Sodium

Sodium is a performance mod created by CaffeineMC. The leading rendering optimization mod for Fabric, dramatically improving frame rates through a rewritten rendering engine. As a performance mod it concentrates on frame rate, loading times, and memory use, and it has been downloaded around 150 million times, which puts it among the options players reach for in this space.

Sodium is built for Fabric players who want the single biggest frame-rate boost available. It rewrites Minecraft's rendering engine for modern GPUs, typically multiplying frame rates while also fixing several vanilla graphical glitches. It is approachable enough to drop into a world and use right away, with little setup required.

The mod is available for Fabric and Quilt, so it fits a range of modpacks and launchers. It currently supports Minecraft 1.20.1, 1.20.4, and 1.21.1, spanning the 1.20.1 to 1.21.1 releases. It is a client-side mod, which means you can add it to your own game for personal benefit even when the server you join does not run it.

Sodium works particularly well alongside Lithium, Iris Shaders, and FerriteCore. It targets the Fabric side of the ecosystem, so it pairs naturally with other Fabric mods and performance tools.

Sodium is client-side only and purely a rendering optimisation, so it never changes gameplay and is safe to add to almost any client setup.

If you are comparing options, similar mods include Embeddium and OptiFine. They cover comparable ground, so the right choice usually comes down to your loader, version, and the rest of your pack.