Add a live map to your Minecraft server with Dynmap

Dynmap renders your Minecraft world as a browser map that updates while people play, like Google Maps for your server. Here is how to install it, give it a web port, and stop it eating your disk and CPU.

6 min read · Updated Oct 21, 2026 · By GuavaHost Team

What you get

Dynmap draws your world into image tiles and serves them from a small web server inside the plugin. Open the address in a browser and you get a pannable, zoomable map with player markers that move in near real time, chat alongside it, and optional markers for warps or spawn.

People use it for three things: showing the map off on a Discord or a website, letting players find each other, and quietly spotting griefing or a huge lag farm somewhere nobody has visited in weeks.

It is a plugin, so you need Paper, Spigot, Bukkit or Purpur. Fabric and Forge builds exist too, and install into mods instead. On vanilla nothing will load, so switch server type on the Version page under Minecraft tools first, as described in changing your Minecraft Java server version.

Install it

1. Take a snapshot on the Backups page. Dynmap is not risky, but you are about to kick off a lot of disk writes.
2. Open the Plugins page under Minecraft tools, go to Find plugins, search Dynmap and click Install. The full routine, including the manual upload path, is in installing plugins on Minecraft Java.
3. Restart the server with Restart at the top of the page, and watch the Console as Dynmap starts rendering tiles near spawn.

After that first start you will find its settings on the Files tab in plugins/dynmap/. The two files that matter are configuration.txt, which is the main config despite the extension (it is YAML inside), and worlds.txt, where you control each world individually.

Give it a web port

This is the step that catches everybody. Dynmap's built in web server listens on a port of its own, separate from the game port, and defaults to 8123. That port is not yours unless it has been allocated to your server, so give Dynmap one of your real ports instead.

1. On your server's Overview, find the Ports & network card and click Manage.
2. Click Add a port and either let us pick the next free one or choose from the list of free ports on your machine. Add a note like "Dynmap web" so you remember what it is for.
3. Open plugins/dynmap/configuration.txt on the Files tab and set:

webserver-bindaddress: 0.0.0.0
webserver-port: 25570

Use your own port number, not 25570. 0.0.0.0 means "listen on every address this machine has", so the map is reachable from outside.

1. Save the file and restart the server. Port changes apply on the next start, so a restart is not optional here.
2. Open http://your-server-ip:your-port in a browser. You should see the map, probably mostly blank until it has rendered.

Managing your server ports covers the ports page in full, including how many ports a server can have and why you cannot pick any number you like.

That address is plain HTTP, so browsers mark it as not secure, and it shows your server's IP to anyone you send it to. If you would rather not publish the IP, read protecting your server IP and identity first.

Render settings, and what they cost

Dynmap's defaults render more than most servers need. Each world can have several maps, and each is a separate set of tiles:

• flat is a straight top down view. Cheapest to render, smallest on disk, perfectly readable.
• surface is the isometric view most people picture when they think of Dynmap. Much heavier, several times the tiles, and what people mean when they say Dynmap filled their disk.
• cave renders underground. Rarely needed, and it doubles your tile count again.

Open worlds.txt and delete or comment out the maps you do not want. Where the map is a nice extra rather than the main attraction, keep flat and drop the rest.

One more setting in configuration.txt pays for itself: image-format: jpg-q90 stores tiles as JPEG instead of PNG, a large saving at a quality nobody notices on a map. The render-triggers list just below it decides when a tile is redrawn, and the default is broad, so trimming it means Dynmap is not re-rendering a tile every time a wheat block grows.

The full render

A first render of an existing world is the heaviest thing Dynmap does, because it reads every generated chunk and writes a tile for it. Do it at a quiet time with nobody online: run dynmap fullrender world in the Console, using your actual world folder name from level-name in server.properties, and watch the console for progress. On a big explored world it can run for hours. If TPS drops, dynmap pause all stops rendering and dynmap pause none resumes it.

If your TPS is already shaky, fix that first rather than adding a renderer on top. Find what is causing Minecraft lag with spark will tell you what is eating your tick.

Limit the area you render

The most effective thing you can do is render less world. A world with no border grows every time someone walks in a straight line, and Dynmap dutifully renders all of it, so set a world border and pre-generate inside it: set the world spawn, world border and pre-generate chunks walks through both, and it helps performance whether or not you run Dynmap.

Dynmap can also be told to only draw a region, regardless of how far the world goes. In worlds.txt, under the world, add a visibility limit:

worlds:
  - name: world
    visibilitylimits:
      - x0: -3000
        z0: -3000
        x1: 3000
        z1: 3000

Anything outside that box is never rendered and never stored. If you have already rendered a huge area, that limit stops new tiles but does not delete the old ones; purge those with dynmap purgemap world flat for the map you are clearing, then full render again.

Hiding players

Not everyone wants their base coordinates on a public map. Dynmap gives you three levels of control, all in configuration.txt:

• player-info-protected: true hides player names and positions from people who are not logged in to the map's own web interface.
• hidebydefault: true hides every player unless they choose to be shown.
• Per player, /dynmap hide <player> and /dynmap show <player>, which players can run on themselves if you grant the permission node through your permissions plugin. Set up permissions with LuckPerms covers granting nodes to a group.

If you run a PvP server, hiding players by default is close to essential. A live map that shows every player position is a hunting tool.

If the map will not load

If the browser says the site cannot be reached, the port is not allocated to your server, webserver-port does not match the one you added, or the server has not been restarted since the change. A map that loads blank simply has nothing rendered yet. A map stuck on old terrain is cached in your browser, so hard refresh it and check your render triggers.

Common questions

How much disk does Dynmap use?

It depends on how much of your world has been explored and how many map types you render, not on player count. A small bordered world with one flat map is modest, while an unbordered world with surface and cave maps is where people run out of space.

Is there a lighter alternative to Dynmap?

BlueMap and squaremap are the two commonly used alternatives. BlueMap renders a 3D map and looks the best but is the heaviest to render, while squaremap is top down only and is the lightest of the three. All of them need a web port exactly the same way, so the port steps above apply whichever you choose.

Will Dynmap show chunks nobody has visited?

Only if you render them. Dynmap draws from generated chunk data, so unexplored terrain that has never been generated simply is not there yet. Pre-generating your world creates the chunks, and a full render after that gives you a complete map.

Still stuck? Jump into our Discord at discord.gg/GuavaHost and the team will help you out.

• dynmap
• minecraft
• java
• plugins
• performance

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