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Back up your Minecraft world

A free server doesn't last forever, and things go wrong: a bad plugin, a creeper in the wrong place, an accidental delete. A copy of your world on your own computer is the only backup that's fully yours. It takes a couple of minutes.

Updated 25 October 2026

Where the world lives

Paper keeps each dimension in its own folder, next to server.properties:

FolderWhat's in it
worldThe Overworld, plus player inventories and statistics
world_netherThe Nether
world_the_endThe End

If you changed level-name in server.properties, the folders use that name instead of world.

Download a backup

  1. Run save-all in the Console tab, or stop the server. Either makes sure the files are up to date.
  2. Open the Files tab.
  3. Select the world, world_nether and world_the_end folders and choose Compress. This makes one .zip (or .tar.gz) file.
  4. Download the archive and keep it somewhere safe.
  5. Delete the archive from the server afterwards. It counts towards your storage.

Expired servers keep their files for 7 days. You can still download your world from the Files tab in that time.

Play the backup in singleplayer

Singleplayer keeps all three dimensions in one folder, while Paper splits them. To turn a backup into a singleplayer world:

  1. Extract the archive and rename the world folder to the name you want.
  2. Copy the DIM-1 folder out of world_nether into your world folder.
  3. Copy the DIM1 folder out of world_the_end into your world folder.
  4. Move the world folder into your Minecraft saves folder. In the launcher, open Installations, hover your installation and choose the folder icon to find it.

Open Minecraft and the world shows up under Singleplayer.

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