Upload a plugin to your Paper Minecraft server
Drop a .jar into the plugins folder from the dashboard file manager, restart the server, and the plugin loads on next boot — no SFTP needed.
Step 1 of 2 · minecraft-server-extensions
Paper, Spigot, and Bukkit servers all load plugins from the same place: a plugins/ directory next to server.jar. The dashboard's file manager handles the upload for you — pick the JAR, drop it in, restart the server, and Paper picks it up at boot. The whole thing takes about a minute and works the same way on every tier. This guide walks the safe, no-SFTP path: stay in the dashboard, never touch the running server directly.
01 Open the file manager
From your dashboard, open the Minecraft server you want to add a plugin to and switch to the FILES tab at the top. You land in the server's root directory — the same place SFTP would drop you. The folder you care about is plugins, somewhere near the top of the listing alongside bukkit.yml, commands.yml, and server.properties. If it isn't there, your server is either fresh and hasn't booted once yet (start it from the Overview tab, wait 30 seconds, refresh) or it's not actually a Paper/Spigot/Bukkit server — vanilla Minecraft servers don't have a plugins/ folder because they can't load plugins.
02 Open the plugins folder
Click into plugins/. A new Paper server already has two folders here — bStats (anonymous stats Paper sends, harmless, can be disabled in its config) and spark (the bundled profiler). These aren't plugins you installed; they're Paper internals that happen to live in the same folder. Leave them alone. Anything you upload sits next to them as a .jar file.
03 Upload your plugin JAR
Click ↑ UPLOAD in the toolbar. A dialog opens with the target locked to /plugins — that's the breadcrumb working in your favour, so you can't accidentally drop the JAR in the wrong folder. Pick your plugin's .jar file (or a .zip / .tar.gz archive if you tick Extract after upload, useful for resource-pack-shaped plugins that ship a bundle), then click UPLOAD →. The file lands in plugins/ within a few seconds.
The plugin isn't loaded yet. Paper only scans plugins/ at startup, so the new JAR is sitting on disk but the running server doesn't see it. Switch back to OVERVIEW, click RESTART in the power buttons, and wait ~30 seconds for Paper to come back up. The console will print a line like [Server thread/INFO]: [YourPlugin] Loading YourPlugin v1.2.3 somewhere in the boot log, followed by the usual Done (X.YZs)! once the world finishes loading.
Troubleshooting
- "My plugin uploaded but isn't loading." Almost always one of: (a) you forgot to restart — uploading drops the file but Paper doesn't hot-reload plugins, (b) the JAR is built for a Minecraft version your server isn't running (e.g. a 1.20-only plugin on 1.21.8), or (c) the JAR is actually a Forge/Fabric mod, not a Paper plugin. Check the plugin page on Spigot/Modrinth/Hangar for the supported Minecraft + server software combo before uploading. Version mismatches show up in console as a
NoSuchMethodErrororUnsupportedClassVersionErrorline on boot. - "The plugins folder doesn't exist." Paper creates
plugins/on its very first boot. If your server has never started (status badge shows OFFLINE since provisioning), go to OVERVIEW → START, wait for the first install to finish, then come back here. Ifplugins/still isn't there afterwards, you probably picked the Vanilla or Bedrock pack at checkout — vanilla can't load plugins, period. - "Upload fails with 'file too large'." Default cap is 1 GB per upload, shown next to the target in the dialog. Plugin JARs are almost always under 5 MB, so hitting this usually means you're trying to upload a modpack (wrong guide — see Upload a mod to your modded Minecraft server for those) or a
world.zip. For very large files, use SFTP — the connection details live under OVERVIEW → CONNECT TO YOUR SERVER. - "I uploaded the wrong file." Right-click → DELETE in the file listing, then upload the correct one. No need to stop the server first — Paper hasn't loaded the file yet because it hasn't restarted.
- "Where do I find trustworthy plugins?" // TODO: link the operator's preferred plugin sources here (SpigotMC, Modrinth, Hangar) once we have an opinionated short list. Avoid random forum download links — that's how botnets get installed.