Velocity or BungeeCord? What Big Minecraft Servers Run

Velocity is the most common answer by far. 39 of the 76 servers answer as Velocity, and between them they had 49.7% of the players on these servers. 13 still answer as BungeeCord or one of its forks, 3 name a single server build, and 21, including the biggest of all, send a text of their own that hides the software.

The live ranking is on our Minecraft server list. Open the Minecraft server list

Velocity, BungeeCord and the rest

Counted by servers or by players, Velocity comes out on top. The largest Velocity servers in our list were DonutSMP, ReallyWorld, Minehut, FadeCloud and PikaNetwork. The BungeeCord side is mostly forks: the names we saw were BotFilter, CheatBungee, XeBungee, BungeeCord, FlameCord, MinelandBungee, Waterfall.

The 30 biggest, with their answer

Average and highest are over our readings every 5 minutes from 22:43 UTC on 24 September 2026 to 22:41 UTC on 26 September 2026. The version text is shown as the server sent it, cut off where the server cut it off.

Why the biggest names hide it

Hypixel, the largest server here with about 23,764 players on average, answers Requires MC 1.8 / 1.21. Wynncraft says WynnProxy, CubeCraft lists the game versions it supports, and several networks send their own name. A proxy can be set up to answer with any text, and the largest networks often run software they built themselves. For those servers the ping tells you which game versions they accept, not what runs behind them.

Together the 21 servers with a custom answer had 29% of the players, and Hypixel alone was 19.9%. That is why counting by players makes the "unknown" group look bigger than counting by servers.

How to read the version name

Every server list ping returns a version name next to the player count. A single Paper or Spigot server usually answers with its own name and one game version. A proxy answers with its name and the range of client versions it lets in: Velocity 1.7.2-26.3 means Velocity, accepting players from Minecraft 1.7.2 to 26.3. That is how you can tell a network from one big server without logging in.

Two limits. The text can be changed by plugins, so it is a strong hint, not proof. And it only shows the proxy: a Velocity network can run Paper, Folia or its own fork behind it.

Velocity or BungeeCord for your own network

Both do the same job: players connect to the proxy, and the proxy moves them between your lobby, survival and minigame servers without a reconnect. BungeeCord is the original, from the SpigotMC project. PaperMC built Waterfall as a BungeeCord fork, then ended it and now tells Waterfall users to move to Velocity, its own proxy. The big servers above show where things went. For a new network with a few Paper servers behind a proxy, Velocity is the usual pick today.