Minecraft Server Lag: Low TPS and How to Fix It

What are TPS and MSPT?

• TPS (ticks per second): How many ticks the server processes per second. The target is 20; it never goes above 20 TPS.
• MSPT (milliseconds per tick): How many milliseconds a tick takes. Under 50 ms is healthy; every tick over 50 means TPS drops.

MSPT warns you earlier than TPS: if TPS shows 20 but MSPT has climbed to 45 ms, the server is at its limit and lag will start when a few more players join. On Paper servers, you can measure them in the console or in game with these commands:

/tps
/mspt

Find the bottleneck with spark

Measure instead of guessing. spark is a free profiler that shows where the server spends its time. It comes built in with recent versions of Paper; if it doesn't, you can install it as a plugin.

/spark tps
/spark health
/spark profiler start

Start the profiler while the server is lagging, wait a few minutes and stop it:

/spark profiler stop

spark gives you a link. In this report, a tree view shows which plugin, which world or which job (chunk generation, entities, redstone) the tick time goes to. The sections below are fixes for the causes that most often stand out in the report.

1. Chunk generation

When players enter areas no one has visited before, the server generates the world on the fly. This is one of the heaviest jobs in Minecraft and the most common cause of sudden lag during exploration.

The fix is to pre-generate the world and set a world border. With the Chunky plugin:

/chunky radius 5000
/chunky start

This command generates the area within a 5,000-block radius of the center before players get there. It can take a long time; start it at an hour when few players are online. Then set a world border so players don't go outside this area:

/worldborder set 10000

2. View and simulation distance

Two settings in the server.properties file decide how much area the server loads and processes for each player:

view-distance=8
simulation-distance=6

• view-distance: The chunk distance sent to players. Higher values increase RAM and network usage.
• simulation-distance: The distance within which mobs, crops and redstone run. It directly decides the processor load.

For most servers, a view-distance of 8–10 and a simulation-distance of 6–8 is a good balance. Paper also has separate settings that let players see farther without straining the server.

3. Entities: mob farms and items

Every tick, the server processes all entities (mobs, animals, items on the ground, minecarts, armor stands). If entities stand out in the spark report:

• Limit large mob farms or steer players toward more efficient designs.
• Clear items piling up on the ground; farms that collect junk and the items of players who died build up over time.
• Use the entity and item merging settings in Paper's world settings (paper-world-defaults.yml).
• If there's a problem in a specific area, the /spark profiler report and the warnings in the console lead you to the right chunk.

4. Plugins

A single plugin that's badly written or runs every tick for no reason can slow down the whole server. If a plugin takes a big share in the spark report:

• Update the plugin; performance problems are often fixed in new versions.
• Review its settings; turn off timers that run frequently and features you don't need.
• Look for a lighter alternative, or remove it if you don't really need it.

5. Server software

Vanilla server software isn't optimized for performance. Paper, and Purpur, which is built on top of it, keep most of the vanilla gameplay while performing much better and supporting plugins. If you're still using vanilla or Spigot, switching to Paper alone can make a big difference; back up your world before switching.

6. RAM and Java settings

If there isn't enough RAM, the server runs garbage collection often and stutters; more RAM than needed can also lead to long pauses. The recommended approach:

• Set -Xms and -Xmx to the same value.
• Leave 1–1.5 GB for the operating system.
• Use Aikar's flags, which Paper recommends; they tune the G1 garbage collector for Minecraft:

java -Xms10G -Xmx10G -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200 \
  -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+AlwaysPreTouch \
  -XX:G1NewSizePercent=30 -XX:G1MaxNewSizePercent=40 -XX:G1HeapRegionSize=8M \
  -XX:G1ReservePercent=20 -XX:G1HeapWastePercent=5 -XX:G1MixedGCCountTarget=4 \
  -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=15 -XX:G1MixedGCLiveThresholdPercent=90 \
  -XX:G1RSetUpdatingPauseTimePercent=5 -XX:SurvivorRatio=32 -XX:+PerfDisableSharedMem \
  -XX:MaxTenuringThreshold=1 -Dusing.aikars.flags=https://mcflags.emc.gs \
  -Daikars.new.flags=true -jar paper.jar --nogui

Change 10G to match your server's RAM. Paper's documentation also gives the current version of the flags, with small differences for large memory values. You can find how much RAM you need in the table on our Minecraft server page.

7. Processor

Minecraft's main loop runs largely on a single core. Even if total processor usage looks low, TPS drops when that core is maxed out. That's why single-core speed matters more than the number of cores. If MSPT is still high after all the optimizations, moving to a processor with a higher clock speed is the most effective fix. We cover checking the server's overall resource usage in our Why is my server slow? article.

Quick checklist

1. Confirm the problem is on the server with /tps and /mspt.
2. Take a report with /spark profiler while the lag is happening.
3. Pre-generate the world with Chunky and set a world border.
4. Balance the view-distance and simulation-distance values.
5. Check the entity count and heavy plugins.
6. Use Paper and start it with Aikar's flags.
7. Restart the server regularly; we cover automating this in our What is cron? article.

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