Hello! If your NeoForge modpack is lagging or your FPS keeps tanking, you are in the right place. This guide lists the best NeoForge performance mods for Minecraft up to 1.21.x, with a strong focus on modern versions like 1.19.x, 1.20.1 and 1.21.x.

💡Tip: If you see a mod that could be useful for your server but is not available for your version, especially if it's just not up to date, don't hesitate to check online, new version often appear faster than we can update this article!

Every mod here has a NeoForge build. Some also exist for Fabric or Forge, but they are only included if a NeoForge version is actually available. You will find a short explanation of what each mod does, plus the supported Minecraft versions.

You can safely combine several of these mods to boost both client FPS and server TPS. Whether you run a small friends server or a big public community, these optimizations will help Minecraft run smoother and more stable.

NeoForge performance mods for servers (TPS)

This first section focuses on server-side optimizations: tick time, AI, chunk loading, redstone, and general CPU usage. These mods are ideal for NeoForge servers that struggle to stay at 20 TPS.

Adaptive Performance Tweaks

Adaptive Performance Tweaks is a modular suite that monitors tick time in real time and dynamically throttles heavy systems. It can slow down AI, adjust item despawn timers, reduce hopper scans and more whenever TPS is about to drop below 20.

All rules are configurable, so you decide which mechanics should “slow down” first to keep gameplay smooth for your players.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.16

ServerCore

ServerCore bundles many small but powerful patches. It adds asynchronous chunk I/O and player logins, smarter mob caps, and a lag-spike smoother that pushes expensive tasks onto helper threads.

This mod is particularly effective on machines with 6+ CPU cores, where it can dramatically reduce random TPS drops.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.17

Radium Reforged

Radium Reforged is a faithful port of Lithium’s game-logic rewrites. It speeds up block updates, collision checks, random ticks and mob AI pathing, all without changing vanilla behaviour.

On real servers, you can expect 20–40 % lower MSPT, which directly translates to more stable TPS under load.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21.1, 1.20.x, 1.16.5

Sepals

Sepals introduces a cutting-edge AI scheduler that batches and defers non-critical mob tasks. This significantly reduces per-entity CPU time, which is a huge win for mob-heavy servers.

In stress tests with large mob farms, TPS improved from 12 to 19, making the game feel much more responsive. This mod requires Architectury.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21.x

AI Improvements

AI Improvements streamlines mob pathfinding by reducing node expansions, caching goals and shortening re-path intervals. It is especially useful on servers with a lot of wildlife or large mob farms.

The result is noticeably steadier TPS in areas with many entities constantly moving and thinking.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21, 1.20.6 → 1.19

BadOptimizations

BadOptimizations is a collection of micro-optimizations that each save a bit of CPU time. It cancels redundant light-map uploads, caches sky-colour calculations and skips pointless packet serialisations.

Individually these changes are small, but together they can save several milliseconds per tick in heavy modpacks.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.19

Alternate Current

Alternate Current completely rewrites how redstone dust updates propagate. Instead of cascading thousands of block updates, it uses a deterministic queue to process contraptions in a single pass.

This drastically reduces lag from large redstone machines, farms or technical builds that would normally hammer your tick time.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21, 1.20.2

FastFurnace, FastWorkbench and FastSuite

FastFurnace caches the last smelting recipe per furnace type and skips expensive logic when inputs stay the same. This keeps big auto-smelters from destroying your MSPT.

FastWorkbench removes costly per-slot scans from crafting, so shift-clicking large stacks no longer freezes clients or the server. FastSuite extends similar caching logic to all JSON recipe types, speeding up every datapack recipe lookup.

FastFurnace / FastWorkbench: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.20
FastSuite: NeoForge 1.21, 1.20.1

Annuus

Annuus re-implements Minecraft’s packet encoder and decoder with pooled buffers and Zstd compression. This shrinks chunk-burst traffic and keeps the networking thread from spiking under heavy load.

It is especially useful for servers with many players loading and unloading chunks at the same time.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21.x

Smooth Chunk Save

Smooth Chunk Save spreads automatic region-file writes across multiple ticks instead of doing them all at once. This prevents the classic 2–3 second “Saving World” pause that can happen every few minutes.

Your players will feel fewer random freezes, especially on busy worlds that save often.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.19

Concurrent Chunk Management Engine (C2ME)

Concurrent Chunk Management Engine (C2ME) parallelises chunk generation, lighting and heightmap building across multiple threads. Exploration that used to cut TPS in half now barely shows up in your timings.

