Vanilla servers aim to play like normal Minecraft: no crate keys, no custom enchants, and little or no gameplay-changing plugins. They may still use Paper for performance, or small quality-of-life datapacks.
Fully public vanilla without any protection is uncommon, because griefing is hard to stop. Many “vanilla” listings are semi-vanilla: normal progression plus claims or a whitelist. Read the description carefully.
Check difficulty, view distance, and map age. On an old unprotected public map, spawn is often already ruined—plan to travel far or choose a whitelisted world.
