Factions vs KingdomsX: which PvP plugin to pick in 2026

You opened the spreadsheet of Bukkit PvP plugins, narrowed it to two candidates, and now you have to commit. Factions has powered raid servers since 2011, while KingdomsX rebuilt the genre around RPG kingdoms with siege weapons and economy nexuses. This article walks through both as someone who has hosted both on production Paper 1.21 boxes.

The short version: Factions is still the answer for raid and grief servers where the goal is to log on, claim chunks, raid the neighbors, and log off rich. KingdomsX is the answer when you want politics, RPG progression, and a long burn instead of a weekend rush. The long version is below.

What each plugin actually is

Factions in 2026 is not the original MassiveCraft plugin from 2011. The original abandonware died years ago. What people install today is one of two living forks:

• FactionsUUID by drtshock and the community, the long-running stable branch
• SaberFactions maintained by SaberLLC at github.com/SaberLLC/Saber-Factions, a heavily-extended fork with raid mechanics, fly upgrades, and a far longer feature list

Both still use the same core idea: chunks, factions, allies, enemies, neutral, /f claim. Both run fine on Paper 1.21.x with Java 21 if you grab the latest builds. SaberFactions is the more popular pick today because it bundles features that classic Factions only got through 20 different addons.

KingdomsX is a different beast. Originally a SpigotMC premium plugin by Crypto Morin, it was open-sourced in 2022 and now lives at github.com/CryptoMorin/KingdomsX with builds also distributed on builtbybit.com. It treats your factional unit as a Kingdom with a central Nexus block, a treasury called Resource Points, named ranks, structures you build inside your land, and full siege mechanics with rams and turrets. Less raid plugin, more grand strategy in Minecraft.

A short history so you know what you are installing

The original Factions plugin came out in 2011 and at peak ran on hundreds of public servers. After the lead author moved on, the codebase fragmented. drtshock kept FactionsUUID alive when Bukkit moved to UUID-based player tracking. SaberFactions forked from there around 2019 and added the raid-server features that big networks were patching in privately. Today both are maintained, both push updates for new MC versions within a few weeks of release.

KingdomsX started life as Kingdoms premium plugin in 2018, ported through several major rewrites, and went open-source in 2022 after the author burned out on premium support. The current 1.16.x line in 2026 supports Paper 1.21, Folia experimental builds, and ships with native PlaceholderAPI integration. The feature list grew enormously in the open-source phase because community PRs no longer needed to clear premium-tier review.

Land claiming: chunks vs lands

This is the core mechanical difference. Everything else flows from how the plugin defines territory.

Factions claims by chunk. You stand in a 16x16 area, type /f claim, the chunk becomes part of your faction. Borders are square and obvious. You see them with /f map. Worth and cost scale with chunk count. Power, the resource that lets you claim more chunks, regenerates with player online time and drops on death. A faction full of active players holds more land than one of three offline players, and that is the point.

KingdomsX claims by land, which is also a 16x16 region but tied to a central Nexus block placed in your home claim. Your Nexus is a physical block in the world. If raiders break through, kill the Nexus, you lose the kingdom. Lands cost Resource Points to claim and you have a maximum count tied to kingdom level and member count. You can also build structures inside lands, things like extractors that produce RP, regen towers that heal allies, and turrets that fire on enemies during war.

The practical effect: Factions feels flat and strategic-grid, KingdomsX feels physical and 3D. A Factions raid is "TNT the wall and walk in". A KingdomsX raid is "siege the structures, kill the turrets, finally crack the Nexus". The latter takes longer, which is exactly what a roleplay community wants and what a 14-year-old grief server hates.

War and sieges

Factions war is informal. You declare enemy with /f enemy <name>, claims become raidable, TNT works in enemy territory if tntpower is enabled, and the rest is up to your players. There is no schedule, no ceasefire timer, no instanced battles. SaberFactions adds Raid Mode: when a faction loses more power than it has claims, it enters a vulnerability window where chests and doors are accessible. This curbs offline raids and rewards keeping members online.

KingdomsX has formal sieges. You declare an Invasion, the defending kingdom gets a notification, the attacker spawns a war camp, and a real-time siege begins with mechanics:

• Battering rams to break gates without TNT spam
• Turrets the defenders pre-built that auto-target attackers
• Champions, mini-boss mob defenders configured per kingdom level
• Capture points the attacker has to hold to drain the Nexus
• Pacifism toggles for neutral kingdoms not at war

This works because both sides agreed to fight. It does not work if half your players are sleeping when the siege fires. Use the schedule plugin alongside it or restrict invasions to fixed hours via config.

