40 Best Minecraft Mods You Must Install

Minecraft gives you a chance to have infinitely random experiences with each world being different from any that has existed before. Mods in the game take that experience to the next level. However, with thousands of cool Minecraft mods, we understand picking out the best can become a task. We decided to make it easier for you by sorting out the best Minecraft mods you can use to make your time in this sandbox game more enjoyable.

Note:

It is important to mention that the mods will be limited to Minecraft Java Edition because of the difference between Java and Bedrock Edition. The latter does not have Minecraft mod support if you were unaware.

Minecraft Optimization and Tool Mods

This category includes mods that improve the overall Minecraft gameplay experience without making you feel like you are playing an entirely different game. These mods boost your performance, reduce lag, and allow you to enjoy and easily access the game’s features.

1. OptiFine

One of the most popular mods of all time, OptiFine is treasured by low-end PC gamers. It not only enhances your graphics in the game but also greatly helps improve performance with custom settings options.

If you want to become one of the OptiFine users, check out our guide on how to install OptiFine in Minecraft. Moreover, we have an in-depth article dedicated to getting started with OptiFine. It will teach you how to get the best FPS on Minecraft using OptiFine.

2. WorldEdit

This mod is technically a map-builder, but what makes it unique is that it runs inside the game. Yeah, you can use mathematical equations, shared construction files, and even 3D brushes to build and customize your in-game structures.

The WorldEdit mod is the dream of any Minecraft player who is into custom structures. Since I am not the best builder, you can see an official screenshot to get an idea of what WorldEdit can do for you.

3. JEI (Just Enough Items)

If you’ve ever watched any modded series on YouTube, you might have noticed that players have some kind of an item and block search tab on the right side of the screen. This is one of the most popular Minecraft mods ever made – JEI, AKA Just Enough Items.

Pretty much every modpack includes this mod. It’s rather useful in the vanilla game, but even more so in the modded. In the mod’s tab, you can access the list of all the different items and blocks in the game.

Additionally, you can view their crafting recipes and uses, which comes in handy when playing with mods you’re not familiar with. The JEI mod allows you to put in a search keyword and quickly find what you’re looking for. And with the bookmarks system, you can adapt the mod and make it more easily traversable. This is undoubtedly one of the best Minecraft mods, so make sure to check it out.

4. Bobby

The Bobby mod aims to extend your render distance beyond your server’s limit without compromising the performance even a bit. It records and stores all the chunks the server sends beforehand to achieve this task. This helps Bobby in displaying all the chunks that were stored previously at times when the server doesn’t send in any data.

Finally, this mod can load chunks from an existing world to a new one to completely fill the areas where chunks fail to load. From what we tested, it certainly delivers on that promise.

5. Jade

Jade Mod is also one of the highly recommended beginner mods in Minecraft. It boasts features that enhance the vanilla game and make the user experience more enjoyable. Essentially, it provides you with a HUD (heads-up display) information related to the blocks’ states, horse stats, mob effects, chest contents, breaking process, and others.

With this mod, you won’t be banging your head against the wall anymore due to the confusion and unclearness, because all the vital info is displayed right in front of you.

6. Mouse Tweaks

The Mouse Tweaks is a Minecraft tool mod that helps you more easily control your mouse dragging and item moving in the game. It changes the way you interact with the items in the UI, making it so much faster than the vanilla game’s mechanics. This mod modifies the vanilla’s RMB (right mouse button) dragging mechanic turning it into a more intuitive feature.

Moreover, the LMB (left mouse button) mechanics have been expanded to allow you to easily move the cursor across your inventory and quickly move the items in the other inventory while holding shift and the LMB. This mod may not seem like a big deal, but once you start using it, you’re never switching back to vanilla’s mechanics.

7. Crafting Tweaks

Have you ever tried manually spreading the items on the crafting table while crafting something? Or what about moving items back into your inventory after you want to craft a different recipe? Even though the previous mod can help you greatly for this purpose, the Crafting Tweaks mod has its unique and incredible uses.

