TPS vs FPS: Meaning and Difference on a Minecraft Server

TPS (ticks per second) is how many times per second the server updates the game world, and a Minecraft server aims for a steady 20 TPS. FPS (frames per second) is how many images per second your own computer draws: that is the core of TPS vs FPS, because low TPS slows the game down for every player on the server, while low FPS only makes your own picture choppy. Both describe how smoothly a game runs, and knowing which one is low tells you exactly where to look when a game server feels laggy.

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TPS, FPS and ping at a glance

What is TPS?

A game server runs the game world in a loop. Every pass through that loop is a tick: the server moves mobs, grows crops, runs redstone, processes player actions and saves changes. TPS is the number of ticks the server completes per second.

Minecraft aims for 20 TPS, which gives the server 50 milliseconds per tick. That time budget is called MSPT (milliseconds per tick). As long as a tick takes less than 50 ms, the server holds 20 TPS. When ticks take longer, TPS drops below 20 and the whole world slows down.

Signs of low TPS

• Blocks you break reappear for a moment (rubber-banding).
• Mobs freeze, stutter or teleport short distances.
• Crops, furnaces and redstone clocks run slower than normal.
• Commands and chat respond with a delay.
• Every player on the server notices it at the same time.

What is FPS?

FPS is a client-side number. It shows how many frames per second your computer renders, and it depends on your graphics card, processor, settings and mods. A player with a slow laptop can have low FPS on a server that runs perfectly at 20 TPS, while everyone else plays smoothly.

The server can influence FPS indirectly: areas with many entities, such as large mob farms or item piles, take more effort to draw, so FPS can drop there. But the fix for that is usually on the server side: fewer entities.

What about ping?

Ping is the travel time of data between you and the server, in milliseconds. High ping feels like lag too, but the server itself can be healthy. Choosing a server location close to your players keeps ping low.

How to check TPS and FPS

• /tps on Paper and Purpur servers shows the average TPS over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
• /mspt on Paper shows how long ticks take. Under 50 ms is fine.
• spark is a free profiler plugin and mod. /spark tps shows TPS and MSPT, and /spark profiler shows exactly which plugin, mod or chunk costs the most time.
• /tick query works on vanilla servers since Minecraft 1.20.3.
• FPS is shown in the top left of the F3 debug screen in Minecraft Java Edition.

How to improve TPS

1. Run optimized server software. Paper or Purpur handle the same world with far less tick time than vanilla.
2. Lower the simulation distance. It controls how far from players the world is actively ticked. Lowering it from 10 to 6 or 8 saves a lot of tick time, while view distance can stay higher.
3. Pre-generate the world. Generating new chunks while players explore is expensive. A plugin like Chunky generates the map in advance.
4. Limit entities. Large animal farms, villager halls and dropped items are the most common cause of low TPS. Use spark to find the worst chunks.
5. Use sensible RAM settings. Too little RAM causes frequent garbage collection pauses. Far too much does not help either. Aikar's flags are a good starting point for Java servers.
6. Remove heavy plugins or mods. The spark profiler shows which ones take the most tick time.

Minecraft runs its main game loop on one thread, so a processor with high single-core performance matters more for TPS than a large number of cores.

How to improve FPS

• Lower your render distance and graphics settings, or turn off shaders.
• Install performance mods such as Sodium (with Iris if you want shaders) on Fabric.
• Close other programs and update your graphics drivers.

Frequently asked questions

Is 20 TPS good?

Yes. 20 TPS is the maximum and the target for a Minecraft server. Anything close to 20 feels smooth. The further TPS drops below 20, the more players notice the slowdown.

What is MSPT?

MSPT stands for milliseconds per tick: how long the server needs to process one tick. For a steady 20 TPS, MSPT has to stay below 50 ms. MSPT shows problems earlier than TPS does, because TPS only drops once the 50 ms budget is exceeded.

Does more RAM increase TPS?

Only if the server was short on memory. Once there is enough RAM, adding more does not make ticks faster. Tick time mostly depends on the processor, the server software and how much is happening in the world.

Can a server fix my low FPS?

Mostly not, because FPS is rendered on your own computer. A server can help indirectly by keeping the number of entities around players under control.

What does TPS mean in Minecraft?

TPS means ticks per second: how many times per second Minecraft runs its game loop, which moves mobs, grows crops and runs redstone. The game runs at a fixed 20 ticks per second, one tick every 50 milliseconds, on servers and in singleplayer, which uses a built-in server.

What is server FPS?

Some games measure the speed of the server in frames per second instead of ticks. In Rust, for example, the fps command also works on the server and fps.limit caps the server frame rate. Server FPS means the same as TPS: how often the server updates the world, not what your graphics card draws.

What is the difference between TPS and FPS?

TPS is measured on the server and affects every player at once; FPS is measured on your own computer and only affects you. With low TPS mobs freeze and blocks reappear for everyone, with low FPS only your own screen stutters.