Optimize Minecraft performance (TPS, lag)

A healthy Minecraft server runs at 20 TPS (ticks per second). Below 18, players feel lag: blocks reappearing, mobs teleporting.

Cause / The problem

The TPS drop comes from main-thread overload: too many loaded chunks, too many active entities (villagers, farm mobs), a heavy plugin, or an unoptimized default configuration.

Solution

1. Switch to Paper or Purpur if you’re still on Vanilla/Spigot. This is the most immediate performance gain (up to 2x faster).
2. Lower view-distance in server.properties: go from 10 to 6-7. Also drop simulation-distance to 4-5. Every chunk removed frees up CPU.
3. Tune paper-world.yml (or paper.yml):
   • entity-activation-range: reduce the ranges (monsters: 24, animals: 16).
   • tick-rates.villager: raise to 2 or 3 to ease villager processing.
   • hopper: enable disable-move-event and cooking-when-full.
4. Profile with Spark before removing anything. Install the Spark plugin, run /spark profiler, wait a few minutes, then /spark profiler stop. The HTML report shows exactly which plugin or mechanic consumes the most.
5. Replace the heavy plugins flagged by the profile. Frequent culprits: mob-stack plugins, heavy world-edit tools, poorly optimized economy systems.
6. Limit entities with a plugin like FarmControl or EntityTrackerFixer to reduce tracking of inactive mobs.

Measure TPS with /spark tps or /tps. An optimized server stays at 19-20 TPS even with dozens of players.