Improve Your Rust Server's Performance

Rust server lag has a few causes you can actually measure: the server running out of CPU or memory, a plugin that uses too much, and a world that is bigger or busier than the plan behind it. This guide shows how to measure each on your Rust server and what Facepunch says to change. Checked against Facepunch's Rust wiki and Rust server build 2635, plus Performance Monitor 1.2.8 on uMod (released March 2026), October 2026.

Measure first

1. Open the Console tab. The CPU and RAM cards show how hard the server is working. Watch them while players are on, not while it is empty.
2. Type fps into the Console. Facepunch's wiki lists it as "Returns current Frames Per Second. Can be used on client and server". On an empty test server it printed 240 FPS, so read the number while players are on.
3. Note the player count with status, so you can tell whether lag follows population.

A full RAM card means the server needs more memory. How much RAM does a Rust server need? covers sizing. High CPU with spare RAM points at players, bases or plugins.

Settings that cost the server

These are on the Startup tab. Change them, press Save and Restart.

• World Size. Facepunch's wiki says "The larger the map, the more disk space and memory you need", and recommends 1000 to 6000. How map size affects Rust server performance goes into it.
• Max Players. The same page says "The more players, the faster your computer CPU needs to be".
• Additional Arguments. If you added -enableProfiler to take a profiler snapshot, remove it afterwards. Facepunch says keeping the profiler enabled "will slightly decrease performance".

Changing World Size makes the server generate a new map on its way up, so take a backup in the Backups tab first.

Find a heavy plugin with Performance Monitor

Performance Monitor reports which plugins and entities cost the most. It needs Oxide or Carbon: see How to install Oxide/uMod plugins on your Rust server.

1. Open Plugins, stay on Store, search for PerformanceMonitor as one word (a search for "Performance Monitor" with a space did not find it) and press Install.
2. On Oxide, a newly installed plugin stays unloaded until the server restarts: restart, or type oxide.load PerformanceMonitor in the Console. On Carbon it loads by itself, and c.load PerformanceMonitor or c.reload PerformanceMonitor do it by hand.
3. In the Console tab, run monitor.report (monitor.createreport does the same). It answers "[Performance Monitor] Performance report was completed in 0.042 seconds." on a test server. The plugin's code only accepts the command from an admin.
4. Open the File Manager and look in oxide/data/PerformanceMonitor/Reports on Oxide. Each report is a file inside a folder named for the date, in month-day-year order unless you change it in the config.

The plugins section lists each plugin with its version, memory use and Total Hook Time, sorted by hook time. The entities section counts entities by shortname, split into owned and unowned. A plugin near the top of the hook-time list is the first to remove or replace. The entity counts show whether player-built bases or the world itself dominate.

In the plugin's config (Installed, then Config) Create reports every (seconds) is 0 by default, which means reports are only made when you ask. Set a number to get them on a timer.

Lag when the deep sea opens

The game's own descriptions for three deep sea settings say to raise them "if you're experiencing lag when the deep sea is opening": deepsea.entities_spawninterval (default 5 seconds), deepsea.navmesh_spawninterval (default 5) and deepsea.spawngroups_spawninterval (default 0.15). How to change deep sea settings on your Rust server shows where to put them.

Leave other convars alone

Facepunch's guidelines for community servers say that "most convars are for development and debugging purposes" and that changing the defaults "may have undesired side effects on the server's performance". Change one at a time and read the RAM and CPU cards afterwards.