You’ll be able to easily and quickly rotate, balance and clear the crafting grid with one mouse click. This simple mod will save you a lot of time with these effective buttons. Also, the Crafting Tweaks mod does require the Balm mod to function.

8. Clumps

Clumps mod has a rather cool use. Many players love the in-game experience and hate ruining it with the UI and F3 debug screen. Grouping the XP orbs together helps minimize the lag in your game.

In addition to grouping, the Clumps mod helps collect the orbs instantly without causing them to clutter the screen. Hence, it makes your massive XP and endgame farms easy to maintain without breaking the game.

9. Xaero’s Minimap

We all know that Minecraft has its own maps. However, wouldn’t it be awesome if we had a UI minimap, always displayed in the corner, that showed us the surrounding terrain and locations of the nearby mobs and players? Oh, wait, we do have it with this mod! The Xaero’s Minimap mod is one of the best Minecraft minimap mods out there. It can display a square or a circle-shaped map with the coordinates and cardinal directions presented as well.

One of this mod’s most clever designs is its vanilla-like feel. It doesn’t deviate from the regular Minecraft looks compared to many other minimap mods. Xaero’s Minimap is also the first rotating square minimap for Minecraft. Thanks to the customization settings, you’ll have no issues getting used to it.

10. AppleSkin

The AppleSkin mod is similar to the Jade mod in that it provides you with additional information that the vanilla game doesn’t. However, this mod focuses on information related to the two most important bars Minecraft players have—the health and hunger bars.

With the AppleSkin mod, you can view how effective certain food items are regarding the potential restored hunger points, saturation, and health points. It also comes with visualization saturation and exhaustion to the HUD and the food value information to tooltips.

Minecraft World Changing Mods

The world-changing mods are quite self-explanatory. They change, enhance and revamp the Minecraft world we know and turn it into an even better, more magical, and alive blocky world. These mods mostly focus on the world, terrain, and biomes, but a couple modify the appearance of the mobs, even drastically. So, let’s waste no time and jump straight in.

11. Better Animations Collection

It’s kind of crazy to think that despite all the amazing and fresh features which have been added recently to Minecraft, we still have some very plain and bad features, with a little effort put into making them. One of those is animations in the game, mostly mob animations. If you have played Minecraft for a while, you can surely notice the difference between the newer mobs’, such as sniffers and camels, and the older mobs’, such as sheep and cows, animations.

So, if you want that to be changed, you should check out this mod right now. The Better Animations Collection mod aims to bring life and character to all the mobs in Minecraft. You’ll encounter kneeling sheep, wobbly cows and creepers, wiggly villager noses and ghast tentacles, bending humanoid knees, arm-flailing Endermen, playful doggies, curly cat tails, and much more. Your Minecraft world will feel so much more lively with this fantastic mod.

12. Biomes O’ Plenty

Minecraft biomes are different areas of your world with unique temperatures, mobs, building blocks, etc. Unfortunately, not all biomes are representative, due to lack of details, life, and excitement. Biomes O’ Plenty mod changes that completely. It’s one of the best-looking biome mods on the market currently, adding over 100 brilliant new areas to the Overworld and the Nether.

In those sections, you will come across pretty building blocks, interesting trees and plants, eye-catching atmospheric details, and so much more. With the Biomes O’ Plenty mod, exploring is totally upgraded and you’re provided with plenty of traversing challenges, dangers, and breath-taking sceneries. If you’re into exploring, then checking out this mod is a must.

13. Terralith

The next entry on our list of best Minecraft mods is another gorgeous biomes mod, Terralith. It brings a massive overhaul to the world generation, introducing nearly 100 brand-new biomes and welcoming changes to almost every single vanilla biome. Furthermore, this mod adds completely new terrain types, such as canyons, shattered biomes, floating islands, deep ocean trenches, and so many more.

