PlaceholderAPI

PlaceholderAPI — everyone calls it PAPI — is one of those plugins that does nothing on its own and yet turns up on almost every server. Its whole job is to be the middleman: it lets one plugin display a value that belongs to another plugin. That's how a scoreboard shows your money, or a tab list shows your rank. Once you understand the pattern, half the "how do I show X in Y" questions answer themselves.

What a placeholder is

A placeholder is a little token like %player_name% or %vault_eco_balance%. When a plugin that "supports PlaceholderAPI" renders text containing that token, PAPI swaps it for the live value for that player. So a tab-list header of Hi %player_name%, you have $%vault_eco_balance% becomes Hi Steve, you have $1200 on Steve's screen.

Two things have to be true for that to work:

1. The plugin displaying the text supports PlaceholderAPI (TAB, DeluxeMenus, most scoreboard and chat plugins do — it's usually a config toggle or just automatic).
2. The expansion that provides the placeholder is installed (see below).

🎯 Good to know: PAPI is a dependency layer, not a feature you see. Installed alone it changes nothing in-game. Its value is entirely that other plugins can lean on it — which is why so many plugins list it as a required or optional dependency.

Expansions: where placeholders come from

PAPI ships almost no placeholders itself. Instead, each set of placeholders lives in an expansion — a small add-on. %player_...% comes from the Player expansion, %vault_...% from the Vault expansion, and so on. You download the ones you need from PAPI's eCloud with in-game commands:

/papi ecloud download Player
/papi ecloud download Vault
/papi reload

download fetches the expansion into /plugins/PlaceholderAPI/expansions/, and reload makes it live without a full restart. A few useful commands:

That last one is the trick worth remembering: /papi parse me <placeholder> tells you instantly whether a placeholder resolves before you wire it into another plugin's config.

💡 Tip: Many plugins register their own placeholders automatically when both they and PAPI are installed — LuckPerms exposes %luckperms_...%, an economy exposes its balance, and so on. You don't always download an expansion; sometimes just having both plugins present is enough. /papi list shows you what's actually available.

Where you'll use them

You almost never type placeholders into PAPI itself — you type them into other plugins' configs:

• Tab list and nametags — a rank prefix, ping, or world name. See TAB & scoreboards.
• Scoreboards — the sidebar showing balance, kills, or online count.
• Chat format — a %luckperms_prefix% in front of each message. See chat plugins.
• Holograms — a floating leaderboard or live stat. See holograms and NPCs.
• GUI/menu plugins — buttons that show and act on live values.

The workflow is always the same: install PAPI, make sure the right expansion is loaded (/papi list), test the placeholder (/papi parse me ...), then paste it into the other plugin's config and reload that plugin.

Verify it works

Run /papi parse me %player_name% — it should print your name. Then pick a placeholder from an installed expansion (/papi info <expansion> lists them) and parse that too. If both resolve, PAPI is healthy and the only thing left is whether the displaying plugin has PAPI support switched on.

Troubleshooting

• A placeholder shows up as literal text (%vault_eco_balance% printed raw) — either the displaying plugin doesn't support PAPI (or its PAPI option is off), or the expansion providing that placeholder isn't loaded. Check /papi list.
• /papi parse returns nothing or the token unchanged — the expansion isn't installed. /papi ecloud download <name> then /papi reload.
• It worked, then broke after an update — an expansion can lag behind a new Minecraft or plugin version. Re-download it, and check the plugin whose values you're showing is up to date. See updating plugins safely.
• Which expansion provides %something%? — the placeholder's prefix names it (%vault_...% → Vault expansion). Expansion names and placeholders change over time, so treat PAPI's own eCloud listing as the current reference.

Next steps

• TAB & scoreboards
• Chat plugins
• Holograms and NPCs