Minecraft TPS and the types of lag explained

"Lag" covers three different problems in Minecraft, and each one has a different fix. TPS, short for ticks per second, is the number that tells you whether the server itself is the problem. Below are the three kinds of lag, how to read the TPS card on your Console tab and which commands show TPS.

Checked against the Minecraft Wiki, the Paper and spark documentation and the panel, October 2026, on Minecraft 26.3.

What a tick is

Minecraft normally runs its game loop at 20 times a second, so one tick should take 50 milliseconds. The time a server really spends on a tick is called MSPT, milliseconds per tick. The server holds 20 TPS only while MSPT stays at or below 50. When it cannot keep up, TPS drops and most things slow down with it, because the game times almost everything in ticks. A day lasts 24,000 ticks, which is 20 minutes only at a steady 20 TPS.

On the console, a vanilla server that has fallen far behind prints a line like this:

Can't keep up! Is the server overloaded? Running 2013ms or 40 ticks behind

Paper replaces this warning with its own catch-up logic, so a Paper or Purpur server may never print it. On those, rely on the Ticks per second card, mspt or spark instead.

The three kinds of lag

TPS is the server's own count, so it is the same for everyone. Ping and FPS are measured separately by each player, so check TPS first and then ask the affected player for their numbers.

Read the TPS card

The Console tab shows a Ticks per second card under the power buttons on a Minecraft server, with a target of 20. It turns amber below 18 and red below 16. It reads a short recent window of about five seconds, so a spike shows quickly instead of being averaged away.

A dash instead of a number means the server has not answered the panel's TPS check. Vanilla and Fabric before 1.20.3 have no TPS command, and a server that is starting or stopped does not answer either.

Check TPS with a command

Type these in the Console, without the leading slash that in-game chat uses:

• tps on Paper and Purpur shows TPS over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes. The target is 20.0.
• mspt on Paper and Purpur shows the average, minimum and maximum MSPT over the last 5, 10 and 60 seconds. Below 50 is healthy.
• tick query on Vanilla 1.20.3 and newer shows the target tick rate and the average time per tick.
• spark tps shows TPS and CPU usage if the spark profiler is installed. The Paper documentation recommends spark over tps and mspt.

What usually drags TPS down

The Minecraft Wiki lists hoppers that keep searching for items, redstone, large numbers of mobs, and a random tick speed set too high. On your server, lowering View distance (chunks) and Simulation distance (chunks) in the Config Editor is a good first step, since the panel describes view distance as the biggest lever on RAM and CPU. After that, work through Why is my server lagging? and the Paper-specific Reduce entity lag on a Minecraft Paper server. On a modded server, profile with spark to find the exact cause: Profile a modded Minecraft server with spark.

When TPS is fine but players still lag

Ask the affected player for their ping, which shows in the multiplayer list when they hover the connection bars. It is the time between that player and the server, so it is separate from TPS. What ping to expect from each Australian city gives the normal range, and Run an MTR report for lag tests the route. For frame rate, the F3 debug screen shows the player's current FPS.