This insane revamp includes not only the surface biome but also the caves. You’ll find unique cave shapes, scary cave biomes, and decorative stone caves, such as andesite and diorite caves. Above everything we mentioned, all these changes are accomplished with vanilla blocks, making this mod fully compatible with vanilla clients.

14. BetterNether

Before Minecraft 1.16, the entire Nether dimension looked pretty plain and boring. That all changed with the famous and arguably, one of the best Minecraft updates of all time, the Nether update. Not only did this epic update bring us ancient debris and netherite armor, tools, and weapons, but it also added whole new Nether biomes, mobs, and bastions.

It made the Nether much more alive, atmospheric, and even scary. Well, if you like the Nether update, what would you say about a mod that takes it and turns it up to 11? Yes, the Better Nether mod kind of makes a joke of the whole Nether update.

It adds new fiery biomes, exotic plants, epic building blocks, materials, and more. There are even custom structures with specific perils lurking inside. However, the balance has been achieved with the new tools, items, and equipment. If the cavernous dimension is your favorite, you can make it even better with the Better Nether mod.

15. BetterEnd

From the same developers who created the previous mod on our list, Better End is here to transform the neglected End dimension. This beautiful mod adds a ton of features to the space dimension. They include special End biomes, fascinating mobs, new powerful resources, and stunning building blocks.

Every biome also has its own atmosphere, sound effects, and background music that will all make you feel as if you’re really there. The End cities aren’t the only structures, as there are custom ones on the central End island.

16. Environmentz

Unlike all the previously-mentioned biome-related mods on our list of best Minecraft mods, this one is different. Environmentz mod doesn’t strive for additional biome changes and features but instead aims to update and improve the existing biomes.

This mod adds realistic temperature challenges, weather, and seasons. The Environmentz mod does all of this and still keeps the vanilla feel. So, if you want to try out modded Minecraft for the first time, this mod may just be perfect for you.

17. Cobblemon

The Cobblemon mod brings all the Pokemon games into your Minecraft world. The Pokemon don’t have the Minecraft drawing style, but they still feel the same.

You can go on adventures, capture Pokemon, or visit iconic locations like the Pokemon Center in the anime or game. The Cobblemon mod offers the whole experience of a Pokemon world in Minecraft.

18. NoCubes

This is the most mind-bending, game-breaking Minecraft mod I have come across. Minecraft is known for its block-based gameplay, and this mod smoothens it all out. Yeah, no more blocks.

As a player, you refuse to believe the game you are playing is Minecraft once you install this mod. The game doesn’t look bad, but it certainly doesn’t feel like the game you love in any sense. You can break your perspective by trying it from the link below.

Minecraft Gameplay Mods

Mods in this category change the gameplay, either subtly or exceptionally. They can make you fall in love with the features you may not enjoy working with or perhaps they may encourage you to take more risks and play worry-free. These mods are also extremely popular and frequently used nowadays, so let’s start listing them right away.

19. Create

You probably heard about this mod because it is all the rage in the Minecraft community. The Create mod is one of the most popular and best Minecraft mods. It is a highly technical mod geared towards constructing automated machines and farming difficult resources.

You are provided with a bunch of specific tools and blocks that help you create insanely-compacted contraptions. You can come up with various ways to achieve a certain goal. Furthermore, you’re encouraged to use your creativity and common sense to find solutions to problems.

Most of the features are practical and don’t require you to spend a lot of time in the UIs, allowing you to interact more with your surroundings and other Create features. Therefore, we recommend you follow a guide on how to play with this mod and install the JEI mod first.

20. Origins

If you’re aware of the Afterlife or the New Life SMPs on YouTube, you probably know how I found out about this mod. The Origins mod is quite a mind-blowing mod with plenty of fun, unusual and exciting features.

Basically, you can play as one of the 10 different origins and have special abilities, buffs, or debuffs according to the origin’s lore. For example, if you’re an Enderian, an origin inspired by the Enderman Minecraft mob, you can teleport around without Ender pearls and reach further.

