Better Performance

The main benefit of using Paper is the significantly improved performance compared to Spigot. Paper includes a large number of changes that speed up different aspects of the game, some of which are so impactful they’ve been ported to other mod platforms. It's impossible to give exact performance statistics due to how different every Minecraft server is. However, it's common for Paper to increase the number of players your server can support without slowing down by over 50%.

Paper also includes many options that you can enable to further improve performance at the expense of impacting gameplay behaviour. Such as optimising the way the game chooses spawn locations for mobs to allow fewer overall mobs without players noticing.

Paper-only Plugins

While both are Bukkit-derived APIs, Paper allows plugins to do significantly more than they can with the Spigot API. While some of these APIs are aimed at being more performant versions of Spigot ones, there is a significant amount that allow interacting with the game in deeper or more precise ways. Due to this, there are many plugins that either outright require Paper, or support both Spigot and Paper with extra improvements on top for servers that are running Paper. These usually take the form of either much better performance, or improvements to the plugins functionality that wouldn’t be possible on Spigot. As supporting Spigot can significantly hinder functionality of the plugin however, it’s becoming more and more common to drop support for it. For example, CraftBook 5 is a rewrite of CraftBook using Paper-specific features, allowing for significantly better performance, better reliability, and more features.

Larger Community and Community Focused

More servers use Paper than Spigot, meaning it has a broader community. Some estimates of user share show that Paper has more than ten times the users than Spigot. More people using the software means bugs are found and fixed more quickly, and more people want to contribute to the project. Contribution is also much easier, given everything is publicly available on GitHub. Spigot requires creating an account on their website and signing an agreement to submit changes. A wider community also means that more people can help when something goes wrong.

Paper is also more community-focused, regularly conversing with other sections of the Minecraft community such as Sponge and Fabric to share discoveries and improvements. The development process is also public, so anyone can help out if they can do so, including the update process for new Minecraft versions.

Spark vs Timings

Paper includes the Spark software to identify performance issues, which is much better than the Timings software that is within Spigot. It allows accurately identifying the source of slowdowns, rather than Timings which often has false positives and incorrectly blames various plugins. Both do require some skill to interpret, but with Spark you’re starting from a baseline of significantly more accurate information.

While it is possible to install Spark on Spigot, it’s built into Paper already so you don’t need to do anything extra.

Patches Bugs

While potentially a downside for some, Paper patches many bugs that can heavily impact servers. Paper aims to fix every known item or block duplication bug, which lets servers ensure that their survival gameplay is fair and free from cheaters. Generally, all changes that impact gameplay other than patches for dupe bugs will be optional.

Backwards Compatibility

In late 2024, Paper hard-forked from Spigot. This means that Paper is no longer built on top of Spigot and will not be compatible with Spigot plugins that make use of new Spigot features going forward. While this does not mean that all existing Bukkit and Spigot plugins will not work on Paper, it does mean that as time goes on and Paper makes more large-scale changes to their API, older plugins might fail to load.

Spigot has also put significant work into ensuring legacy plugin compatibility where they can, which also improves the backwards compatibility further. While it’s always a better idea to use up to date and actively maintained plugins, Spigot can be a good choice if you’re stuck using old ones.

Spigot-only Plugins

While there are fewer Spigot-only plugins due to its relatively smaller community than Paper, these do still exist. If you’re in a situation where you can’t live without a Spigot-only plugin, and no alternatives exist, Spigot might be the right option for you.