What does SMP mean in Minecraft?

SMP stands for Survival Multiplayer. In practice, the community uses “SMP” for any survival server where multiple players share the same world, build up infrastructure over time, and create some kind of social meta around it (politics, economy, lore, whatever).

The term became popular through YouTube and Twitch series (“SMP worlds” and creator SMPs) and is now a generic label for any shared survival server.

What Actually Makes a Server an SMP?

An SMP behaves like normal Minecraft survival mode, just with more people. A server is understood as an SMP when:

It runs survival mechanics (health, hunger, progression) as the core loop.

It’s multiplayer and persistent: same world, recurring players.

There is some kind of social layer: diplomacy, trade, alliances, RP, or at least recognizable “regulars”.

You can add plugins, datapacks, or a full modpack and it’s still considered an SMP as long as those three ingredients hold. Some SMPs are completely vanilla and stay close to the default Minecraft experience. The label “SMP” doesn’t dictate the tech stack, it describes the style of play.

Minecraft Server Hosting Considerations For SMP

If you’re planning an SMP, thinking about scale early is important: how many players, which plugins, whether you’ll go modded later.

From a Minecraft server hosting standpoint, SMPs are demanding compared to casual single-player or LAN worlds.

You’re dealing with:

Multiple players online at once, often far apart in the world.
Redstone contraptions, mob farms, and chunk loaders that keep the server busy even when players are “idling.”
Constant world growth as people explore new chunks, build infrastructure, and expand bases.

That translates into real technical needs:

Strong CPU performance to keep tickrate stable when farms, entities, and redstone all stack up.
Enough RAM for your expected player count and your plugin/mod setup.
Fast storage and reliable backups, because nobody wants to lose a months-old SMP world to corruption.
24/7 uptime, so the world feels alive and available whenever your community wants to play.
Server location matters: SMPs with international player bases are more sensitive to latency.

Different Types of SMP

The key point: SMP is the umbrella term. The type of SMP underneath is defined by your rules, plugins, mods, and community culture. Here are some of core SMP types you can find:

A vanilla SMP sticks as close as possible to the base game. No gameplay-changing plugins, no modded items: just rules, community, and maybe a couple of server-side tools to keep things running smoothly.

A semi-vanilla SMP looks and feels like vanilla but adds small conveniences: commands like /home or /spawn, basic land claims and maybe even a simple economy. It’s still recognizably Minecraft, just better.

A modded SMP goes further. Here, you’re usually running a modloader (Forge, Fabric, etc.) and often a full modpack. That can mean technology mods, magic systems, new dimensions, or new blocks, and a much higher demand on server resources.

A roleplay SMP layers story and characters on top of survival. Players might stick to in-game personas, follow loose lore, or run events that drive the “season” forward.

Hardcore SMPs raise the stakes: limited lives, punishments for death, or world resets under certain conditions.

Most Popular Minecraft SMPs (Examples)

If you say “SMP” today, most players recall large-scale SMPs that put the foundation for the term. Here’s a list of the most popular SMPs of all time:

Dream SMP

Private, whitelisted SMP created by Dream in 2020. Blew up during COVID with semi-scripted storylines, wars, elections and massive Twitch/YouTube viewership regularly pulling hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers

Hermitcraft

Long-running, invite-only vanilla SMP focused on big technical builds, megabases, and community projects. Members like Grian and Mumbo Jumbo turned it into a SMP series on YouTube.

Lifesteal SMP

Private creator SMP built around the “hearts” mechanic: kill a player, gain a heart; die, lose one, hit 0 and you’re banned until revived. Branded as “the deadliest SMP”, with multiple seasons and a big YouTube presence.

2b2t (2builders2tools)

The infamous anarchy server with no rules, no resets, and a 2010 map; over a million players have joined and the world file is tens of terabytes.

Where to Find SMP Servers to Join

Now you might want to join and check out what an SMP looks like. Here’s the fastest ways to find SMP servers to join both public and private.

Public SMPs: Server listing sites

Most players discover SMPs via server lists. There are many different public listing sites you can use but the most popular ones are these:

Look for categories/tags like “SMP”, “Survival”, “Semi-Vanilla”.

Private SMPs: Discord and Reddit

If you’re looking for more private SMPs with smaller player counts, Discord and Reddit are usually the best places to look. That’s where people try to expand their existing friend groups and whitelisted SMPs without turning them into fully public servers.

Recommended subreddits:

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What Is SMP in Minecraft? Survival Multiplayer Explained