However, you’ll take damage while in contact with water and are also “scared of pumpkins”. This fantastic mod can be further expanded with a ton of single-origin mods out there like the Giant, Witheran, Flutterling, Vampire, etc. You’ll have the best time playing this mod with your friends on a Minecraft server, so follow our linked guide on how to set it up.

21. Storage Drawers

As we all know, the Minecraft team adds many various blocks and items with each update, though the storage solutions haven’t changed much. This is why players have trouble fitting everything in nice and organized systems, and instead make chest monsters.

The Storage Drawers mod is one of the best Minecraft inventory-revamping mods that keep the vanilla feel. It brings incredible blocks called drawers, which are storage containers. These drawers are wooden blocks, so you can craft them with any wood type you want and get matching drawers. You can easily put single or stacks of items in them and take them out.

22. Refined Storage

The Refined Storage mod is an even better and easier-to-work-with storage solution than the Storage Drawers mod. It’s essentially a network-based storage system that allows players to store items and fluids on a massively expandable device network with a single access point.

This mod contains a few rather technical blocks all geared towards providing you with storage and item management abilities. Even devices within the mod will offer you auto-crafting in the system itself, with just a couple of clicks.

This amazing feature alone could save you a lot of time, especially if you’re playing with many other mods. If you’ve always wanted to create the perfect storage system out of a sci-fi movie, then stop dreaming and check out the Refined Storage mod.

23. Mekanism

If you thought previous technical mods were a bit over the top, then Mekanism will completely blow you away. This mod doesn’t care that the world of Minecraft is a simple place; it completely transforms it into a futuristic and extremely engineering game. It revolves around machines that require generated power to run. As you start to advance to higher technological levels, all the tedious in-game tasks are completely removed.

Mekanism uses realistic scientific processes, such as purification, dissolution, chemical injection, and crystallization technologies, to maximize resource output. These advanced machines aren’t available only in the late game, either. Depending on your progression through the game, you will have a chance to play around with many different features.

24. Botania

Are you into technical mods in Minecraft, but the looks and grindy aspects just turn you away? Well, lucky for you, the Botania mod is here. This is for sure one of the best technical Minecraft mods ever. Botania is a tech mod completely based on natural magic.

There are no pipes, wires, numbers, GUIs, or anything else. The mod is focused on using mana, Earth’s power source. With this power, you can make fully automated systems that can be designed without following complicated blueprints.

Not to forget, the mod’s visuals are just stunning, calming, and pleasing. One thing left to mention is that Botania requires Patchouli and Curios mods to run.

25. Tinkers’ Construct

Tinkers’ Construct is one of the most famous Minecraft mods. It’s essentially a tool and weapon-creation mod. It allows players to make powerful tools with special buffs and abilities. You’ll be guided through the entire mod with a handbook at the beginning, and you can craft additional books with more advanced information related to the mod.

There are a few different workstations that have their own uses. Since they’re pretty commonly used, you’ll get used to them quickly. There are even a couple of new materials and resources. After you build the smeltery, you can smelt metals and use them to create even more powerful tools. You’ll even come across some blueish slimes in this mod. To run Tinkers’ Construct, you’ll need the Mantle mod.

26. Traveler’s Backpack

Players always wanted new portable storage systems besides shulker boxes, so nowadays we have plenty of backpack mods. There are many of them on the market and they’re fairly popular. On this list, we’ll cover the Traveler’s Backpack mod, as it’s currently one of the best Minecraft backpack mods out there.

It consists of highly customizable backpacks with unique features. They can have up to 52 inventory slots and two fluid tanks, storing up to 6 buckets of fluid or even more than 24 bottles of potions.

Apart from this awesome mod, there are also Simple Backpack mod, Simply Backpacks mod, Sophisticated Backpacks mod, etc. All of these backpack mods are similar to each other and also special in their own way.

27. Corpse

Are you scared of dying and losing your items in Minecraft? Does that stop you from experiencing fun game features? Well, the Corpse mod will take care of that. This mod spawns a corpse in the exact location where you died. It’s a storage containing all of the items you had when you died. The corpse doesn’t burn in lava nor does it fall in the void. When you pick up the items from the corpse, it’ll despawn.

