Every NeoForge vs Forge guide says NeoForge forked off in 2024. It didn’t — the split happened in July 2023, and the extra year matters, because it means NeoForge has had two full Minecraft update cycles to prove whether the switch was worth it. It was, but not for the reason most articles give you.
Search “NeoForge vs Forge” and you’ll find a dozen near-identical posts claiming NeoForge is “faster” and has a “cleaner codebase,” with no benchmark, no mod count, and no explanation of what’s actually different under the hood. This guide checks those claims against Forge’s own documentation and real CurseForge listings instead of repeating them. Verified against Minecraft 1.21.1 and NeoForge 21.1.x, current as of August 2026.
NeoForge vs Forge at a Glance
Here’s the honest version of the comparison, before the marketing gloss: performance parity once you match mods, a real and growing gap in 1.21+ content support, and a NeoForge team that ships new-version builds within hours instead of weeks. Both loaders are free, open-source, and install through the same launchers (the vanilla launcher, CurseForge, Prism, or ATLauncher) — there’s no license fee or account requirement tied to either one, so the decision is purely about which mods and modpacks you want to run.
The table below is the summary. The sections after it show the receipts — where each number in it actually comes from, and which parts of the standard NeoForge-is-better pitch don’t hold up once you check the source.
Why NeoForge Exists (and Why the 2024 Date Is Wrong)
NeoForge split from Forge on July 12-13, 2023, and the cause wasn’t technical. According to the project’s own account of the split, lead developer cpw and most of the triage team left over governance and how Forge’s owner, LexManos, ran the community — not a disagreement about code architecture or performance targets [1]. The plan was a written constitution and distributed leadership instead of one person holding final say.
That distinction matters for how you read every performance claim that follows: NeoForge wasn’t built to fix a technical bottleneck in Forge. It was built by people who wanted to run the project differently, and the technical divergence happened afterward, as a side effect of two teams shipping independently for two years.
1.21 Mod Support: The Numbers, and What Actually Broke
1.20.1 is the last version where a Forge mod and a NeoForge mod are the same file — NeoForge forked there and kept the package structure intact. From 1.20.2 onward, NeoForge renamed its internal packages from net.minecraftforge to net.neoforged, so nothing crosses over automatically anymore. A modder has to build and publish separately for each loader, and increasingly, they only build for one.
NeoForge’s own 2025 retrospective puts a number on that shift: NeoForge 1.21.1 passed 16,000 mods roughly 18 months after 1.21’s release, growing faster over that stretch than Forge did for 1.20.1 at the same age [1]. That’s the loader teams are choosing to build on first.
Two concrete examples beat any percentage. All the Mods 10, one of the most-downloaded kitchen-sink packs on CurseForge at 20.9 million downloads, moved from Forge to NeoForge specifically for its 1.21 release — the pack notes say so directly [2]. Cobblemon is blunter: its 1.21.1 build only exists for Fabric and NeoForge. There’s no Forge download for that version at all, even though the 1.20.1 build still ships one [3]. If you’re chasing a specific pack or mod on a current Minecraft version, the loader isn’t really your choice anymore — the mod author already made it for you.
| Version | Forge Status | NeoForge Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1.20.1 | Full library, still the default for this version | Cross-compatible fork point — most Forge mods run unchanged |
| 1.20.2-1.20.6 | Actively shrinking new-mod share | Became the primary target for new mods |
| 1.21+ | Legacy support only, by most accounts | Default for new mods and modpacks |
If you already run a stable 1.20.1 modpack, none of this touches you — Forge and NeoForge mods are still interchangeable there, and there’s no content gap to worry about. See our full Forge vs Fabric vs NeoForge mod loader comparison if Fabric is also on your shortlist.
Is NeoForge Actually Faster? What the Loader Controls (and Doesn’t)
This is where most comparisons fall apart. “NeoForge has better memory management and faster loading” gets repeated across guide after guide with zero measurement behind it — no seconds, no megabytes, no test setup.
Start with what’s demonstrably not new: Forge has dispatched mod setup events in parallel across every installed mod since Minecraft 1.13, back in 2018. Forge’s own developer documentation describes mods receiving FMLCommonSetupEvent and the client/server setup events concurrently, with a DeferredWorkQueue for anything that isn’t thread-safe [4]. Parallel mod loading is not a NeoForge invention — it’s six years older than the fork.
What actually drives the loading-time complaints on Forge is mod count and lack of optimization mods, not the loader’s base architecture. The clearest evidence: ModernFix, the mod most credited with fixing Forge’s slow starts and bloated memory use, ships builds for Forge, Fabric, AND NeoForge [5]. If NeoForge’s core were meaningfully faster on its own, a cross-loader optimization mod wouldn’t need to exist for it too — but it does, and people install it there for the same reasons they install it on Forge.
