31 Best Minecraft Mods To Build With In 2024

[Gamespot]

It’s difficult to discern the best Minecraft mods with so many to choose from. Mojang’s blocky sandbox game has now been charming players around the world for over a decade, standing strong as the best-selling game of all time. With the massive upcoming 1.21 update release on the horizon, the charming survival experience’s fanbase will likely only grow. If you’re a longtime player, though, you may feel as though you’re running out of content to enjoy in vanilla Minecraft. One can only enjoy so much crafting, exploring, farming, and mining in the same biomes with the same features before they tire of it all. What better way to spice your game up in such a moment than with a few free Minecraft mods?

Minecraft gameplay mods and modpacks are no secret to most fans, but many may not know which ones to look to as the constantly expanding pool of modder-created content continues to grow. While most everyone knows how to download Minecraft mods, whether via libraries such as CurseForge or elsewhere, searching through countless pages can feel daunting. Thankfully, there’s a mod or a modpack for everyone as modders encompass a diverse community of creators that offer everything from fantasy RPG-like Minecraft add-ons to performance-enhancing downloads.

If you need a bit of guidance on the best Minecraft modpacks or standalone mods, look no further as we’ve compiled 31 of the greatest around. We’ve got everyone covered with these, whether you’re hoping to catch Pokemon or ride dragons. For those of you who know how to download Minecraft mods but not which ones to favor over others, here is our rundown on the most worthy, from those that give frame rate boosts to those that add entirely new dimensions and planets.
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Alex's Mobs​

• Creator: sbom_xela
• Current Downloads: 54.2 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

If you feel that Minecraft is just downright devoid of life sometimes, then sbom_xel's mod Alex's Mobs may be perfect for you. This Forge mod adds a whopping 89 new mobs to your game, including real-life species such as grizzly bears as well as fantastical beasts like bone serpents. Each mob fulfills a functional in-game purpose, whether that be through its unique drops or other such mechanics, which means they all also bring more to Minecraft than just visual appeal.
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All the Mods​

• Creator: ATMTeam
• Current Downloads: 6.1 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

All the Mods 9, the latest edition of ATMTeam’s iconic All the Mods modpack, packs a content-filled punch. This modpack includes over 400 mods, spicing up your base Minecraft game with everything from new mobs to immersive questlines to follow. If there’s a good mod out there, All the Mods 9 is likely to contain it. It also harbors many great but lesser-known mods, making for an interesting mix of content that you may not otherwise play through.
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Artifacts​

• Creator: ochotonida
• Current Downloads: 39.7 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Artifacts is a useful mod from creator ochotonida which makes exploration in Minecraft a far more rewarding feat with its addition of powerful items that one cannot otherwise craft. You'll find said items throughout your world in chests, giving you a reason to head outside and truly explore vanilla structures you previously may not have had the urge to check out. Some of these items that you can find include flamingo-shaped pool floaties, leprechaun hats, beer can helmets, and more.
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Better MC​

• Creator: SHXRKIE
• Current Downloads: 2.4 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Better MC, or Better Minecraft, is a massive modpack from creator SHXRKIE that adds a bit of everything you'd want in your game. You'll encounter over a hundred unique quests, a completely overhauled world generation with various new biomes, countless new dungeons and reworked structures, and quality-of-life features like fully functional Waystones or XP Tomes. You'll also find rideable dragons and a handy minimap/world map combination to help you as you soar the skies. With over 250 solid mods, Better MC is a wonderful way to enhance your game.
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Biomes O’ Plenty​

• Creator: Forstride
• Current Downloads: 124.2 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Unsurprisingly, Biomes O’ Plenty from creator Frostride is featured in many of the most downloaded modpacks. That’s because this expansive mod adds various new unique biomes to the Overworld, Nether, and the End. Whether you're hoping to find colorful new flowers, useful new plants, or stunning new building blocks to use, you're sure to stumble across them with this mod installed. There are serene lavender fields to explore, bustling rainforests to traverse through, whimsical white snowblossom groves to experience, and many more such biomes in this mod.
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Botania​

