Unlike Fabric, which was built independently, NeoForge is a direct fork of Forge, created by much of Forge's own original development team. Understanding why that split happened makes the practical choice between them much clearer.
Why NeoForge exists
In mid-2023, a large part of the Forge development team, following disagreements over the project's technical direction and governance, forked the codebase and launched NeoForge as a community-driven continuation under more open management. Almost the entire existing modding toolchain and API surface carried over, this was a governance split more than a technical rewrite from zero, which is why so many mod developers were able to support NeoForge quickly.
What actually changed
NeoForge prioritized modernizing Forge's aging internals and picking up support for new Minecraft versions faster, in some cases within hours of a Minecraft release, compared to Forge's historically slower cadence. NeoForge also stopped maintaining older Minecraft versions early (it never went back to fully support 1.20.1, for instance) to focus development effort on 1.21 and newer.
Mod compatibility
This is the practical crux of the decision. Because so much of the modding community and tooling moved to NeoForge after the fork, it has become the de facto standard for new Forge-lineage modpacks on Minecraft 1.21 and later. Forge itself is still very much alive and still has an enormous back-catalog of older mods and modpacks that were never ported to NeoForge and, in many cases, never will be.
Which should you use?
If you are building on an older, established modpack that predates the 2023 fork, Forge is very likely still what it needs, check the specific mods before assuming otherwise. If you are starting something new on a current Minecraft version, NeoForge is now the more actively developed option in that lineage and the one most new mods target first. Fabric remains a separate, third option if lightweight performance mods rather than large content packs are the goal.
As with any modded server, matching Java startup flags and RAM allocation to what the modpack actually needs matters more than with a plain vanilla or Paper server, both a Java arguments generator and a RAM calculator can help get that right before your first launch. Tick Hosting's panel supports both Forge and NeoForge with a one-click installer on every plan, including the free tier. Get started on Tick Hosting's plans page.