Where NeoForge genuinely pulls ahead is in things a benchmark won’t catch: less legacy code to work around, and a smaller, more current codebase that’s easier for mod developers to optimize against — which shows up as fewer compatibility crashes over time, not raw FPS. If a modpack feels snappier on NeoForge, check whether it’s actually running fewer or better-optimized mods before crediting the loader.
Treat any specific “X% faster” number you see elsewhere with suspicion — neither project publishes standardized benchmark data, and the honest answer is that loader-vs-loader speed differences are small enough to be swamped by which mods you’ve actually installed. If your actual complaint is load time rather than mod availability, that’s the problem our guide to making Forge load faster already solves on the loader you’re on — Java 21, matched heap sizing, and ModernFix close most of the gap people credit to switching loaders entirely.
Who Ships Support Faster After a New Minecraft Version
This is the one category where the gap is real and measurable. NeoForge’s 2025 numbers show initial builds for new Minecraft releases landing between 40 minutes and just under 3 hours after the matching snapshot or release drops [1]. That’s not a small operation running on goodwill, either — the project’s infrastructure served over 1.4 billion dependency requests and 383 terabytes of data in 2025 alone, with 633 pull requests merged across the year [1]. Forge’s update cycle for current versions has slowed since the fork pulled most of the active core team away — the consistent account from the modding community is that Forge will keep getting maintenance fixes on existing versions, but new-version support and new features are going to NeoForge going forward.
Practically: if you’re the type who installs a modpack the week a new Minecraft version drops, NeoForge’s mod ecosystem will be ready faster. If you’re still running a 1.20.1 pack you set up two years ago, this entire category is irrelevant to you.
Which Loader Should You Actually Run?
| Your Situation | Run This | Why |
|---|---|---|
| New to modding, starting fresh on 1.21+ | NeoForge | Most new mods and modpacks target it first; you’re not fighting missing content |
| Already running a stable 1.20.1 pack | Stay on Forge | Mods are still cross-compatible there — nothing to gain by migrating a working setup |
| Chasing a specific pack (ATM10, Cobblemon, etc.) | Whatever the pack uses | Packs aren’t cross-loader anymore — the launcher profile decides for you |
| Running a dedicated server, performance is priority one | Consider Fabric first | Even Cobblemon’s own developers recommend Fabric over NeoForge for raw performance |
Switch to NeoForge if: you’re starting a new 1.21+ install, you want the newest content mods as they release, or you want fast post-update support. Stick with Forge if: your modpack is 1.20.1 or older and stable, or a mod you depend on has never shipped a NeoForge build. Once you’ve settled on a loader, our step-by-step guide to installing Minecraft mods covers setup for Forge, Fabric, and NeoForge alike.
FAQ
Can I run Forge and NeoForge mods on the same 1.21 instance?
No, and it’s not a compatibility oversight you can patch around — NeoForge renamed its internal package structure from net.minecraftforge to net.neoforged starting at 1.20.2. A Forge mod is compiled against classes that don’t exist under NeoForge’s naming, so it fails to load rather than running poorly. The only version where mixing works is 1.20.1, where NeoForge kept the original structure.
Is Forge actually going away?
Not in the way people assume. LexManos has continued fixing bugs on current Forge releases, so it isn’t abandoned. But the consistent account from the modding community is that new features are going to NeoForge, not Forge — so expect Forge to keep working on the versions it already supports while falling further behind on anything new. Treat it as maintenance mode, not active development.
If our own site’s guide to making Forge load faster works, why would I bother switching?
You might not need to. If ModernFix, FerriteCore, and the JVM tuning in that guide already get your load times where you want them, you’re solving the actual problem — mod count and JVM configuration — without touching the loader. Switch for mod availability on 1.21+, not for a loading-speed fix you can get on Forge anyway.
Which loader has more mods in total?
Forge still wins by raw historical volume — over a decade of mods across every Minecraft version ever released dwarfs NeoForge’s two-plus years. But that number is backward-looking. For anything targeting 1.21 specifically, NeoForge’s 16,000-plus mods and faster growth rate mean it’s already ahead where it counts: what’s being built right now [1].
Does switching loaders cost anything or need a new Minecraft license?
No. Forge and NeoForge are both free and open-source, and neither requires anything beyond the Minecraft Java Edition license you already own. Switching is just a matter of running the correct installer for the loader and Minecraft version you want, then pointing your launcher at the resulting profile — you’re not buying or unlocking anything new.
Sources
- The NeoForged Project, “2025: Big Changes are Coming,” neoforged.net
- CurseForge, “All the Mods 10,” curseforge.com
- CurseForge, “Cobblemon,” curseforge.com
- Forge Documentation, “Loading Stages,” docs.minecraftforge.net
- CurseForge, “ModernFix,” curseforge.com
- The NeoForged Project, “What is happening?,” neoforged.net
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.