• Creator: Vazkii
• Current Downloads: 123.3 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Botania is a fun technology mod that blends the magic of nature with Minecraft's vanilla gameplay. In creator Vazkii's enchanting mod, you create magical flora and use devices that utilize mana, the power of the Earth. There's a strong focus on automation without the usual grind that accompanies it. No numbers, no pipes, and no wires. You'll have to truly interact with the world around you to grasp Botania and see it bloom to its full potential. The mix of nature and sandbox elements is perfect for you if you like engineering, flowers, magic, or all of the above.
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Chisel​

• Creator: tterrag1098
• Current Downloads: 140.5 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Chisel is a decorative-based mod maintained by tterrag1098 and other creators. It adds a massive library of decorative blocks to Minecraft, making it perfect for those of you who enjoy building and crafting in-game above all other activities. You'll primarily use a new tool, the chisel, to access said blocks. All you'll have to do is right-click with this device, made from an iron ingot and a stick, to peruse through different blocks and place them as you please. Chisel also adds another useful new tool, the Ender Offset Wand, which allows you to shift textures up, down, left, or right.
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DarkRPG​

• Creator: GamerPotion
• Current Downloads: 2.2 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

DarkRPG is perfect for players looking to enjoy some multiplayer shenanigans alongside friends. With official built-in MMO-like servers, you can choose to play with others online or host your own private server with pals. This modpack from creator GamePotion includes its own currency, guild, and party systems. It also harbors features like a casino with rare items, auction houses and shops, player races and origins, armor and weapons, magic wands and spells, special bosses, and much more. DarkRPG is fantasy MMO gameplay meeting Minecraft.
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DawnCraft​

• Creator: bstylia14
• Current Downloads: 5.2 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

DawnCraft is another fantastical mod with a challenging Soulslike combat system to boot. Creator bstylia14 has put together a gameplay-enhancing RPG modpack of sorts with dozens of new animals, bosses, monsters, structures, and more to encounter. This modpack also features a reputation system, another highlight from its collection of over 200 mods. If you’re looking for a fantasy game within Minecraft that offers tough yet fair battles against massive beasts and countless hours of exploring, then DawnCraft may just be the modpack for you.
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DeceasedCraft​

• Creator: TqLxQuanZ
• Current Downloads: 479,000
• Download Link: CurseForge

The Walking Dead, but make it Minecraft. That’s basically what creator TqLxQuanZ offers with their unique horror modpack, DeceasedCraft. With suburban hellscapes and gory zombies to fend off galore, this modpack brings challenging gameplay and new combat mechanics such as shooting, slashing, and stabbing enemies. Much like you'd expect of a zombie-based game, DeceasedCraft thrusts you into the midst of an apocalypse where you'll need to survive with new recipes, a technology progression system, and all sorts of fresh building mechanics.
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Fabulously Optimized​

• Creator: robotkoer
• Current Downloads: 2.4 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Fabulously Optimized is exactly what it may sound like. This modpack from robotkoer blends various performance-boosting mods such as Lithium and Sodium to provide noticeable speed benefits regardless of a player’s device. There are no content mods within Fabulously Optimized, meaning that you can use it on any server or world without issues. If you’re in need of a performance boost or are looking to enhance the vanilla Minecraft experience without changing too much via mods, then we’d recommend you give Fabulously Optimized a go as it’s convenient, easy to use, and safe.
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Farmer's Delight​

• Creator: vectorwing
• Current Downloads: 64.6 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Farmer's Delight is perfect for all you Stardew Valley lovers out there. This unique little mod expands upon cooking and farming in Minecraft, albeit quite gently. With an easy-to-learn cooking system and some familiar ingredients, you'll be able to prepare a variety of tasty, health-restoring meals whether you're looking to make a salad or a sandwich. Creator vectorwing also brings new utilities to the table, including the ability to improve your soil to healthier crops, a tool that's useful for scavenging, and decorative blocks as well as unique items to spice your building experience up.
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Farming Valley​