It is still marked as alpha, but already stable on multi-core hosts and a strong option for exploration-heavy servers.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21 (alpha)

Ksyxis

Ksyxis removes always-loaded spawn chunks, freeing several hundred megabytes of memory and constant tick overhead. You can configure a smaller radius if you still want a tiny always-loaded spawn area.

This is a simple but very effective optimization for servers that do not need a huge spawn kept active 24/7.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.8

Noisium

Noisium optimises the noise sampler and block-state placement used by the terrain generator. In practice, this gives 20–30 % faster new-chunk creation without changing how the terrain looks.

It is a great complement to other world-generation optimizers on NeoForge.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.19

Clumps and Let Me Despawn

Clumps merges nearby XP orbs so mob crushers or large mining sessions do not spawn hundreds of tiny entities. You get the same total XP with far fewer entity ticks.

Let Me Despawn fixes a vanilla edge case where mobs holding items refuse to despawn, slowly inflating entity counts. It lets them despawn again after configurable timeouts, keeping your world clean.

Clumps: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.10
Let Me Despawn: NeoForge 1.20.x

Async Locator and Chunky

Async Locator moves heavy structure searches like /locate, explorer maps and dolphin treasure lookups off the main thread. This ensures those scans never freeze gameplay while they run.

Chunky pregenerates chunks ahead of time so players never trigger heavy terrain generation during normal play. It is a simple idea, but transformative for exploration-heavy NeoForge servers.

Async Locator: NeoForge 1.20.x (back-port)
Chunky: NeoForge 1.20.6 (back-port)

ThreadTweak Reforged and Smooth Boot Reloaded

ThreadTweak Reforged is a modern successor to Smooth Boot. It re-prioritises loading threads, preventing 100 % CPU stalls during mod or plugin startup and smoothing TPS spikes caused by thread contention.

Smooth Boot Reloaded caps how many background threads Minecraft spawns during launch, stopping the full-CPU slam that freezes low-core PCs. Together, they make both startup and early gameplay feel smoother.

ThreadTweak Reforged: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.19 and 1.21.5 → 1.21.1
Smooth Boot Reloaded: NeoForge 1.20.x (Forge 1.18+ retro-back-port)

Starlight (NeoForge) and ScalableLux

Starlight (NeoForge) is a complete light-engine rewrite that removes ghost-lighting bugs and makes block-light updates almost instant. This is huge for chunk generation or massive torch placements.

ScalableLux is a modern replacement for light optimizations on new versions. It uses chunk-parallel light propagation and GPU-friendly skylight sampling to keep both client frame-times and server MSPT stable during mass block updates.

Starlight (NeoForge): NeoForge 1.20.4
ScalableLux: NeoForge 1.21.x (beta)

Get It Together, Drops!

Get It Together, Drops! automatically merges nearby item entities as soon as they appear. This prevents TNT quarries or mob grinders from dumping thousands of separate items on the ground.

The total number of drops stays the same, but the entity count is drastically lower, which is great for TPS.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.15

NeoForge FPS mods and graphical optimizations

These mods focus on client-side performance: FPS, rendering, shaders and visual effects. They are perfect if your NeoForge client stutters or you want to keep high FPS with shaders and big bases.

Embeddium and Embeddium Extra

Embeddium is Sodium’s multi-draw renderer ported to NeoForge. It brings multithreaded chunk updates, modern OpenGL structures and aggressive face culling, often doubling or tripling FPS on CPU-bound systems.

Embeddium Extra adds OptiFine-style video settings such as animation sliders, fog density and sky colours, plus extra culling fixes. It is the perfect companion to fine-tune visuals versus performance.

Embeddium: NeoForge 1.21.4 → 1.16.5
Embeddium Extra: NeoForge 1.21, 1.20

NeOculus (shaders on NeoForge)

NeOculus is an unofficial NeoForge fork of Oculus/Iris that restores shader-pack support on top of Embeddium. It lets you use shader packs like SEUS or Complementary while keeping Sodium-level FPS.

If you want pretty graphics without sacrificing too many frames, this is a must-have in your NeoForge setup.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21+

ImmediatelyFast

ImmediatelyFast optimises immediate-mode OpenGL paths used by the HUD, maps and particles. It batches draw calls and reuses buffers, which is especially noticeable in GUI-heavy modpacks.

Menus and overlays feel snappier, and FPS drops during intense particle effects are reduced.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21 → 1.18

Entity Culling and Cull Less Leaves

Entity Culling uses an asynchronous ray tracer to skip rendering entities hidden behind blocks. This can massively improve FPS in farms, bases and modded factories packed with tile entities.

