What is BungeeCord in Minecraft? Everything You Need to Know.

BungeeCord is a proxy server system that sits between players and multiple Minecraft servers, allowing them to move between different servers without disconnecting.

Instead of running one massive server that handles everything, you can split your network into specialized servers (lobby, survival, minigames) and let BungeeCord route players between them seamlessly.

Why Server Owners Use BungeeCord

Running everything on a single Minecraft server creates bottlenecks. If you're hosting survival, creative, and minigames on one instance, a lag spike in your minigames affects everyone. A crash takes down your entire network. BungeeCord solves this by letting you distribute load across multiple servers while maintaining great player experience.

Large networks like Hypixel pioneered this approach, they run hundreds of individual servers, but players experience it as one big server. BungeeCord brought that capability to smaller server owners.

Performance Isolation

If your parkour minigame server crashes due to a buggy plugin, your survival server keeps running. Players on survival won't even notice the crash happened. This isolation is critical for maintaining uptime on large networks.

Scalability

When you hit performance limits on a single server, BungeeCord lets you scale horizontally. Instead of upgrading to a more expensive dedicated server, you can add more affordable backend servers. Run multiple survival worlds across different instances, each handling different chunks of your player base.

Server Configurations

Different game modes have different optimization needs. Your creative server can allocate more RAM to rendering, while your survival server prioritizes tick rate and entity processing. BungeeCord lets you fine-tune each backend server independently.

Better Server Management

Network-wide commands, permissions, and bans can be managed at the proxy level. Ban a player from BungeeCord, and they're banned from every server in your network, no need to update ban lists across dozens of instances.

How BungeeCord Works

When you set up a BungeeCord network, you're creating a three-layer architecture:

Layer 1: The Proxy BungeeCord runs as its own separate Java application, distinct from your Minecraft servers. Players connect to this proxy using your network's public IP address.

Layer 2: Backend Servers Your actual Minecraft servers (Spigot, Paper, etc.) run behind the proxy. These servers are set to online-mode=false in their server.properties file, meaning they don't authenticate players directly, they trust BungeeCord to handle that. Each backend server binds to a different port (25566, 25567, 25568 etc.) but players never see these ports.

Layer 3: Communication Protocol BungeeCord uses a plugin messaging channel to communicate with backend servers. When a player types /server hub, BungeeCord receives that command, disconnects them from their current backend server, and reconnects them to the hub server

This creates a seamless network experience where players can use commands like /server survival or click NPCs in a hub to instantly teleport between game modes.​

How BungeeCord Networks Work

A BungeeCord network uses a Master/Slave architecture:​

• Master (BungeeCord proxy): The central server that players connect to​
• Slaves (Backend servers): Your actual Minecraft servers (lobby, survival, minigames, etc.)​

BungeeCord vs. AlternativeS

Velocity: A modern proxy built from scratch with better performance and security. Maintained by PaperMC, it's designed to fix BungeeCord's architectural limitations. Recommended for new networks.

Waterfall: A fork of BungeeCord with performance patches and bug fixes. Maintains compatibility with BungeeCord plugins while offering better stability. Good middle ground if you need BungeeCord plugin support.

BungeeCord itself receives minimal updates, but it's still widely used because of its extensive plugin ecosystem and community knowledge base. For small to medium networks, it remains perfectly viable.

For server owners planning to grow beyond a single game mode or expecting more than 50-100 concurrent players, understanding proxy architecture is the foundation of every major Minecraft network.