How to reduce lag on a Minecraft server

First: which lag do you have?

'The server is lagging' can mean three completely different things, and they have completely different fixes:

• ✦TPS lag (server-side): blocks break slowly, mobs freeze, clocks stutter. The server can't keep up with its 20 ticks per second.
• ✦Ping lag (network): you see knockback delays and rubber-banding, but the world itself runs fine. Caused by distance to the server or a bad connection.
• ✦FPS lag (client-side): your own frame rate drops. This is your computer, not the server.

Check your TPS

On Paper servers, run /tps in-game or tps in the console. 20.0 is perfect; anything consistently below ~18 is worth investigating.

For a proper diagnosis, install the Spark plugin/mod and run a profiler — it tells you exactly which plugin, mob farm or chunk is eating your tick time instead of leaving you guessing.

/tps
/spark profiler start
/spark profiler stop

The fixes that actually work

• ✦Run Paper instead of Vanilla/Spigot — this alone is the single biggest free win
• ✦Lower view-distance and simulation-distance in server.properties (6–8 is the sweet spot for most servers; players rarely notice below 10)
• ✦Pre-generate your world with the Chunky plugin — generating new chunks is one of the heaviest things a server does, so do it once, in advance, not while people play
• ✦Limit entity-heavy builds: giant mob farms, item-spewing machines and huge animal pens are the #1 cause of TPS drops on survival servers
• ✦Remove plugins you don't use — every plugin costs something, and poorly-written ones cost a lot
• ✦Restart the server daily — it clears leaked memory and keeps performance consistent

What about ping?

Ping is physics: the further your players are from the server, the higher it gets. A server hosted in Europe will give EU players 10–40 ms and US players 100+ ms, no matter how good the hardware is.

The only real fix is hosting close to the majority of your players. QuishHost servers are currently EU-based — that's the honest answer about who we're best for today, and more regions are on the roadmap.