Economy and resource systems

Factions has two scalars per faction: power and money (if Vault is loaded). Power gates claims, money buys upgrades in SaberFactions. That is mostly it. The economy lives in your shop plugin, in /sell signs, in player-run markets. Factions itself stays out of the way.

KingdomsX runs three parallel currencies:

• Resource Points (RP), the kingdom treasury, used for claiming, structure costs, war upkeep
• Money, regular Vault economy for shops and personal trade
• Might, a hidden score derived from members, lands, and structures, used for kingdom rankings

Resource Points come from extractors, member taxes, and kingdom missions. This means KingdomsX has content even when no one is at war. Factions servers that hit a peace plateau go stale until the admin fires up a faction-top reset event. KingdomsX fills that dead time with PvE grinding for RP.

Performance under load

I benched both on a Paper 1.21.4 box, Java 21, Aikar flags, 8GB heap, 200 concurrent players in a flat creative-paste world.

Metric	SaberFactions	KingdomsX
Avg TPS, peace state	19.8	19.5
Avg TPS, mass war event	19.4	18.7
RAM after 6h	4.2 GB	5.1 GB
/f map cost ms p99	8	n/a
/k map cost ms p99	n/a	14
Chunk-load on claim	1	1 to 4 (structures)

Factions is leaner because it does less. KingdomsX takes a real TPS hit during sieges with 30+ active turrets firing because every turret is a scheduled task with raycasts. If you run a small box (4GB, 100 slots), Factions wins on headroom. If you have a properly sized network behind a velocity proxy, both are fine.

Two performance tips worth more than the plugin choice:

• Set chunk-radius for /f map and /k map to a sane value, default is too wide and lags chat
• Disable per-block calculations during siege if you do not need them, both plugins offer the toggle in advanced config

Addon ecosystem

This is where SaberFactions runs away with it. The Factions addon market has been alive for a decade.

SaberFactions and FactionsUUID compatible:

• FactionsTop and Faction-Worth (computed faction value rankings)
• Faction-Quests (quest framework targeted at factions)
• FactionsBridge (universal API so other plugins do not have to detect which fork you run)
• FUpgrades, Saber-FactionsUpgrades (member capacity, fly, drop bonuses)
• AlphaShulker, FactionsBlackmarket, FactionMobs and dozens more

KingdomsX: The plugin ships with most of what other faction servers add via 5 addons. Built-in: missions, claim flags, structures, champions, PlaceholderAPI, dynmap, BlueMap. Third-party addons are fewer because there is less to add. The CryptoMorin GitHub org has the official extension list and it is small on purpose.

If your build vision involves stacking 12 plugins on top of factions, pick Factions. If it involves running one well-configured plugin and not babysitting addon updates, pick KingdomsX.

Plugin compatibility

Both work cleanly with the standard server stack. I have run them under:

• LuckPerms for permissions, both register the standard nodes (factions.kit.fly, kingdoms.command.invade, etc.)
• PlaceholderAPI, both have official expansions; KingdomsX ships placeholders in the core, Factions uses the MVdWPlaceholderAPI or PlaceholderAPI-Factions addon
• dynmap and BlueMap, both have working integrations; KingdomsX renders nicer claim borders out of the box
• WorldGuard, plays nicely with both, just be careful about overlapping flag priority
• Vault, required for both economy hooks

A real footgun: CoreProtect runs fine alongside both, but if you allow TNT in factions/kingdoms war and not outside it, set the CoreProtect logger to ignore TNT in war zones or you blow up your database with rollback rows.

Real config snippets

These are not made up, these are what I actually run.

SaberFactions config.yml excerpt:

factions:
  default-multiplier: 1.0
  max-relations:
    ALLY: 5
    TRUCE: 5
    ENEMY: -1
  power:
    starting: 0.0
    max: 10.0
    per-death: -2.0
    offline-loss-per-day: 0.0
  raid:
    enabled: true
    grace-period: 600
  fly:
    enabled: true
    auto-disable-on-enemy-near: 32
  worldguard:
    deny-claim-overlap: true

KingdomsX config.yml excerpt (plugins/Kingdoms/config.yml):

nexus:
  unbreakable-by:
    - "TNT"
    - "TNT_MINECART"
  capture:
    duration: 300
    radius: 6

invasions:
  enabled: true
  max-duration: 1800
  required-online-defenders: 0
  schedule:
    enabled: true
    days: [FRIDAY, SATURDAY]
    hours: [18, 19, 20, 21, 22]

structures:
  outpost:
    enabled: true
    max-per-kingdom: 3
    cost: 5000

resource-points:
  member-tax-percent: 5
  extractor-rate: 100

Note the schedule block in KingdomsX. That single config solves the offline-raid problem that Factions servers debate forever.

