What Purpur adds
The headline features are playful: rideable mobs and dolphins, elevator blocks that move players between floors, persistent boat and minecart behaviour, and custom join messages. None require players to install anything.
Underneath those sit hundreds of small toggles covering hunger rates, anvil costs, mob attributes, and per-world mechanics — the kind of tuning that would otherwise need a plugin.
What stays the same
Performance and plugin support are identical to Paper, because Purpur is built directly on it. Every Paper plugin runs unchanged, and the vanilla world format is untouched.
Configuration is a superset: Paper’s files work as documented, with purpur.yml adding the extra options.
Choosing between them
Pick Paper for maximum compatibility and strict vanilla mechanics, which competitive and economy servers tend to prefer. Pick Purpur when a couple of its extras genuinely fit your group and you want them without another plugin.
Purpur’s options are off or set to vanilla-safe values by default, so enabling it costs you nothing until you deliberately turn something on.
FAQ
Common questions
Is Purpur slower than Paper?
No. It inherits Paper’s performance patches, and its gameplay features are optional. Any measurable cost appears only if you deliberately enable heavy mechanics.
Does Purpur break vanilla mechanics?
Not by default. Its toggles are opt-in, so a fresh Purpur server behaves like Paper behaves like vanilla until you change something yourself.
