Minecraft server TPS and MSPT
A Minecraft server updates its world twenty times a second, and each of those updates has fifty milliseconds to finish. TPS counts how many of them it managed and MSPT says how long one took. This page is about what those two numbers mean, why one of them lies to you, and what to do about the answer.
The fifty millisecond budget
- 20 TPS
- 50 ms per tick
- 1 thread
- MSPT
- TPS
Every twenty times a second the server walks the world once: it moves each mob, runs each hopper, steps each piece of redstone, loads whatever chunks people walked into, applies weather and growth, and answers everyone who did something. That single pass is a tick, and it has fifty milliseconds to be done.
Finish early and the server waits for the clock, which is what a healthy server does all day. Finish late and the next tick starts late, and the counter drops below twenty. There is no credit for being fast: twenty is the ceiling and the only question is how much of the budget you have left over.
| MSPT | TPS you will see | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Under 20 ms | 20.0 | Nothing. Room to spare for a busy evening |
| 20 to 35 ms | 20.0 | Normal for a full server. Worth watching, not fixing |
| 35 to 50 ms | 20.0, then dipping | Mobs stutter at spawn, hoppers fall behind |
| 50 to 100 ms | 10 to 19 | Blocks break slowly, mobs skate, redstone misfires |
| Over 100 ms | Under 10 | Unplayable. Something is wrong rather than busy |
Why TPS is the number that lies
TPS only reports a problem once the problem has already happened. A tick that takes forty five milliseconds still fits inside fifty, so the counter says twenty, and it will keep saying twenty right up until the evening when thirty people log in at once and the same work no longer fits.
MSPT is the early warning, because it moves smoothly. Watching it over a week tells you whether you are at twenty milliseconds with room to grow, or at forty five with none. That is the difference between planning an upgrade and being surprised by one.
What actually eats a tick
| What | Why it costs tick time | What it costs in memory |
|---|---|---|
| Loaded entities | Every mob, item and armour stand is stepped once per tick | Little, until there are tens of thousands |
| Hoppers and block entities | Each one checks its neighbours every tick, whether or not it moves anything | Almost nothing |
| Redstone | A clock updates its whole network on every pulse | Almost nothing |
| Chunk loading and generation | New terrain is built while a player walks toward it | A lot, briefly |
| Plugins and mods | Anything scheduled every tick runs inside the same budget | Varies wildly |
| The size of your world | Almost nothing. Terrain on disk is not stepped | Almost nothing |
The last row surprises people. A world that is two hundred gigabytes on disk does not cost a single millisecond for the parts nobody is standing in. It is the loaded part that is stepped, and that is why a chunk loader keeping an area awake in an empty corner of the map is one of the most expensive mistakes there is.
Reading it on your own server
| Where | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| /tps | The average over one, five and fifteen minutes. Operator rights needed |
| /mspt on Paper and Purpur | The tick time itself, which is the number that warns you |
| The graph in our panel | The same figures over time, so a spike and a slope look different |
Read them while the server is busy, not while it is empty. An empty server sits at twenty on any plan we sell, which is exactly why measuring at a quiet moment tells you nothing about the evening you are worried about.
Which of the two halves to buy
Memory near full with a tick time that is fine means the server is holding more than it has room for, and a larger plan is the answer. Standard is 12 GB for €13.59 a month on the twenty-four month term, against €6.99 for Mini at 4 GB.
Memory half empty with a tick time climbing towards fifty means one core is running out of time, and more memory changes nothing about that. That is what our Performance line is for: the same memory and the same number of vCPU on a faster machine, with an NVMe slice of its own.
Dedicated cores against shared vCPU, and which one a tick actually needs
Before you buy anything
The most common cause of a server at four ticks a second is not the plan at all. It is tens of thousands of loaded entities, or a chunk loader keeping terrain awake that nobody has visited in months, or one plugin scheduled on every tick that should be scheduled once a second. No plan on any host fixes those, and buying one is the expensive way to find out.
Questions about TPS and MSPT
What is a good TPS on a Minecraft server?
Twenty, and nothing above it exists. Twenty ticks a second is the speed the game runs at, so TPS is a ceiling rather than a score: a healthy server sits at 20.0 and a struggling one sits below it. Anything from 19.5 downwards is already a server that missed work it was supposed to finish.
What is a good MSPT?
Under fifty milliseconds, and the further under, the more room you have left. MSPT is how long one tick took, and fifty is the entire budget: at forty you are using four fifths of it and a busy evening will push you over, at twenty you have the whole thing to spare.
Why does my server feel slow while TPS says 20?
Because TPS only moves once the server has already failed to keep up. A tick that takes forty five milliseconds still fits inside its fifty, so the counter reads twenty while the server is one busy moment away from not managing it. MSPT shows that coming; TPS shows it after it happened.
What uses up the tick on a Minecraft server?
In practice: loaded entities first, then hoppers and other block entities, then redstone, then chunk loading and world generation ahead of players who are walking. Weather, growth and mob pathfinding sit underneath all of it. Almost none of that is decided by how much memory the server has.
Does more RAM raise TPS?
Only when memory was the thing that was short. A server that is swapping or garbage collecting constantly will gain from more memory. A server sitting at half its memory with a rising tick time will not gain a single tick from doubling it, because the tick runs on one core and that core is what ran out.
How do I check TPS and MSPT on my own server?
The /tps command reports the average over the last one, five and fifteen minutes, and on Paper and Purpur /mspt reports the tick time itself. Both need operator rights. In our panel the same numbers are drawn as a graph, so you can see whether the number is a spike or a slope.
Delivery: most servers are handed over instantly and run within seconds of payment, the rest follow within 60 minutes during the day and within 12 hours at night.