Bukkit and CraftBukkit

Back in 2010, the Bukkit team created two projects, Bukkit and CraftBukkit. CraftBukkit was the server software you’d install to run a Minecraft server, and Bukkit was what developers would use to create plugins. Bukkit is what’s known as an API, or an “Application Programming Interface.” An API in this context is an interface to allow programmers to interact with an application. So, to put it simply, Bukkit was what plugin developers would interact with in their plugins’ code in order to interface with the Minecraft server software. As CraftBukkit was written to load plugins written for Bukkit, it’s referred to as an implementation of Bukkit. If a plugin is written for Bukkit, there’s an expectation that it will run on all (correctly made) implementations of Bukkit.

But CraftBukkit is dead? What about Bukkit?

Even though CraftBukkit hasn’t existed for a long time at this point, the Spigot team have continued to update the API and release it under the name Bukkit. The main difference is that instead of CraftBukkit being the software released alongside it, Spigot is. This means that while the new Bukkit is not the original Bukkit, it fundamentally is still the same thing that it was beforehand. Bukkit is a simple way to refer to plugins that will work on servers that implement the Bukkit API.

This can sometimes create a minor point of confusion, as Bukkit is both software that was discontinued in 2014, but also software that is published by Spigot to this day, You can think of it as a spiritual successor, similar to other spiritual successors such as New Club Penguin being a successor to the now-defunct Club Penguin. This one just decided to keep the same name. If it’s a Minecraft version prior to 2014 it’s Bukkit by Bukkit, if it’s after 2014 it’s Bukkit by Spigot.

Spigot API, Paper API?

Whilst both Paper and Spigot are servers that derived from the original Bukkit project back in 2014, both do have their own APIs built on top of Bukkit too. Spigot has the Spigot API, and Paper has the Paper API. Prior to late 2024 when Paper underwent a hard fork, Paper fully extended Spigot’s server software and API, so any plugins written for Spigot’s version of Bukkit or the Spigot API would work on Paper. Since the hard fork, these projects have diverged, and Paper is no longer based on Spigot. So, both of these projects are derivatives of the original Bukkit project, and both followed a shared trajectory until their split in late 2024.

As these two projects do have their own APIs, it is generally significantly more useful to refer to plugins as either Spigot plugins or Paper plugins, rather than the antiquated Bukkit plugins. While it was a useful distinguisher for plugins that ran on both in the past, we’re likely at a point in Minecraft server history where it’s better to leave the term behind, and purely use it to refer to the old 2014-discontinued Bukkit project.

Conclusion

Bukkit is an API that has allowed creating plugins for Bukkit-based servers for well over a decade. While it isn’t server software, it refers to a class of server software that are all capable of running plugins made for Bukkit. The term when referring to plugins rather than the API has gone through some changes over the years and is likely more confusing than it’s worth now. It’s better to refer to plugins as for Spigot or for Paper, and purely use the term Bukkit to refer to the Spigot team’s published copies of the Bukkit API.