Best Anti-Cheat Plugins for Minecraft Servers in 2026

Cheating ruins the experience for everyone. A good anti-cheat catches exploits while minimizing false positives.

Top Options

Grim (Free — Best Overall)

Open-source, predicts movement server-side. Detects fly, speed, kill aura, reach, scaffold. Very low false positives, actively maintained. Requires Paper.

Vulcan (Premium — Best for PvP)

Excellent combat detection. Low false positives in PvP. Popular on competitive servers.

Spartan (Premium — Feature Rich)

Wide coverage including x-ray detection. Built-in GUI. Higher false positive rate, needs tuning.

NoCheatPlus (Free — Legacy)

The original. Still works but many modern cheats bypass it.

Anti-Xray (Paper Built-In)

Enable in paper-world-defaults.yml: ```yaml anticheat: anti-xray: enabled: true engine-mode: 2 ```

Engine mode 2 replaces hidden blocks with random ores. X-ray becomes useless.

Which to Choose?

• Small survival server: Grim + Paper anti-xray
• PvP-focused: Vulcan
• Large network: Vulcan + Grim together
• Budget: Grim alone covers most cases

Configuration Tips

• Start lenient, tighten gradually
• Use setback instead of kick to reduce false positive impact
• Log violations for a week before enabling auto-bans
• Whitelist staff using creative mode or WorldEdit
• Keep the anti-cheat updated — cheat clients update constantly

No anti-cheat catches everything. Combine with active staff and CoreProtect logging. List your well-moderated server on ServerList.cc.