The Short Answer
Pick Paper if you want plugins and performance, Fabric if you want lightweight mods and fast updates, and Forge if you want heavy modpacks with hundreds of content mods. The right choice depends on what you plan to install on top, not on how many players you expect.
Paper: Performance and Plugins
Paper is a fork of the Spigot line and the default choice for survival, SMP, and minigame servers. It keeps the classic Bukkit plugin API and patches many of the performance problems Vanilla ships with.
What you get:
The largest plugin ecosystem: EssentialsX, WorldEdit, LuckPerms, grief protection, economy - Performance patches like asynchronous chunk loading and smarter entity handling - Fast security updates when Mojang ships a new version
The trade-off: Paper does not run content mods. If you want new blocks, machines, or dimensions, Paper is the wrong base.
Fabric: Lightweight Mods
Fabric is a modern mod loader with a small core. Fabric mods load fast, and the ecosystem usually supports new Minecraft versions within days of release.
What you get:
Fastest updates of the three loaders - Strong performance mods like Lithium that cut server tick time - A good fit for vanilla-plus: small content mods, quality of life, and optimization in one pack
The trade-off: no Bukkit API. Plugin-style features come from Fabric-native mods instead, and that catalog is much smaller than Paper's.
Forge: Heavy Modpacks
Forge is the classic mod loader and still where the biggest modpacks live. If your group wants Create, Ars Nouveau, or large tech and magic packs, Forge (or the NeoForge fork) is the platform.
What you get:
The largest modpack catalog on CurseForge and Modrinth - Big content mods: tech, magic, dimensions, machinery - NeoForge now shares most of this ecosystem, so treat the two as one option
The trade-off: Forge is the heaviest of the three. Modpacks want more RAM, updates take longer to arrive, and version mismatches between mods are the most common crash cause.
Resource Expectations
For the same player count, the loaders behave differently on hardware:
Paper: smallest memory footprint, easiest on the CPU - Fabric: close to Paper once you add optimization mods - Forge: budget extra RAM for the pack itself before players even join, big packs want 4 GB or more allocated
This matters most on a small VPS. On 2 GB of RAM, Paper or Fabric stays comfortable while a full Forge pack will struggle.
Quick Comparison
Plugin support: Paper full, Fabric limited, Forge none - Content mod support: Paper none, Fabric light to medium, Forge heavy - Speed of updates after a new Minecraft release: Fabric fastest, Paper close behind, Forge slowest - Memory use for the same player count: Paper lowest, Fabric low, Forge highest - Stability with big packs: Paper most stable, Fabric good, Forge needs care
What About Vanilla and Spigot?
Vanilla is fine for testing a snapshot but has no plugin API and none of Paper's performance work. Spigot is Paper's parent: anything Spigot runs, Paper runs faster, so there is rarely a reason to pick Spigot in 2026.
Choosing by Use Case
Friends survival with protection and a few quality-of-life plugins: Paper - Small group that wants optimization mods and fast updates: Fabric - Group that plays big modpacks together: Forge or NeoForge - Public server with ranks, economy, and anti-grief: Paper - Vanilla challenge run with no changes: Paper anyway, you can simply leave plugins off
Can You Switch Later?
Your world folder is technically readable across loaders, but plugins and mods do not move. A Paper server with an economy plugin and a Forge server with Create are different games. If you think your group will change direction, keep backups of the world from day one.
On M.A.F Cloud, Paper, Fabric, and Forge are all one-click templates among 11+ server types, so you can run each from the same dashboard and move a world between them through the file manager or a backup instead of rebuilding a machine by hand.