Waterfall vs BungeeCord — Which Minecraft Proxy Should You Run?
BungeeCord vs Waterfall in 2026: Waterfall is end-of-life, so what to run instead, what still works, and when Velocity is the real answer.
Short answer: for a new network, neither — use Velocity. PaperMC declared Waterfall end-of-life in March 2024. If you're stuck on the Bungee API (old plugins, existing network), Waterfall is still the nicer drop-in over stock BungeeCord, but treat it as a stopgap and plan the move to Velocity.
Long answer below — what each one is, where they came from, and the edge cases where it matters.
The lineage
BungeeCord — the original Minecraft proxy by md_5, started around 2013. Lets you stitch multiple Minecraft servers into one network: a lobby, a PvP server, a creative server, all behind one IP. SpigotMC maintains it.
Waterfall — fork of BungeeCord by the PaperMC team, started 2016. Same API, same config, drop-in replacement. Adds patches BungeeCord rejected: better thread handling, bug fixes that sat in BungeeCord PRs for years.
On 26 March 2024 PaperMC officially announced Waterfall's end of life and recommends Velocity. Downloads stay up and builds still appear — but sporadically, with no promise of updates for new Minecraft versions or of timely security fixes. Fine to keep an existing network running for now; don't start a new one on it.
What they share
- Identical
config.ymlsyntax. My BungeeCord config.yml deep-dive applies to both. - Same plugin API. Drop the same
.jarinto theplugins/folder. - Same IP-forwarding contract with backends.
- Same start command, just a different JAR.
If you have a working BungeeCord setup, swapping to Waterfall is:
sudo systemctl stop bungeecord
cd /opt/bungeecord
mv BungeeCord.jar BungeeCord.jar.bak
URL=$(curl -s -A "your-name/1.0 (you@example.com)" \
"https://fill.papermc.io/v3/projects/waterfall/versions/1.21/builds/latest" \
| jq -r '.downloads."server:default".url')
wget -O BungeeCord.jar "$URL" # needs jq
sudo systemctl start bungeecord
(Yes, you can leave the filename as BungeeCord.jar — your systemd unit doesn't care, and rolling back is a one-line revert.)
Where they differ
Performance
Waterfall carries extra performance patches on top of BungeeCord. On a small network you won't notice; it matters more as player counts grow. If raw proxy performance is your reason to switch, that's an argument for Velocity, not Waterfall.
For a friends-and-family network, irrelevant. For a public server, put the effort into moving to Velocity instead.
Security patches
This is the one that actually matters, and it's why the answer changed. Waterfall used to pick up proxy fixes faster than BungeeCord upstream. Since the end-of-life announcement there's no commitment to that anymore — builds still appear, but irregularly.
If you're internet-facing — and your proxy port is, by definition — you want a proxy with active maintenance. Today that's Velocity.
Wider hardening reference: SSH hardening checklist. Same thinking applies — fewer days exposed, fewer ways in.
Plugin compatibility
Waterfall is a strict superset. Every BungeeCord plugin works on Waterfall. The reverse isn't quite true — a few plugins use Waterfall-only API hooks — but in practice, in 2026, no maintained plugin requires BungeeCord and refuses Waterfall.
LuckPerms-Bungee, BungeeTabListPlus, RedisBungee — all run unchanged.
Logging
Waterfall logs more by default and the format is closer to what you'd expect. BungeeCord swallows stack traces in places where Waterfall surfaces them. When something breaks at 11pm, Waterfall tells you what; BungeeCord tells you a plugin disabled itself.
When to pick BungeeCord anyway
Honestly: never, for a new setup. The cases I can think of:
- You inherited a server with custom forks of BungeeCord internals. Migrate when you have time.
- You're following a tutorial from 2018 and don't want to deviate. Waterfall runs every command in it — but the better move is to follow a current Velocity guide instead.
- Your hosting panel only ships BungeeCord. Switch panels or upload Waterfall manually as a custom JAR.
That's the list.
When to pick neither — Velocity
If you're starting fresh in 2026, look at Velocity before either of these. Velocity is the PaperMC team's modern proxy, written from scratch. Different config format (velocity.toml), different plugin API, different IP-forwarding scheme (modern instead of BungeeCord's), but materially better: lower latency, better backpressure, active development.
Migration from BungeeCord/Waterfall to Velocity is a rewrite of the proxy config and a swap of every plugin, since the plugin APIs are incompatible. For an existing 3-backend network, that's an evening of work. For a 30-backend network, it's a weekend.
I'm running Waterfall on the network I maintain because it predates Velocity and I haven't had a reason to migrate. If I were starting today, Velocity.
Decision tree
- New small network, just want it to work → Waterfall.
- New large network, want the best stack → Velocity.
- Existing BungeeCord network, no problems → swap to Waterfall this weekend, it's 30 seconds.
- Existing BungeeCord network, hitting performance walls → Waterfall now, plan a Velocity migration.
The two failure modes when you switch
Plugins log warnings about unsupported API on first start. Read the warning. If the plugin still loaded, you're fine — the warning is informational. If the plugin failed to load, check its page — there's almost always a Waterfall-compatible build.
Config silently rewrites. Waterfall (like BungeeCord) overwrites config.yml on shutdown to add fields it added in newer versions. Diff your config after the first clean shutdown to see what changed. Don't panic — the new fields default to safe values.
Backing up before the swap
sudo systemctl stop bungeecord
cp /opt/bungeecord/BungeeCord.jar /opt/bungeecord/BungeeCord.jar.bak
cp /opt/bungeecord/config.yml /opt/bungeecord/config.yml.bak
Three lines. If anything breaks, revert and you're back where you started. Same idea, full pipeline: rsync backups on Linux.
If you want the full setup walkthrough rather than just the proxy choice, the BungeeCord / Waterfall network setup guide covers the proxy + backends + DNS + IP forwarding end-to-end.