• Creator: Kehaan
• Current Downloads: 2.4 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Farming Valley, much like Farmer's Delight, revolves around, well, farming! This modpack from Kehaan draws inspiration from some of the greats such as Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley to allow players to build and maintain a farm as well as a small town in Minecraft. You can sell crops to progress your village, enjoy each of the four unique seasons, and witness your town grow as your farm expands. If you’re an indie farming gem lover with hundreds of hours in Story of Seasons to boot, this modpack is without a doubt one that you’ll need to test for yourself.
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Fear Nightfall​

• Creator: SHXRKIE
• Current Downloads: 964,000
• Download Link: CurseForge

Fear Nightfall combines all of the spooky elements that make a horror game great and turns them into a modpack. Creator SHXRKIE’s modpack is challenging, frightening, and most importantly, immersive. With custom content, linear progression, and a terrifying final boss to overcome, Fear Nightfall is one of the most fun and scary horror modpacks around. It's multiplayer-friendly, too, meaning you can progress through its five chapters and take on the mysterious entity corrupting the Aether alongside friends. If you truly want to ensure a sleepless night, you can opt to try the modpack in VR, too.
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Jade​

• Creator: Snownee
• Current Downloads: 57.4 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Jade is a quality-of-life mod from creator Snownee that we’d recommend everyone try at least once. It doesn’t make any drastic changes to Minecraft’s vanilla gameplay with new features, but rather adds a HUD overlay that offers information about any entity you hover your pointer over. This mod is truly all about making the user experience better, and you can even change the position of the overlay as you please. While a UI mod such as Jade is quite simple, it’s perfect for both beginners and expert players alike.
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JourneyMap​

• Creator: techbrew
• Current Downloads: 214.3 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

If you’re looking for even more quality-of-life mods, JourneyMap is the next best one to download. This mod is genuinely essential for those of you searching for a far more functional map in Minecraft than the vanilla game’s own. Creator techbrew offers a mod that employs real-time mapping while a player explores, allowing them to view said map in-game as a minimap or full-screen map. It even lets players open their maps in an entirely separate web browser. While it’s no secret that Minecraft’s standard map system leaves much to be desired at best, you can quickly improve it with JourneyMap.
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Just Enough Items​

• Creator: mezz
• Current Downloads: 301.2 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Just Enough Items is yet another quality-of-life mod, and its sheer number of user downloads alone speaks for its usefulness. Creator mezz offers a revamp of Minecraft’s own item and recipe viewing system, making it easier for players to check both recipes and uses for various items. No longer will you need to open up a separate tab to browse for Minecraft recipes and their required ingredients. You’ll simply need to use Just Enough Items to search for specific items you may want to craft or wondering about instead, all within the game itself.
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Medieval MC​

• Creator: SHXRKIE
• Current Downloads: 217,000
• Download Link: CurseForge

Medieval MC is another banger modpack from creator SHXRKIE, and just like their other modpacks, it completely overhauls vanilla Minecraft. This modpack turns your game into a biome-diverse experience plucked straight from the Middle Ages, with the ability to grow your own kingdom and explore thousands of new dungeons. It's also challenging, featuring a stamina, thirst, and temperature system. The immersive medieval modpack with over 350 mods includes fantastical elements, too, allowing for the use of magic. Whether you like it for its quality-of-life features such as fully functional Waystones or its historical elements, Medieval MC has a bit of gameplay suitable for all flavors of players.
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Nature’s Compass​