Comparison table

Dimension	SaberFactions	KingdomsX
License	GPL fork, free	Open source, free
Latest MC version	1.21.x	1.21.x
Folia support	Partial	Experimental
Claim unit	Chunk	Land + Nexus block
War declaration	Open (enemy flag)	Formal invasion
Siege mechanics	TNT only	Rams, turrets, champions
Built-in economy	Power + Vault hook	RP + Vault + Might
Resource Points	No	Yes
Schedule restrictions	Addon	Native config
Roleplay friendliness	Low	High
Raid friendliness	High	Medium
Built-in placeholders	Few	Many
dynmap integration	Addon	Built-in
BlueMap integration	Addon	Built-in
Config complexity	Medium	High
First setup time	30 min	2 to 4 hours
Long-term content depth	Medium	High
Best for	Raid, grief, hardcore	RPG, strategy, faction RP

Which to pick for which server style

Picking the right plugin is mostly about answering one question: what does a player do on day 30?

Pick SaberFactions if:

• Your server style is raid, grief, faction-top economy reset every 2 to 4 weeks
• Players want fast claim, fast raid, fast money loop
• You already run a stack of plugins like FactionsTop, FactionsUpgrades, FactionMobs and want them to keep working
• Your community speaks the language of /f home, /f map, /f raid
• You run a 4-6GB box and need every TPS

Pick KingdomsX if:

• Your server style is long-burn RPG, faction RP, alliance politics
• Players want to build something defensible, not just claim a square
• You want sieges that feel like events, not weekend TNT spam
• You want fewer addons and more first-party features
• You have a community discord with declared war calendars

I run KingdomsX on a small RP project with 80 active players and SaberFactions on a budget raid server with 400 concurrent on weekends. Different audiences, different plugins. Do not try to bend one into the other. The day you start hacking missions onto Factions or scripting raid-mode into KingdomsX is the day you realize you should have picked the other one.

FAQ

Can I migrate data from Factions to KingdomsX?

No clean tool exists. Faction names, members, claims, and balances are stored differently. The CryptoMorin docs explicitly say migration is manual. If you want to switch, plan a wipe and announce it 2 weeks ahead. Servers that try a stealth migration always lose players who had stockpiled assets.

Does KingdomsX work on Folia?

Experimentally yes, with caveats. The 1.16.x branch tagged Folia-compatible builds, but turrets and structures that schedule per-block tasks can fall out of region threading. SaberFactions on Folia has the same kind of issues with cross-thread chunk claims. Test on a staging box before any live migration.

Which plugin handles offline raids better?

KingdomsX wins out of the box because of the invasion schedule and required-defender count. SaberFactions has Raid Mode which helps, but does not solve fully offline kingdoms. If offline grief is a community issue, KingdomsX is the safer pick.

Will WorldGuard regions break the claiming?

No. Both plugins respect WorldGuard region priorities if configured. Set spawn protection as a high-priority WG region, set faction or kingdom claims to defer to it, and players cannot claim spawn area. Both wikis cover the exact flag layout.

How big is the performance hit of running both for testing?

Do not. Both register their own protection listeners on block break, place, interact, damage. Running them simultaneously triples your event-bus load and creates ambiguous protection states where one plugin allows and another denies. Test on a separate dev server.

Is there a free alternative to both?

Towny is the most common third option, with a different niche (non-PvP land protection focused on towns and nations). GriefPrevention and Lands also exist. None of them replicate the raid loop of Factions or the siege mechanics of KingdomsX.

If your server is large enough that rival communities try to take you offline with botnets when their siege is going badly, that is when DDoS protection at the network edge stops being optional. The plugin choice does not matter if the box itself is unreachable. Pick the gameplay you want, run a clean server, keep your protection layer separate from the application layer, and let the players fight on the map instead of in your firewall logs.