Set up LuckPerms on your Minecraft server

LuckPerms is a permissions plugin. It decides who can run which command, groups your players into ranks, and keeps all of it in one place that you control from the Console or a web page. This guide installs it on a Paper or Purpur server and builds a first rank.

Checked against LuckPerms 5.5.88, the build the project's own download page lists, on Paper 26.3, October 2026. The Plugins tab currently installs 5.5.71, the newest Bukkit build on Modrinth.

What you need

• A server running Paper or Purpur. You can switch software in JAR Manager; see Change your Minecraft version or mod loader.
• Minecraft 1.17 or newer. LuckPerms needs Java 11 or higher, and servers on Minecraft 1.16 or older run Java 8 here.
• No other permissions plugin. The LuckPerms wiki says it has to be the only one on the server, unless you are migrating data from another.

On Fabric, Forge or NeoForge the project ships its own builds. They install from the Mods tab. This guide covers the Paper and Purpur plugin.

Install LuckPerms

1. Open Plugins in the Content group of the left rail.
2. Leave the Modrinth button selected and type LuckPerms in the search box.
3. Click Install on the LuckPerms row. The panel adds the jar to your plugins folder.
4. Press Restart on the Console tab, or Start if the server is stopped. A new plugin only loads on a restart.
5. Type plugins in the command box. LuckPerms should be listed in green. Red means it did not load; read the log above for the reason.

You can also upload the Bukkit jar from luckperms.net to the plugins folder with the File Manager. That is the 5.5.88 build. If you ever replace an older copy, delete the old jar first.

Give yourself access

Right after install nobody can use the LuckPerms commands. Open the Console tab and run this, with your own player name. Leave off the leading slash.

lp user YourName permission set luckperms.* true

Build your first rank

Every player starts in a group called default. These commands create an admin group, give it a permission and put a player in it. The minecraft.command.ban node is the permission for the vanilla /ban command, used here as an example.

lp creategroup admin
lp group admin permission set minecraft.command.ban true
lp user Steve parent add admin

A group can inherit another with lp group admin parent add mod. Check the result with lp user Steve info and list your groups with lp listgroups.

To find the permission a command needs, run lp verbose record Steve, have Steve run the command, then run lp verbose paste for a report of every check.

Prefer a web page?

Run lp editor and follow the link it prints. The editor lets you change groups and permissions in your browser. When you save, it gives you a command to run in the Console to apply the changes.

Where the settings and data live

LuckPerms keeps its files in plugins/LuckPerms. Open config.yml there in the File Manager. The setting storage-method is h2 by default, a single database file. Set it to yaml if you want readable files you can edit by hand, and choose before you build ranks, because changing later means moving the data across. Plans here do not include MySQL databases, so stay with a file-based method.

Common problems

• The lp command is unknown. The plugin did not load. Run plugins and check the log for the error.
• A change in a file is not picked up. Run lp sync to reload from storage.
• Prefixes do not show in chat. LuckPerms stores them but does not draw them. See Add chat prefixes with LuckPerms.
• Plugins that want a permissions bridge. Chat and shop plugins read LuckPerms through Vault. See Set up Vault on your Minecraft server.