An anti-cheat watches player movement and actions for patterns a human cannot produce. It costs performance, it produces false positives, and on a private server it catches nothing — which is why the first question is whether you need one at all.
Do you need one?
| Server | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Friends only, allowlist on | No. You know everyone. A ban is one command. |
| Public survival with valuables | Yes, once you have players you do not know. |
| Public PvP or competitive | Yes, and expect to spend real time tuning it. |
| Creative or building server | Rarely. Flight and speed are usually allowed anyway. |
What it costs
Every movement packet from every player gets analysed, on top of the movement checks the server already does. On a busy server that is measurable, and it is paid every tick whether anyone is cheating or not.
The other cost is your time. An anti-cheat with default settings on a modded or heavily-plugged server will flag legitimate players — elytra flight, high-ping movement, plugin teleports — and every one of those is a person telling you the server is broken.
Introducing one without an uproar
- Start in log-only mode
Almost all of them can flag without punishing. Run it for a week and read what it caught before letting it kick anyone.
- Whitelist your plugins' movements
Teleports, launch pads, custom elytra mechanics and vehicles are the usual false positives. Most anti-cheats have compatibility settings for common plugins.
- Punish gradually
Flag, then warn, then kick, then ban. A configuration that bans on a first detection will ban a legitimate player with bad Wi-Fi in week one.
- Keep a human in the loop
The best result is a report to staff, not an automatic ban. An automatic system that is wrong once loses a player who did nothing.
Running two means two systems analysing the same movement, doubling the cost and producing contradictory verdicts. The vanilla movement check is already there; adding one plugin on top of it is the setup. Adding two is a performance problem with false positives attached.
On most survival servers, the actual harm is people breaking each other's builds, not flying. A rollback plugin addresses that directly and costs a fraction of the performance.