How to Reduce Server Lag of Your Minecraft Server

No one wants to play on a laggy server that takes five business days to load chunks or a server that keeps kicking you out of the server. So if you are a server owner, you must optimize your server to be as fast as possible if you want to make your server a success. That's exactly what we are going to discuss in this article.

So the first step of reducing lag is to understand what is the cause of the lag that your players are experiencing. We can name three main reasons why lag can occur:

• TPS
• Latency
• FPS

So what are they?

TPS (ticks per second) is the measure of your server's performance. In Minecraft, a tick is 1/20th of a second. In a Minecraft server, 20 TPS is the best, and the lower the TPS, the worse the server performance.

Then the latency and the FPS are pretty much self explanatory. They are mostly just client sided issues that you, as a server owner, cannot handle.

However, if your server is lagging and you aren't even using all of the server resources that you have on your plan, or it uses more than what it should, there's a good chance that your current hosting provider isn't that good. So consider choosing a reliable provider like Eternal Hosting.

So is that it? Just choose a better plan? NO, there's a lot more to it. So let's get started, shall we?

Understanding the Type of Lag That You Are Experiencing

First, understand what causes your server to lag. Is it server performance, is it server latency, or is it FPS?

So how do I actually understand that?

That's pretty simple. To check if your lag is TPS-related, simply go to your server console and run the command /tps, which will show the output. If it says 20, your server hardware is not the issue.

And if you are having high server ping, that means it's latency related.

How Do I Optimize My Server for Better Performance?

We are going to discuss this under 5 main topics.

1. Server Software

There are many server softwares to choose from when you create your server. But not all of them are created equally. Some are made with performance in mind and some with functionality. So for the best in both worlds, we recommend you to use Paper, Purpur, or Fabric as your server software.

These are not only super optimized for better performance, they allow you to customize your server with plugins and mods that you like.

So with that out of the way, another major thing that we see on many servers that causes lag is outdated server jar files. Always make sure that your server jar is up to date.

One other thing is to change your server startup commands for better performance or simply disable or change features that you don't need, like tick speeds and autosaves. But if you don't have prior experience in doing so, just simply reach out to your hosting provider for support and they can do it for you easily.

2. Plugins and Mods

Plugins and mods are the best feature of Minecraft servers. So simply reducing or removing them to reduce server lag is not the option. So then what is it?

You should always check the compatibility between each plugin or mod that you have installed on your server, since that's a common reason for servers to drain server resources unnecessarily.

Also, make sure all of your plugins are up to date and optimized.

3. Server Settings

Adjusting your server settings to gain more server performance is one of the most commonly used and most effective methods. You can reduce the distance where the entities are spawning around the player and render distance to reduce the amount of server resources a single user uses.

This can significantly reduce the server hardware usage. But always make sure to let your players know if you are making a change like this, because with changes like these, farms and other builds on your server might not function as usual.

4. Entities and Redstone

So, talking about entity spawning leads us to entities and redstone. Anything from a cute frog in a swamp to a complex redstone world eater, everything adds more demand to your server hardware, which ultimately leads to low server TPS and a laggy experience.

So it's a better idea to limit the redstone usage on your server and also the behavior of mobs and other entities. For example, we are seeing users use plugins to stack mobs into one single entity if they are in a small area, and plugins that optimize things like falling leaves and dropped items. And also, plugins that limit redstone usage and sometimes even block redstone components like redstone clocks completely.

But again, don't forget to tell your community about the changes that you made.

5. Allocating Resources

So you've done everything that we mentioned and still the same result? Or is your server already optimized? Then the only option that you have is to move to a server plan with better server hardware. But make sure that you aren't just adding more server RAM to your server, since Minecraft is not just run on the RAM. It's the balance between the amount of RAM and the power of the CPU of your server that gives the performance to your server.

So always make sure to go for a better CPU and enough RAM with at least 1–2 GB headroom for your server to fluctuate during peak hours.

You can check out our blog on how to choose the best server plan to learn more about this.

Conclusion

So in this article, we learned that server lag could be caused by TPS, latency, or FPS, and how you can optimize your server to reduce server lag. Using optimization plugins and changing server settings can give you massive performance increases. Make sure to monitor your server's performance from time to time and make changes to optimize your server gradually. So with all these, we are sure that you are ready to tackle your server lag and create a better experience for your users.