Pumpkin
A Minecraft server rebuilt from scratch in Rust for speed and low resource use — for self-hosters who've hit the ceiling of what a Java-based server can handle on modest hardware.
🔗 Visit Pumpkin
Description
A vanilla Minecraft server, and even the popular Paper variant most server admins actually run, is written in Java — a language that's easy to extend with plugins but comes with real memory and CPU overhead, which matters a lot if you're self-hosting on a cheap VPS or an old home server rather than renting a beefy dedicated box. Pumpkin re-implements the Minecraft server protocol from the ground up in Rust, a language built for exactly this kind of performance-sensitive, memory-safe systems work, aiming to run the same game with a fraction of the resource footprint.
Pumpkin supports Java Edition today, with Bedrock Edition (the mobile/console version) support still in progress, and includes multi-threading, protocol encryption, packet compression, multiple world-loading strategies, and compatibility with common proxy software like Velocity and BungeeCord so it can slot into an existing multi-server setup. It has a plugin system of its own, though — being a from-scratch reimplementation rather than a fork of the reference server — it does not run Java-based Paper or Spigot plugins directly, which is the single biggest practical difference from switching. At 10,400+ GitHub stars and active daily development, it has real community momentum for a project that hasn't hit version 1.0 yet.
💬 Our review
The short version: Pumpkin is a genuinely promising from-scratch Rust reimplementation of the Minecraft server with real performance upside for self-hosters on constrained hardware, but it's pre-1.0 software — the project's own maturity, not its architecture, is the main reason to hesitate before running it for a community you care about.
The practical dealbreaker for a lot of admins will be the plugin ecosystem: Paper and Purpur, the entrenched Java-based options, have years of accumulated plugins covering everything from anti-grief tooling to economy systems, and none of that runs on Pumpkin without a rewrite, since it isn't API-compatible with Spigot/Paper. That makes Pumpkin the right pick for a from-scratch server where you're comfortable writing your own plugins or running vanilla-plus, and the wrong pick for an existing Paper server with a plugin list you don't want to lose. If raw performance on cheap hardware is the goal and you can live without the Paper plugin ecosystem, Pumpkin is worth running today; if you need Bedrock crossplay or a mature plugin library, wait for it to mature further or stick with Paper/Purpur for now.
💰 Pricing
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
Gratuit, open source, licence GPL-3.0, sans limite.
Pros
Réécriture complète en Rust — empreinte mémoire/CPU bien plus faible que Java
Compatible proxies existants (Velocity, BungeeCord)
Développement actif, forte traction (10,4k étoiles GitHub)
Compression et chiffrement du protocole intégrés
Cons
Pré-version 1.0 — pas encore stable pour une communauté critique
Incompatible avec les plugins Java Paper/Spigot existants
Support Bedrock Edition encore en développement
Écosystème de plugins propre encore jeune vs Paper/Purpur