The /tick command in Minecraft: freeze, speed up and measure your server

What a tick is and who can use /tick

Minecraft doesn't move continuously: the server works out the world in steps, 20 times a second. Each step is a tick (50 ms), and in each one crops grow, mobs move, redstone runs and the time of day advances.

/tick changes that pace or stops it. It's Java only (it doesn't exist on Bedrock) and needs permission level 3: on a server, being op (how to give op); in a single-player world, having cheats on.

It affects the whole server, every world at once and every player online: it's not per player. If other people play on your server, warn them before touching it.

/tick query: how long each tick takes

/tick query tells you the target rate (20 per second, unless someone changed it) and the average time the server takes per tick, with its percentiles: P50 is the normal tick and P95 or P99 the worst. It's the good old MSPT, with nothing to install.

How to read it: if the average and P95 are below 50 ms, the server has room to spare. If the average is below but P99 shoots up, there are stutters now and then (a farm, a plugin, someone exploring). If the average goes over 50 ms, the server can't keep up 20 ticks per second and you notice it in everything.

To find out WHAT is slow, the next step is spark (the spark guide): /tick query tells you there's lag; spark, who's causing it.

/tick rate: speeding up or slowing down the game

/tick rate 40 makes the game run twice as fast: crops grow twice as fast, the day lasts half as long and mobs move at double speed. /tick rate 10 puts it in slow motion. It accepts 1 to 10000; normal is 20, and /tick rate 20 puts it back.

Careful when raising it: at 40 ticks per second each tick only has 25 ms. If your server takes longer than that (check with /tick query), it can't keep up, falls behind and the lag starts. A high rate needs processor, not RAM.

It isn't saved: when the server restarts it goes back to 20. If you want it to stay, you have to set it again every time it starts.

To make the day pass faster without speeding up everything else, you don't need /tick: /time set day or the day-night cycle game rule do that without touching how fast mobs or farms run (make it day and stop the rain).

/tick freeze and /tick step: stopping the world

1. Freeze

   /tick freeze stops the world: mobs stand still, crops don't grow, redstone doesn't advance and the sun doesn't move. Players can still move (and whatever they're riding), so you can walk around a frozen scene to look at it or record it.

2. Step forward bit by bit

   With the world frozen, /tick step advances one tick and stops again; /tick step 20 advances 20 ticks (one second of game time). It's how you see what's wrong with a redstone circuit or a farm that doesn't collect: you watch it step by step. /tick step stop cuts a long step short. Without freezing first, step does nothing.

3. Unfreeze

   /tick unfreeze puts everything back at its pace. If you forget, the world stays stopped for everyone who joins.

/tick sprint: skipping ahead at full speed

/tick sprint 1d makes a whole in-game day pass as fast as the server can manage, and then goes back to the normal pace. You can give it in ticks (/tick sprint 24000), in game seconds (60s) or in days (1d). /tick sprint stop cuts it short.

Useful for letting a tree or crop farm grow without waiting, or for testing an iron farm and seeing how much it makes in a day. While it runs, everything is sped up for everyone, so it's best with few people online.

When it ends, it tells you how many ticks per second it managed and how long each one took. It's an honest measure of what your server can do with that world and those plugins: if a sprint gets 200 ticks per second, it has plenty to spare for the 20 it needs; if it gets 25, it's tight and one more farm will bring it down.

Common problems

“Unknown or incomplete command”: your version is older than 1.20.3, or you're not op. /op YourName from the console fixes the second one.

The world is stopped and nobody knows why: someone left /tick freeze on. /tick query says so (“frozen”) and /tick unfreeze fixes it. Restarting the server does too.

After a high /tick rate everything stutters: the server can't keep up with that pace. Lower it, or go back to 20.

Players on an old client (joining with ViaVersion from versions before 1.20.3) don't know the rate has changed and see it oddly: the sped-up game looks jumpy to them (how ViaVersion works). With them around, better not to change the rate.

On NapNodes

Minecraft servers are delivered on Paper with the latest version, so /tick is there: type it in game chat as op, or in the server's “Console” in the panel, without the slash (tick query). Paper also has its own /tps and /mspt, which say the same thing another way, and spark to find the culprit.

In the panel's “Performance” you see the processor and memory graphs for your server: if the processor maxes out when you raise the rate with /tick rate or during a /tick sprint, that's your server's limit.

Each plan says how much processor it can use (in vCPU, one thread each, in the plans table) and the RAM you pay for is yours alone, with no overselling. Minecraft's tick runs almost entirely on a single thread: that's why what matters most for /tick is a fast processor, more than lots of cores.

Frequently asked questions