Purpur server software: what it does and who it's for

Purpur is a drop-in replacement for Paper: swap the jar and your world, plugins and Paper settings stay as they are. Everything Purpur adds is off by default — until you touch purpur.yml, the server behaves like Paper. It suits owners who want to change game mechanics without extra plugins: survival, SMP, creative and event servers.

If stability and official support from key plugins — your anticheat, for example — come first, use Paper or Leaf. Details below.

What Purpur is#

Purpur is a fork of Paper. Its README describes it as a drop-in replacement for Paper servers "designed for configurability, new fun and exciting gameplay features, and performance", built on top of Paper. Everything Paper has, Purpur has too, including Paper's files in config/. On top sit Purpur's own patches, licensed under MIT.

Bukkit, Spigot and Paper plugins run on Purpur. The project FAQ adds that incompatibility only happens when a plugin author hard-codes support for CraftBukkit or Spigot and ignores Paper and its forks. Builds are published for current Minecraft versions too, including 26.x — see the downloads page for the exact list.

What you can change in purpur.yml#

All of Purpur's options live in purpur.yml in the server root. Global ones sit under settings, gameplay ones under world-settings: the default block applies to every world, and a single world can be overridden with its own block, just like in Paper. A few telling examples:

world-settings:
  default:
    mobs:
      phantom:
        ridable: true
    gameplay-mechanics:
      player:
        idle-timeout:
          kick-if-idle: false

The Purpur docs list every option with its default. The developers themselves warn that values change often and the page may be incomplete, so after updating the jar, check against the file itself.

Who Purpur is for#

• Survival and SMP servers that want extras without a dozen plugins: rideable mobs, AFK without kicks, Silk Touch spawners, looser anvil enchanting rules.
• Creative and event servers: a mechanic is one line away and can be limited to specific worlds.
• Owners who are ready to test. Every option you enable changes the game, and checking the consequences is your job, not the software's.

Who doesn't need it: if you aren't going to change any mechanics, you get Paper with an extra config file. For PvP and anarchy, where predictable vanilla mechanics matter, Paper or Leaf is usually the better call. All the options side by side: Which server software to choose.

How to switch from Paper to Purpur#

1. 1

   Make a backup

   Copy the whole server folder: worlds, plugins/, configs. How to do it on a schedule: server backups.

2. 2

   Download the matching build

   Get the jar from purpurmc.org for exactly the Minecraft version your server runs. Don't update the game and switch software on the same day — if something breaks, you'll know which change did it.

3. 3

   Swap the jar

   Stop the server, put the Purpur jar where Paper was and update the file name in your start script. For installation Purpur points to Paper's getting-started guide — the process is the same.

4. 4

   Start it and check

   purpur.yml appears on first start. Until you change it, the server runs like Paper. Check the console for plugin errors, then enable the options you want — one at a time.

Going back to Paper works the same way: swap the jar back. Purpur's options simply stop applying.

Purpur and anticheats#

An anticheat compares what a player does with what the game allows. Purpur moves that line: with rideable phantoms a player legitimately flies on a mount, with inventory totems nobody needs to hold one, the crit multiplier changes damage. An anticheat built around Paper's mechanics sees behaviour here that normal gameplay doesn't produce.

Take AutoTotem: the cheat instantly moves a totem into your hand. With totem-of-undying-works-in-inventory: true the totem works from the inventory anyway, so the cheat is pointless and the check has nothing to stand on. Flight is similar: Fly and ElytraFly are caught through movement physics, and a rideable phantom changes that physics.

DGuard is built for Paper and Leaf — those two are the only officially supported platforms, on versions 1.21–26.3. Purpur isn't on the list, so we can't promise every check behaves the same there, especially with movement or combat options enabled. If the anticheat matters to you, run Paper or Leaf. If you can't do without Purpur, contact support and tell us which options you use.

FAQ#