• Creator: Chaosyr
• Current Downloads: 127.6 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Nature's Compass is the perfect companion mod for every player who values exploring above all. This mod from creator Chaosyr provides a new item, aptly named Nature's Compass, which you can hold in your hand in-game and use to locate any biome anywhere in the world. You'll also be able to view information about said biome, and easily locate it if you're hoping to make the trek to its location. You can even adjust the tool's maximum search distance or add in blacklisted biomes if you so please.
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OptiFine​

• Creator: sp614x
• Download Link: OptiFine

OptiFine is probably the most well-known Minecraft mod around if not one of the most recognizable mods for any video game ever. Creator sp614x offers an optimization tool with OptiFine that allows your game to run more quickly and smoothly, thereby boosting overall performance. It also lets you make desirable changes to Minecraft with full support for HD textures and various shaders. Whether you’re downloading it for the FPS boost or to give your game some more aesthetic appeal, you’ll more than likely find yourself snagging OptiFine at some point as a Minecraft player.
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Pixelmon​

• Creator: PixelmonMod
• Current Downloads: 18.4 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Pokemon meets Minecraft. That’s Pixelmon at its core, a whimsical modpack from creator PixelmonMod that adds many aspects of Nintendo's creature-capturing universe to Mojang's survival game. You can catch Pokémon and subsequently battle, breed, or trade with them, much like you can in Nintendo's series. The modpack contains various new items as well, including both new decorative items and familiar resources found in Pokemon such as Poke Balls. You’ll also notice consumable items, currency, and structures from Nintendo’s nostalgia-inducing games, making this the perfect modpack for any hardened Pokémon stan.
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RLCraft​

• Creator: Shivaxi
• Current Downloads: 20.1 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

RLCraft is a notoriously tough modpack from creator Shivaxi that adds elements of true, real-life survival to Minecraft. You're going to die a lot if you play RLCraft, whether that be due to your depleting thirst or the ever-fluctuating temperature. There's no food-based healing anymore, but there are various RPG-inspired skills and perks to work toward to make your experience slightly less painful. With new biomes, mobs (including dragons), and hundreds of quests to complete, RLCraft is great for fantasy enthusiasts and survival lovers alike as it adds a challenging yet fair flair to Minecraft.
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Roguelike Adventures and Dungeons​

• Creator: dreams01
• Current Downloads: 2.6 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Roguelike Adventures and Dungeons 2, the spiritual successor to the original by the same name, is a bustling modpack containing dungeon-delving, RPG, and roguelike mechanics. Creator dreams01 offers an exploration-based Minecraft experience with over 250 mods, a hundred new biomes, and various fresh dimensions to traverse. You can loot dungeons, build flying structures, fight bosses, and level up your skills just like you can in most fantasy RPGs. If you prefer questing in between your journeying, you can also complete some of the over 1,500 missions as you play.
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SevTech: Ages​

• Creator: darkosto
• Current Downloads: 6 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

SevTech: Ages is a massive modpack revolving around long-term player progression. This modpack from creator darkosto introduces unique mechanics like hidden items and recipes depending on your progress, locked ore you have to uncover, and new mobs that appear as you play longer. It’s a truly challenging take on Minecraft’s vanilla experience, but it turns a game that you otherwise may only momentarily dip your toes into as an adult into an expansive experience with the possibility of hundreds of hours of playtime thanks to its progression-based features.
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SkyFactory​

• Creator: darkosto
• Current Downloads: 10.6 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

SkyFactory 4 is the latest in the beloved skyblock modpack line from darkosto, and it's bigger and better than ever before. With over 30 world types to choose from and full automation, magic, and technology systems to familiarize yourself with, SkyFactory 4 is a fun modpack in which you start on one of many maps (depending on your choice) set in the middle of the sky. From there, you must fully employ your creativity to expand your land and survive. If you want to opt for the most classic skyblock experience in SkyFactory 4, you’ll start atop a tree on a humble dirt block and grow from there. SkyFactory4 is a wonderful modpack to try when you’re tired of Minecraft’s vanilla gameplay or are searching for a more extreme deviation from Mojang’s standard world system.
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Sodium​