After an hour, the corpse will turn into a skeleton, signifying it was there for a while, though it acts the same way. This mod perfectly balances merciless death by default and challenge-free death when the keepInventory gamerule is set to true. It ensures all your time and effort spent weren’t in vain, but it encourages you to go and find your corpse and manually restore your items and progress.

28. Easy Villagers

Villagers in Minecraft can be quite a big pain to deal with. They are prone to jumping off edges and randomly killing themselves, cannot be easily moved around, and don’t want to make it easy for you to get the trades that you want. Easy Villagers mod helps you tremendously with them.

It lets you simply “pick up” the villager like an item by right-clicking on them while sneaking. That way, you can put them in a chest until you build a trading hall for them. Then, you can place them back down, also by right-clicking. This awesome mechanic completely bypasses the whole “moving villagers” process.

Apart from that though, with the Easy Villagers mod, we can also cycle the villager trades with just a click of a button. Yes, you heard that right. So, no more breaking the villager’s workbench repeatedly and wasting time.

29. Waystones

Similarly to the JEI mod, if you’ve followed pretty much any modded server, you’ll know about the Waystones mod. It introduces the waystone blocks that act as teleporting stations. You can either craft them or find them naturally generated in the world.

Once a player has activated one by right-clicking, they can quickly travel to the waystone’s location. The only requirement for using this block is experience points. The further away the waystone is, the more XP it will cost. The mod also includes different waystone types and special craftable items called scrolls.

Even though the scrolls don’t require XP, they are consumed on use, so regular waystones are used more frequently. The same developers make this mod as the already mentioned Crafting Tweaks mod and it requires the Balm mod to work properly.

30. Nature’s Compass

Nature’s Compass is a great alternative to the usage of the F3 debug screen in Minecraft. Players usually pull up the debug screen to find a certain location or a biome. This mod lets you craft a compass that’ll point you to a chosen biome. This way, you can locate any area of your world without commands or third-party websites.

Not only that, but this compass allows you to view information about a biome, such as climate, humidity, top block, etc. If you’re using any mods that add new unique biomes, this compass will also support them. Such a simple mod, and a fantastic implementation that should exist in the vanilla game.

31. Cooking for Blockheads

Cooking in the vanilla Minecraft is basically non-existent. There are a few food recipes players can craft, but they usually take a lot of time and in some cases, expensive resources. So, players more often than not just cook raw beef or porkchops in the early game and buy golden carrots from the villagers in the late game. Well, this mod encourages you to actually cook and experiment with food items.

The Cooking for Blockheads mod adds several food and cooking-related blocks to Minecraft, such as a fridge, oven, sink, cutting board, pan, tool rack, etc. There is even more information about this mod, so if you’re interested, you can check out the download page linked below. This mod requires the Balm mod, just like a couple of others mentioned above in the article.

32. Torchmaster

If you’re not really a PvE focused player and if it exhausts more than excites you, the Torchmaster mod may just be the first one you should install. It’s a mod with an incredibly straightforward idea. No mob spawning. Yeah, no more fighting scary mobs. This mod adds a giant mega torch that can completely eliminate hostile mob spawning in a certain radius.

Not only that, but there are a couple more blocks in this mod that stop the passive mob spawning and help you light up an area easily. The mega torch only disables natural hostile mob spawning, so the vanilla and modded spawners will still function. Setting up mob spawner farms is made so much easier thanks to this great mod. Also, you can start building spooky dim builds, without fear of creepers blowing them up.

33. Compressium

Compressium mod is an interesting mod that solves inventory issues in a unique way. It adds compressed blocks. The best way to explain them is with an example. In the image above, if you use 9 cobblestone blocks and place them in a crafting grid, they’ll get compressed once, giving you one compressed cobblestone.

