Every Minecraft server gamemode explained

"Gamemode" on a server list does not mean survival or creative in the vanilla sense. It means the format the server has built on top of Minecraft: what you are trying to do, what stops you and what happens when you die. Every listing here carries up to five of them, and each one is also a browsable page.

Survival

Survival servers are the default: hunger, hostile mobs, real fall damage and a world shared with everyone else. What separates one from another is the plugin set. Almost all of them add land claiming, so a chest you fill is still full tomorrow, plus homes, teleport requests and some form of economy. Some add jobs, quests or skill levelling. The good ones make it easier to live in a shared world without changing what the game is.

SMP

SMP — survival multiplayer — describes the smaller, closer end of survival. Fewer players, fewer plugins, often an application or a whitelist, and a world expected to last years rather than reset each season. If what you want is to build near people whose names you recognise, this is the tag to filter on rather than survival generally.

Skyblock

Skyblock starts you on a floating island holding a tree, a chest and nothing else, with void in every direction. The whole game is bootstrapping: turn the chest's contents into a cobblestone generator, the generator into a farm, the farm into an economy. It began as a downloadable survival map in 2011 and became the most copied server format there is. Modern versions add island levels, minions that keep working while you are offline and a shared auction house, which turns a solo puzzle into a progression race against everybody else on the server.

Prison

Prison is a ladder made explicit. You spawn in mine A, break blocks, sell the ore and pay for the rank that unlocks mine B, and so on to Z, at which point you "free" and enter a second layer of the game with plots and PvP. Prison is unusually honest about being a grind, and the servers that do it well hang enchantments, pickaxe upgrades and prestige resets off the loop so the numbers keep meaning something. It is also the format most likely to sell you a multiplier.

Factions

Factions is organised raiding. You join or found a faction, claim chunks for it and build a base inside the claim. Claimed land is protected from other factions until they break in, which is the entire point. Raiding involves TNT cannons, obsidian walls and an amount of scheduling that surprises people who have not played it. Everything outside your claim is fair game, dying usually drops your inventory, and seasons end with a map reset and a leaderboard. Competitive, social and unforgiving, in that order.

Towny

Towny servers run the Towny plugin, which turns land claiming into local government. A player founds a town, claims chunks, sets a tax rate, sells plots to residents and appoints staff; towns group into nations, and nations sign alliances and declare war. It suits people who want survival with structure and politics rather than survival with a private base, and it tends to produce the longest-lived player communities of any format here.

Minigames

Minigame networks are a lobby with portals into short competitive rounds that reset every few minutes: bedwars, skywars, murder mystery, capture the flag, build battle. Nothing carries between rounds except cosmetics and statistics, which makes them the easiest thing on this list to play for twenty minutes. Bedwars is the format that defined the category — you defend the bed under your island because losing it means you stop respawning, so the first bed break usually decides the match.

Creative

Creative servers hand you unlimited blocks, flight and no mobs. Almost all use a plot system: you claim an empty square, it is yours, and nobody else can place or break in it unless you add them. Many run WorldEdit for players who have earned the rank for it, and promote you as you build. It is the only format here where nothing you make is ever at risk.

Anarchy

Anarchy servers remove the rules rather than the plugins. No claims, no bans, no moderation: griefing, duping, hacked clients and spawn-camping are all permitted. The best-known one has run since 2010 without a map reset, which is exactly the appeal — the terrain around spawn is a monument to everyone doing whatever they liked for over a decade. Expect a queue to get in, expect to be killed on arrival, and expect to travel a very long way before anything is safe.

The tags that layer on top

Economy — currency, chest shops and an auction house, usually attached to survival or skyblock rather than standing on its own.
PvP — the server expects you to fight players, whether that is a practice arena or full-loot survival.
Modded — a Forge, Fabric or NeoForge pack you must install before joining. Machines, magic or new dimensions, and a much heavier client.
Vanilla — nothing altering drops, combat or redstone.
Hardcore — one life, enforced with a ban, a spectator slot or a reset.
Roleplay, parkour and quests — a setting to play a character in, a jump course, or a storyline to follow.

Most servers carry several of these at once, which is why the filter on the server list takes one at a time and the listings show you the rest. If you are not sure which format suits you, how to choose a server works through it from the other direction. Every gamemode has its own page under browse by gamemode.