How to Set Up LuckPerms Ranks

What Is LuckPerms?

LuckPerms is a permissions plugin for Minecraft servers running Bukkit-based software like Paper, Spigot, or Purpur. It replaces older permissions plugins like PermissionsEx and GroupManager, which are no longer maintained and have known bugs on modern Minecraft versions. LuckPerms is actively developed, well-documented, and used by the majority of Minecraft servers today.

At its core, LuckPerms controls what each player can and cannot do on your server. Want regular players to use /home but not /fly? Want moderators to be able to ban players but not access WorldEdit? LuckPerms handles all of this through groups, permissions, and inheritance.

Installing LuckPerms

Download LuckPerms from luckperms.net , make sure you pick the Bukkit version, not the Velocity, BungeeCord, or Fabric version. Upload the jar file to your server's /plugins folder using the Pterodactyl file manager and restart the server. If you need a refresher on installing plugins, read the plugin installation guide first.

After the restart, LuckPerms creates its configuration files in /plugins/LuckPerms/. By default, it uses a flat-file storage system (H2 database), which is perfectly fine for single servers. You do not need to set up MySQL or MariaDB unless you are running a multi-server network where permissions need to sync across instances.

Understanding Groups, Users, and Permissions

LuckPerms works with three main concepts. A permission is a string like essentials.home that controls access to a specific feature. A group is a collection of permissions that you assign a name, like "member" or "moderator." A user is an individual player who belongs to one or more groups and inherits all the permissions from those groups.

Instead of setting permissions on every player individually, you set them on groups and then add players to the appropriate group. When a player joins a group, they automatically get all the permissions assigned to that group. This scales much better than per-player configuration and makes it easy to update permissions for an entire rank at once.

Creating Your Rank Hierarchy

A typical server has three to five ranks. Here is a common setup you can use as a starting point. Run these commands in the server console or in-game as an operator:

LuckPerms comes with a default group called "default" that every new player is placed into. You can either add permissions directly to the default group, or set up your "member" group and configure it as the primary default group. Using a separate member group gives you more flexibility down the line.

Assigning Permissions to Groups

Each plugin documents the permissions it uses. For example, EssentialsX uses permissions like essentials.home, essentials.tpa, and essentials.sethome. To grant the member group the ability to use /home, run:

You can also use wildcard permissions to grant access to entire categories. For example, essentials.home.* grants all home-related permissions including setting, deleting, and teleporting to homes. Be careful with broad wildcards like essentials.* because they give access to everything in that plugin, including admin commands you might not intend to expose.

Setting Up Inheritance

Inheritance means a higher-rank group automatically gets all the permissions of a lower-rank group plus its own additional permissions. This prevents you from having to copy the same permissions across multiple groups. Set up inheritance like this:

With this setup, a moderator gets all member permissions, all helper permissions, and any permissions you assign specifically to the moderator group. An admin gets everything from all three lower groups plus their own admin-specific permissions. This creates a clean hierarchy where you only need to add new permissions at the level where they should first become available.

Group Weight and Display Order

Weight determines which group takes priority when a player belongs to multiple groups. The group with the highest weight is considered the player's primary group, which affects things like chat prefixes and tab list display. Set weights with:

Higher numbers mean higher priority. If a player is both a member and a moderator, their moderator group (weight 50) takes priority over member (weight 1) for determining their display name, prefix, and primary group.

The Web Editor

Running commands in the console works, but LuckPerms has a much better option for managing permissions at scale. Run /lp editor and the plugin generates a unique URL to a web-based editor. Open it in your browser and you get a full visual interface where you can drag and drop permissions, create groups, set up inheritance, and manage individual players. When you are done, click Save and the changes are applied to your server instantly.

The web editor is especially useful when you are setting up permissions for the first time. You can see all available groups, their inheritance chains, and every permission assigned to each group in one view. It is much faster than typing individual commands and less prone to typos.

Vault Integration for Chat Prefixes

If you want rank prefixes to show up in chat (like [Admin] or [Member] before player names), you need Vault and a chat formatting plugin. Vault is a bridge plugin that lets other plugins read group and prefix data from LuckPerms. Install Vault first, then set prefixes on your groups with LuckPerms:

The & codes are Minecraft color codes. &7 is gray, &a is green, &c is red. The number after "setprefix" is the priority (same concept as weight). You also need a chat plugin like EssentialsX Chat or ChatControl to actually display the prefix in chat messages. EssentialsX Chat reads the prefix from Vault automatically when you configure the chat format in its config.

Adding Players to Groups

Once your groups are configured, promote players by adding them to the appropriate group. The command is straightforward:

This sets the player's primary group to moderator. Because moderator inherits from helper and member, the player automatically gets all permissions from those groups too. Changes take effect immediately, there is no need to restart the server or wait for the player to relog.

That covers the fundamentals. LuckPerms has more advanced features like contexts (permissions that only apply in certain worlds), temporary permissions with expiry dates, and per-server configuration for networks, but the setup above will handle the needs of most servers. For the full documentation, visit the LuckPerms wiki at luckperms.net.