Then you can use 9 of those compressed cobblestone blocks to craft compressed cobblestone x2. They work the same as precious material blocks, so you can break down the compressed blocks into regular blocks. This mod doesn’t include just cobblestone, but several other blocks too. You can see exactly which ones are on the download page linked below.

34. Physics Mod

This destructive mod implements real-life physics to the blocky rules of Minecraft. The literal physics mostly applies to the way we break blocks, and it straight-up looks bizarre if you have been playing the game for a long time. For instance, when you break a wood block, you won’t see a small block you can pick up. Instead, you will see different shaped chunks of wood scattered around.

Minecraft Decoration and Building Mods

Now, we’ve reached the last category on our list of the best Minecraft mods, and it’s probably the most popular one. Even though there are various building blocks in vanilla Minecraft, the community still wants more—not just the full, solid building blocks but all the decorative blocks as well. So, let’s jump into the most used and loved decoration and building mods in Minecraft.

35. Chipped

If you are looking for an ultimate building mod, then this mod is the perfect solution. Chipped is currently one of the best Minecraft building and decoration mods. It provides players with over 9,000 different alternations of block textures. To access all of those modded textures, you’ll need to craft seven unique crafting stations or tables with a theme.

Just place the vanilla block inside them and you’ll be presented with gorgeous texture variants. The blocks you can modify are various, from different stone types, such as bricks, prismarine, blackstone, wood planks, basalt, sandstone, etc. This mod can even get a little overwhelming, but it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a builder.

The Chipped mod requires Athena, Resourceful Lib, and ConnectedTexturesMod to run.

36. Chisel

The Chisel mod is a bit older than other mods on this list, but it’s certainly inspired the newer building blocks. It adds a whole variety of building and decorative blocks to Minecraft. You can reveal those unique textures through a chisel tool.

Its crafting recipe is very simple. Just by right-clicking with it, the mod’s UI will open. Then, you can place blocks in the chiseling slot (top left) and turn them into a different variant.

37. Decorative Blocks

As the name suggests, this mod is all about decorative blocks. If you’re building in a popular medieval style, you’ll love it.

Decorative Blocks adds decorative blocks such as bonfires, wooden beam blocks, braziers, chandeliers, rocky dirt, wooden seats, and many more blocks. Make sure to check out the mod’s download page linked below to find out precisely what you can expect in this excellent mod.

38. BlockCarpentry

Have you ever wanted concrete slabs in Minecraft? Or perhaps diamond doors? What about moss slabs? Well, the sky is the limit with the BlockCarpentry mod. It adds frames and illusion blocks that take on the appearance of any block you right-click it with. That essentially means you can have almost any vanilla and many modded blocks in any shape that you want.

Besides the regular vanilla items, like stairs, slabs, doors, fences, walls, etc., this mod adds vertical slabs, slopes, and shelves. Furthermore, you can change the blocks’ light levels, add overlays to those blocks, and even dye some of them (see Minecraft dye colors via the linked article). The mod introduces a few different tools that’ll help you more easily manipulate those frame and illusion blocks, giving you even more freedom and creative options.

39. Macaw’s Mods

This entry on our list of best Minecraft mods is not a single mod but a group of them. These mods were all created by the same developer and bring all sorts of building and decorative blocks to Minecraft; from Macaw’s Furniture, Macaw’s Doors, Macaw’s Trapdoors to Macaw’s Roofs, Macaw’s Windows, Macaw’s Lights and Lamps.

With such an amazing assortment of decorative blocks, everyone will find what they’re looking for with these best furniture mods for Minecraft.

40. Twigs

Twigs mod is basically an all-in-one building mod. It adds many building blocks, both colorful and vibrant, and darker and earth-tone, to the game. Moreover, this mod improves several vanilla blocks with older textures.

The Twigs mod introduces some items and materials as well. This mod’s goal is to bring life to forgotten and rarely used vanilla blocks and provide players with brand new, beautiful building blocks.

And now you know about the best Minecraft mods you must try out in 2025! So which mod will you be going for first? Let us know in the comments below.