• Creator: jellysquid3_
• Current Downloads: 31 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Much like OptiFine, Sodium is a performance-boosting mod that helps see your FPS increase and prevents random game crashes. Creator jellysquid3_’s mod also improves rendering performance, a big issue found among many Minecraft players. You can use it as you would use OptiFine for shader support as well, allowing you to spice your base game up with nicer visuals without costing you any drops in performance. Keep in mind that you must choose either OptiFine or Sodium, however, which can be frustrating as each one allows for different resource packs depending on support. We’d recommend Sodium overall for performance boosts, and OptiFine if you want access to more extra add-ons like shaders.
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SteamPunk​

• Creator: SHXRKIE
• Current Downloads: 1.1 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

SteamPunk is a whimsical modpack from creator SHXRKIE that overhauls Minecraft and turns the vanilla Mojang experience into an engineering lover's paradise. With various new biomes and a reworked world generation system, SteamPunk makes your game feel entirely new. You'll notice wildly detailed dungeons and structures as you explore, as well as some stunning villages and areas home to new steampunk-esque mobs. If you tire of your world's engineering, spellcasting, and questing, you can also opt to explore five different dimensions and five separate planets instead. SteamPunk is huge, but it’s not surprising once you learn that the modpack harbors over 250 unique mods.
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The Twilight Forest​

• Creator: Benimatic
• Current Downloads: 118.1 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

The Twilight Forest is an enchanting mod from creator Benimatic that allows players to step between dimensions into a twilight realm. This stunning alternate dimension features a dense woodland world with challenging boss battles, expansive dungeons, and all sorts of treasures. If you’ve ever found yourself wishing that Minecraft had an alternate dimension with more depth than the Nether or the End, then the Twilight Forest may be the perfect destination for you. It gives off some serious fairy tale vibes, too, with its magic and mobs. You may come for the difficult combat, but the forest’s charm may see you stay for its mysterious beauty.
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Towns and Towers​

• Creator: Biban_Auriu
• Current Downloads: 18.8 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Towns and Towers is a mod that aims to expand upon Mojang's own older 1.14 Minecraft update, adding new pillager outposts, ships, and villages. The structures found in creator Biban_Auriu's mod are more intricately detailed than their vanilla counterparts, all the while still seamlessly fitting into the world. Towns and Towers adds over 50 unique structures, many of which draw inspiration from real-life architectural styles. This mod is an easy way to freshen your game up without adding or changing any major base features.
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Valhelsia​

• Creator: ValhelsiaTeam
• Current Downloads: 307,000
• Download Link: CurseForge

Valhelsia 6 is the latest Valhelsia modpack from ValhelsiaTeam’s iconic line, adding a variety of gameplay-enhancing mods and stunning shaders. There's a bit of everything for everyone in Valhelsia, whether you're a builder looking for new decorative blocks to use or an engineer hoping to make use of powerful automation and machinery. Fans of RPG-style mods eat well with Valhelsia, too, as there are plenty of caves, dungeons, dimensions, and even planets to explore, each with unique artifacts and secrets to uncover. This modpack is perfect for groups of friends with diverse tastes as there’s fun to be had for all variations of players.
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Vault Hunters​

• Creator: Iskall85Team
• Current Downloads: 3.6 million
• Download Link: CurseForge

Vault Hunters is an RPG-like modpack from creator Iskall85Team that introduces a mysterious new dimension, The Vault. There are various new items accompanying this dangerous dimension, including armor, currency, bosses, mobs, totems, weapons, and more. While you explore the depths of The Vault, either alone or with friends in multiplayer, you'll come across 25 unique artifacts that you ultimately must collect. Once you gather them all, you'll gain access to one daunting final challenge. If you’re searching for a more linear modpack that draws elements from full-fledged RPGs and action-adventure games such as Tomb Raider, Vault Haunters may just be right up your alley.
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