Sodium

A powerful rendering engine and optimization mod for the Minecraft client. Improves frame rates and reduces micro-stutter while fixing many graphical issues in vanilla Minecraft. Over 158 million downloads on CurseForge [citation:9].

Quick facts

CategoryPerformance / Rendering
LoaderFabric, NeoForge, Quilt
Minecraft26.3 and older supported versions
AuthorCaffeineMC
SourceCurseForge / Modrinth
Downloads158.5M (CurseForge, Oct 2026) [citation:9]
SideClient-side

Source status

Verified

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What Sodium does

Sodium replaces Minecraft's rendering engine with a more efficient implementation. It does not add content or change gameplay. It makes the game draw the same world using fewer resources, which results in higher frame rates and less stuttering.

Since version 0.6.0, Sodium supports both Fabric and NeoForge . The CaffeineMC team recommends Fabric for new users because it is lighter and more stable for the time being .

What it improves

  • Frame rate — higher FPS in most scenes, especially with complex terrain or many entities.
  • Micro-stutter — fewer frame time spikes when chunks load or entities appear.
  • Graphical fixes — addresses rendering bugs present in vanilla.

Hardware requirements

Sodium requires a GPU with OpenGL 4.5 support and up-to-date drivers . Most graphics cards released in the past 12 years meet this requirement, including:

  • AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series (GCN 1) or newer
  • NVIDIA GeForce 400 Series (Fermi) or newer
  • Intel HD Graphics 500 Series (Skylake) or newer

OpenGL translation layers like GL4ES and ANGLE are not supported and will likely not work with Sodium .

Installation

  1. Install Fabric or NeoForge for your Minecraft version.
  2. Download the Sodium JAR from CurseForge or Modrinth for your loader and version .
  3. Place it in the mods folder.
  4. Launch the game. Sodium has its own video settings menu that replaces the vanilla one.
With Iris: Sodium is a rendering mod, not a shader loader. To run shaders, install Iris alongside Sodium. They are designed to work together.

Frequently asked questions

Does Sodium work with OptiFine?
No. Sodium and OptiFine both replace parts of the rendering engine and conflict. Use Sodium with Iris for shaders, or OptiFine alone. Do not install both.
Can I use Sodium on a server?
Sodium is client-side. The server does not need it. It works on any server that allows client-side mods.
Why did Sodium crash after installation?
The most common cause is a wrong loader build (Fabric JAR on NeoForge or vice versa) or an outdated GPU driver. Check the loader and update your graphics driver.

Related mods

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