Cull Less Leaves implements “smart leaves” by hiding unseen leaf faces. Dense forests and jungles can render up to 30 % faster with almost no visual difference.

Entity Culling: NeoForge 1.21.1 → 1.16
Cull Less Leaves: NeoForge 1.21.6 → 1.16

Vanillin

Vanillin builds on Flywheel to instance-render thousands of identical block entities. In developer tests, 64,000 chests still ran at over 250 FPS, which is ideal for storage-heavy or factory-style modpacks.

If your base is full of chests, barrels or similar blocks, this mod can keep your FPS high.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21.1, 1.20.1

NeoForge memory optimization mods

Memory usage can kill performance on big modpacks. These NeoForge memory mods reduce RAM usage and garbage collection hitches so your game stays smooth during long sessions.

FerriteCore and Saturn

FerriteCore deduplicates block-state and model arrays plus other large immutable data structures. On big packs, it can save hundreds of MB of RAM and reduce GC stutters.

Saturn tweaks byte buffers, chunk-section allocations and caching strategies so Java’s allocator touches less memory overall. It pairs very well with FerriteCore for a leaner memory footprint.

FerriteCore: NeoForge 1.21.6 → 1.16.5
Saturn: NeoForge 1.20.6 → 1.16.5

AllTheLeaks and Memory Leak Fix

AllTheLeaks (Memory Leak Fix) back-ports many upstream leak patches and periodically scans weak and soft references. This prevents runaway RAM growth on long-running servers.

Memory Leak Fix targets vanilla leaks that other mods miss, such as resource packs and particle engines. Combined with FerriteCore, it helps keep memory usage stable over many hours of play.

AllTheLeaks: NeoForge 1.21.1, 1.20.1
Memory Leak Fix: NeoForge through 1.19.4

ModernFix

ModernFix is a broad optimization mod that speeds up class loading, parallelises resource loading, reduces reflection spam and patches many memory and regression bugs. In practice, modpacks can launch up to 2× faster and use around 20 % less RAM.

It also works well with other NeoForge performance mods listed in this guide.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21+, 1.20+

Helium (formerly Hydrogen Reforged)

Helium (formerly Hydrogen Reforged) is a legacy but still useful mod for 1.16–1.18. It pools frequently allocated arrays and adjusts chunk NBT caching, shaving 200–300 MB from large worlds.

If you run an older NeoForge pack, this is still a solid way to save memory.

Versions: NeoForge 1.18.x → 1.16.5

LazyDFU and DataFixerSlayer

LazyDFU delays DataFixerUpper initialisation until an old world is actually loaded. This reduces both startup time and roughly 200 MB of RAM usage on modern versions.

DataFixerSlayer goes one step further for fixed-version servers by disabling DFU entirely. It further cuts load times and memory usage, but should only be used if you never open very old worlds.

LazyDFU: NeoForge 1.19.3 → 1.16.1
DataFixerSlayer: NeoForge 1.16.5

Faster startup and world loading on NeoForge

Long modpack startups and slow world joins can be just as annoying as low FPS. These NeoForge startup mods help your game launch faster and reduce the “Joining World” wait time.

Smooth Boot Reloaded

Smooth Boot Reloaded controls how many background threads Minecraft spawns during launch. By avoiding a full 100 % CPU slam, it keeps your PC responsive and makes the loading process feel smoother.

The number of seconds saved may not always be huge, but the user experience is noticeably better, especially on low-core CPUs.

Versions: NeoForge 1.20.x (Forge 1.18+ retro-back-port)

ThreadTweak Reforged (post-launch tuning)

ThreadTweak Reforged also appears in the server section, but it is worth mentioning again here. It adds an in-game configuration GUI to rebalance thread priorities after launch, which is very handy for modpack developers profiling load hotspots.

It works alongside Smooth Boot Reloaded and lets you fine-tune how your NeoForge instance uses CPU resources.

Versions: NeoForge 1.21.5 → 1.21.1

Fastload

Fastload streamlines the “Joining World” pipeline by short-circuiting redundant checks. Players reach spawn faster, and respawns no longer cause big hitches on large servers.

This is a great quality-of-life mod if your server has long login or respawn delays.

Versions: NeoForge 1.20.1 → 1.18.2

💡 Tip: LazyDFU and ModernFix (listed above) also shave 10–30 seconds off cold startups when combined with the mods in this section.