Are there performance and stability differences between vanilla and Bukkit servers?

Solution 1:

The core CraftBukkit server (Bukkit's implementation) itself is equivalent from my experience.

But since anyone that can copy/paste Java can create a plugin, it really depends on which plugins you use. It pays to do your research here and understand the impact of each plugin you decide to install.

You can sort of rely on the most popular plugins (plugins with threads that have a lot of comments compared to others) to be fairly reliable. If you start delving into lesser used plugins, spend the time to read the entire thread and understand exacly what the developer is trying to accomplish. If you have any coding experience at all, look through the source code to get an idea of what it exactly does.

What I would say in summary is that a significant portion of most servers (small, medium, and large) run CraftBukkit successfully. There are problems for sure, but there are problems with Vanilla also. Nothing's perfect.

Solution 2:

I run two different servers:

• a Vanilla server
  • Running on a computer with the latest i7 I could get with 16 GB RAM
• a Craftbukkit/Spigot hub
  • Running on an i5 processor with 12GB RAM
  • I have a few worlds on the same computer/connection via a hub
  • It has one server with 5 multi-worlds and three other worlds via the Spigot Hub

The craftbukkit ones run much better, with less lag and fewer problems, and can handle more players, despite having worse hardware.