the right plan for your player count and modpack.