Best Mods for Minecraft Servers in 2026

Most advice about Minecraft server mods falls into one of two camps: either it’s a list of performance optimizations (useful but incomplete) or it’s a roundup of gameplay mods that happens to include a few server-compatible picks. Neither is actually useful if you’re sitting down to set up a new server and asking the practical question: what does the server itself need before players log in?

This list is the answer to that question. Six mods, covering diagnostics, performance, and admin utility - the layer underneath whatever gameplay experience you’re building. Whether you’re running a small survival world for friends or a larger SMP, these are worth installing on day one.

Spark

Loaders: Fabric, Forge, NeoForge, Quilt, Bukkit/Spigot/Paper

Spark isn’t a performance mod - it’s a performance profiler. The distinction matters more than it sounds. Other mods on this list will make your server faster. Spark tells you why it was slow in the first place.

When your server starts dropping TPS or players are complaining about lag, the instinct is to throw more RAM at it or start removing mods until things improve. Spark gives you an actual answer. Run /spark profiler start, let it collect data for a few minutes under normal load, then run /spark profiler stop. The result is a shareable report that breaks down exactly which game functions, mods, or world systems are eating the most CPU time.

We see this come up in support regularly: a server is struggling, the admin assumes it’s a RAM issue, and a Spark report shows the real culprit is a mob farm producing thousands of entities in a single chunk, or a specific mod doing something expensive every tick. The fix is targeted instead of guesswork.

Beyond the profiler, Spark also surfaces real-time stats - MSPT (milliseconds per tick) and TPS - through a simple command, which is useful for monitoring server health without installing a dedicated admin panel.

Where to get it: Modrinth - spark

Lithium (Fabric) / Canary (Forge)

Loaders: Lithium = Fabric/Quilt | Canary = Forge/NeoForge

Lithium is the most impactful single optimization mod available for Fabric servers. It reworks a wide range of vanilla game logic - pathfinding, chunk loading, entity tracking, collision detection - to run more efficiently without changing any in-game behavior. Players won’t notice anything different about how the game plays. The server just handles more work per tick.

The practical result is a measurable improvement in tick rate, especially as your world gets older and more complex. A fresh world doesn’t stress a server much. A world that’s been running for a few weeks, with player bases, farms, and explored terrain, is a different story. Lithium’s gains compound over the server’s lifetime.

There’s no configuration required. Drop it in and it works.

For Forge and NeoForge servers, Canary is the closest equivalent - it’s an unofficial port of Lithium maintained by the community. It covers most of the same optimizations and is actively updated, but it’s worth knowing it’s a port rather than the original project if you want to follow development or report issues.

Where to get them: Modrinth - Lithium | Modrinth - Canary

FerriteCore

Loaders: Fabric, Forge, NeoForge

Minecraft holds a lot of data in memory - block states, item models, registry entries - and by default, it’s not particularly efficient about it. FerriteCore fixes that by deduplicating how that data is stored, which can cut RAM usage significantly on modded servers.

The effect is most obvious if you’re running a large modpack. Every mod adds more blocks, items, and registry data. Without FerriteCore, that multiplies fast. With it, the server reuses shared data instead of keeping redundant copies in memory.

For smaller servers with light mod lists, the savings are noticeable but not dramatic. For modded SMPs with 50+ mods, FerriteCore can be the difference between running cleanly on your current plan and constantly hitting memory pressure. It’s also one of the more common mods we see included in popular modpacks for exactly this reason.

No config, no behavior changes - just lower memory footprint.

Where to get it: Modrinth - FerriteCore

Chunky

Loaders: Fabric, Forge, NeoForge, Bukkit/Spigot/Paper

Chunky does one thing: pre-generates chunks around a set radius before players explore them. It’s the most impactful thing you can do before your server opens to players, and it’s consistently underrepresented in mod roundup content.

Here’s the problem it solves. When a player walks into unexplored territory, the server has to generate that chunk in real time - terrain, structures, biomes, everything. Chunk generation is expensive. On a busy server where multiple players are exploring at once, that cost adds up fast, and it shows up as lag spikes that seem random until you look at where players actually are on the map.

Pre-generating a reasonable radius (usually 1,000-3,000 blocks depending on your server size and storage) before anyone logs in eliminates most of that. Players can explore and the terrain is already there. The generation lag is front-loaded to a quiet period instead of hitting during active play.

Chunky is a one-time task. Set it running after your server starts, let it complete over a few hours, and you’re done. The /chunky start command kicks it off; you can set the radius and shape, and it runs in the background without interrupting the server.

Where to get it: Modrinth - Chunky

Clumps

Loaders: Fabric, Forge, NeoForge

XP orbs are entities. Each one the server has to track, update, and keep track of in the world. This is fine when players are killing a few mobs in the wild. It becomes a problem when someone builds a mob grinder.

A decent mob farm can produce hundreds of XP orbs per minute. That’s hundreds of individual tracked entities flooding a single area of the server. The farm itself might be well-designed - good rates, efficient collection - but the XP orb entity count alone can drag down TPS in that chunk and bleed into surrounding areas.

Clumps merges nearby XP orbs into a single larger orb with the combined value. A mob grinder that would produce 200 separate orbs per minute instead produces a handful. Players collect the same XP, the server handles a fraction of the entity work.

Like Lithium and FerriteCore, this is invisible to players. Drop it in and it works. No config needed.

We see this pattern often enough in support that it’s worth flagging: a server starts lagging after a few weeks of play, and the Spark report points to a chunk with hundreds of entities. XP orb accumulation from farms is a common culprit. Clumps is the preemptive fix.

Where to get it: Modrinth - Clumps

FTB Essentials

Loaders: Fabric, Forge, NeoForge

Every multiplayer server needs a set of utility commands: teleportation requests, home points, warps, a spawn command, the ability to return to your last location after death. Vanilla Minecraft doesn’t provide these. FTB Essentials does.

The command set covers the basics players expect from any multiplayer experience: /tpa and /tpahere for teleport requests, /home and /sethome for personal waypoints, /warp for admin-configured locations, /spawn to return to spawn, /back to return to your previous location, and /rtp for random teleportation.

From an admin perspective, the important detail is that all of these are configurable and permissions-backed. You can disable any command you don’t want, restrict others to specific player groups using FTB Ranks or LuckPerms, and tune behavior through the config file. The /rtp command, for instance, lets you control the valid teleportation radius - useful if you want to keep random teleports within your pre-generated area.

FTB Essentials is server-side only, so players don’t need to install anything. It supports Fabric, Forge, and NeoForge from the same mod, which makes it easier to manage than alternatives that maintain separate projects per loader.

Where to get it: CurseForge - FTB Essentials

The short version

If you’re looking for a quick reference:

Install Spark first and run it occasionally even on a healthy server - knowing your baseline makes it much easier to spot problems early.

Running a Minecraft server with WinterNode

We’re obviously biased, but WinterNode exists because we wanted hosting that didn’t nickel-and-dime people. All our game servers are $1.99/GB of RAM - we don’t charge extra for CPU usage, storage, or features that other hosts mark up. There are no CPU throttles or thread limits, which matters more than it might sound when you’re running optimization mods that depend on being able to actually use the CPU you’re paying for.

If you want to test the waters, we offer a 48-hour free trial on Minecraft servers with no credit card required.

Got questions about mod setup or server configuration? Our support team responds to tickets with actual humans, and we’re active on Discord if you prefer real-time help. If you share a Spark report when you open a ticket, we can usually get to the root of performance issues pretty quickly.