Which Minecraft proxy software is the best?
Velocity and BungeeCord are both great pieces of proxy software which allow you to link multiple servers together, under the same IP/server address.
This technique is used by the majority of large Minecraft servers/networks, like Hypixel, to give the illusion that players are on the same Minecraft "server", when in fact they're split across multiple (sometimes dozens or even hundreds) separate servers. At the bottom of this article, we've written how Hypixel's backend works to give you an insight into what a large Minecraft netework actually looks like.
You can install either software at the click of a button under your "Settings" tab on panel.lilypad.gg
Find plugins on Modrinth here
A modern, high-performance proxy designed with speed and stability in mind.
Velocity is the best Minecraft proxy software available, capable of supporting over a thousand players on a single proxy, with little to no performance degradation. The majority of proxy-based plugins support Velocity, and those that don't will likely support it at some point in the future. There's an experimental tool called Snap which acts as an adapter to allow some BungeeCord plugins to work on Velocity but it's unlikely to work with more complex ones. We recommend extensively testing any plugins with Snap before adding them to a production instance.
It's simple to configure and is compatible with both vanilla and modded servers, from Minecraft 1.7 all the way to the latest version. You can even install Geyser on your Velocity proxy to allow Bedrock players to join your server!
We've written a guide on how to set it up here.
Find plugins on Modrinth here
A sophisticated proxy designed to teleport players between multiple Minecraft servers.
Sometimes referred to as "Bungee", BungeeCord is developed by the same team who works on the Spigot server software. It functions very similarly to Velocity, but generally has poorer performance when it comes to supporting high player counts. One of the main reasons why servers still use BungeeCord is compatibility, as custom plugins may have been developed to specifically work on these proxies – but the majority of plugins on the market today will support both proxies.
If you need to use Bungee, we suggest installing Waterfall instead, which is a drop-in replacement by the Paper team offering better performance and stability.
The Paper team (who also maintain Velocity) has written up some the more technical advantages of Velocity over Bungeecord here.
They use Cloudflare as their DDoS protection provider
All incoming connections from players are distributed to a large number (dozens) of proxies, which helps with reliability and performance
Each of these proxies forward connections to individual servers – each lobby and minigame runs on a separate Minecraft server or "instance", meaning there are thousands of separate servers running at any given time!
This is all available to players via the server address mc.hypixel.net – no manual intervention needed from players to forward them to the right server
If you're interested, here are some stats Hypixel admin Connor posted at the end of 2020 (43TB RAM, wow!): https://twitter.com/ConnorLinfoot/status/1343632899262844929
This technique is used by the majority of large Minecraft servers/networks, like Hypixel, to give the illusion that players are on the same Minecraft "server", when in fact they're split across multiple (sometimes dozens or even hundreds) separate servers. At the bottom of this article, we've written how Hypixel's backend works to give you an insight into what a large Minecraft netework actually looks like.
You can install either software at the click of a button under your "Settings" tab on panel.lilypad.gg
💨 Velocity
Find plugins on Modrinth here
A modern, high-performance proxy designed with speed and stability in mind.
Velocity is the best Minecraft proxy software available, capable of supporting over a thousand players on a single proxy, with little to no performance degradation. The majority of proxy-based plugins support Velocity, and those that don't will likely support it at some point in the future. There's an experimental tool called Snap which acts as an adapter to allow some BungeeCord plugins to work on Velocity but it's unlikely to work with more complex ones. We recommend extensively testing any plugins with Snap before adding them to a production instance.
It's simple to configure and is compatible with both vanilla and modded servers, from Minecraft 1.7 all the way to the latest version. You can even install Geyser on your Velocity proxy to allow Bedrock players to join your server!
We've written a guide on how to set it up here.
🙃 BungeeCord
Find plugins on Modrinth here
A sophisticated proxy designed to teleport players between multiple Minecraft servers.
Sometimes referred to as "Bungee", BungeeCord is developed by the same team who works on the Spigot server software. It functions very similarly to Velocity, but generally has poorer performance when it comes to supporting high player counts. One of the main reasons why servers still use BungeeCord is compatibility, as custom plugins may have been developed to specifically work on these proxies – but the majority of plugins on the market today will support both proxies.
If you need to use Bungee, we suggest installing Waterfall instead, which is a drop-in replacement by the Paper team offering better performance and stability.
The Paper team (who also maintain Velocity) has written up some the more technical advantages of Velocity over Bungeecord here.
How is Hypixel able to support 200,000 players?
They use Cloudflare as their DDoS protection provider
All incoming connections from players are distributed to a large number (dozens) of proxies, which helps with reliability and performance
Each of these proxies forward connections to individual servers – each lobby and minigame runs on a separate Minecraft server or "instance", meaning there are thousands of separate servers running at any given time!
This is all available to players via the server address mc.hypixel.net – no manual intervention needed from players to forward them to the right server
If you're interested, here are some stats Hypixel admin Connor posted at the end of 2020 (43TB RAM, wow!): https://twitter.com/ConnorLinfoot/status/1343632899262844929
Updated on: 26/08/2024
Thank you!