Short answer
Lower the mob spawn caps, turn on per-player spawning, drop view distance to 6 or 8, cut item and experience orb persistence, and leave everything else alone. Those five changes cover most of the tick time a small server wastes, and each one has a measurable trade-off.
Paper defaults are tuned for a machine with headroom. On a 3 GB server with one core, those defaults spend tick time on things your players never notice: spawning monsters in caves nobody visits, keeping tens of thousands of item drops in memory, and sending chunks past the point where they matter.
This guide is the short list of settings worth changing on a small server, in the file each one lives in, with what it costs. Apply them one at a time, with a /tps reading before and after, so you know which one earned its place.
Before you start
- A Paper server you control and a backup
- File access to config/paper-world-defaults.yml and server.properties
- Ten minutes to measure before and after
Paper settings worth setting on a small server
| Setting | File | Paper default | Small-server value | What you trade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
entity.spawning.spawn-limits.monsters | paper-world-defaults.yml | 70 | 40 or lower | Denser caves; the server spawns monsters further from players instead of everywhere |
entity.spawning.per-player-mob-spawns | paper-world-defaults.yml | true | true | Nothing: it prevents one player using the whole mob cap |
chunks.entity-per-chunk-save-limit.experience_orb | paper-world-defaults.yml | -1 (no limit) | 16 | Uncollected orbs beyond the cap vanish when the chunk unloads |
hopper.cooldown-when-full | paper-world-defaults.yml | true | true | Nothing; already the default |
view-distance | server.properties | 10 | 6 to 8 | Higher chunks load on first visit, so the first walk somewhere takes longer |
simulation-distance | server.properties | 10 | 6 to 8 | Mobs further out stop moving; keep it at or below view distance |
collisions.max-entity-collisions | paper-world-defaults.yml | 8 | 4 | Cram damage in dense mob piles is less accurate |
1. Measure before you change anything
With the server empty and again with the usual players on, run /tps and /mspt and write both down. Paper recommends spark for anything beyond a glance, so if you have it installed, take a profile that you can compare against later.
These two numbers are the only evidence that a setting helped. Everything else is a feeling.
/tps
/mspt2. Cap entity spawns and let Paper spread them out
This is the single biggest win on a small server. The defaults allow 70 monsters per world at once, and those monsters spawn wherever the generator allows, which on a small server means near the players. Lower the caps and turn on per-player spawning, which makes the count scale with the number of players instead of applying to the world as a whole.
Also set how far away monsters despawn. The defaults keep them loaded well past the distance at which players can see them; pulling that in returns tick time without changing anything on screen.
entity:
spawning:
spawn-limits:
monsters: 40
animals: 10
water-animals: 5
ambient: 15
per-player-mob-spawns: true
despawn-ranges:
softer:
monsters:
horizontal: 32
vertical: 83. Stop the server hoarding drops and hoppers
Items and experience orbs on the ground are saved with the chunk, and a farm that nobody collects leaves thousands of them in memory forever. Paper lets you limit how many are persisted per chunk. The hopper settings matter for the same reason: a full hopper that keeps retrying costs tick time every second, so the cooldown lets it rest.
For hoppers, also consider whether the move event is needed at all. Turning it off makes large hopper arrays cheap, but any protection plugin that relies on it stops working, so check your plugins first.
chunks:
entity-per-chunk-save-limit:
experience_orb: 16
hopper:
hopper-transfer: 8
cooldown-when-full: true- Eperience orbs are capped first because they accumulate fastest and matter least after they are picked up.
- Set a per-type cap for any other entity you produce in bulk, such as arrows or item frames.
4. Trim view distance and collisions
View distance decides how many chunks exist around each player; simulation distance decides how far away entities keep moving. On a small server, dropping both to 6 or 8 removes most of the tick load and the memory with it. Fog and client render settings hide the difference better than you would expect.
Collisions are computed for every pair of entities that overlap. Limiting how many pairs one entity can collide with, and letting only player-involved collisions count, both cut that work without changing how the game plays for people.
view-distance=6
simulation-distance=6collisions:
max-entity-collisions: 4
only-players-collide: true5. Measure again and keep only what worked
Restart, let the server settle, and take the same two readings with a comparable number of players on. If the numbers did not move, revert that setting: a config full of changes you never measured is impossible to reason about later.
Record what you changed and when. Paper regenerates its config files on every start, so your notes are the only record of which values are deliberate.
Good to know
- Every value in this guide appears in the file Paper writes on first start, with a comment describing it. Search the generated file for the key if the nesting ever differs from what is shown here.
- Settings that are safe on a survival world are not necessarily safe on a minigame or skyblock server, where players expect different spawning and despawn behaviour. Override them per world rather than globally.
- Lower limits are not a substitute for cleaning up. A mob spawner with a week of uncollected drops still costs you; the caps only stop it becoming fatal.
- How to configure Paper explains which file owns which key, and fixing Paper lag covers the cases these settings do not reach.
Common questions
What are the best Paper settings for a 3 GB server?
Lower view and simulation distance to 6, cap monsters at 40 or fewer, enable per-player mob spawning, limit experience orbs saved per chunk, and set the hopper cooldown. Those fit comfortably in 3 GB and give the tick loop room on one core.
Will these settings break my plugins?
Rarely. Protection plugins are the exception: hopper.disable-move-event removes the event they use to detect who moved items. Everything else in this guide changes load, not events, so plugins keep working.
Does lowering view distance hurt players?
Slightly, and far less than the lag you are removing. Fog and client-side render distance hide most of the difference. If players complain, raise it one step and check whether the tick time still holds.
Should I raise these limits on a bigger server?
Only as far as the measurements justify. Entity caps that are too low make a large server feel empty, and hoppers that move too slowly become the bottleneck in a big item-sorting build. Measure, then adjust one step at a time.
Sources
Official documentation this guide was checked against.
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