TPS and MSPT: what they measure and what to watch for
What TPS and MSPT tell you about your Minecraft server's performance and how to interpret the numbers in your clan.me analytics dashboard.
Updated 7 June 2026
TPS and MSPT are the two most important performance indicators for a Minecraft server. They tell you whether your server is keeping up with the game loop, and by how much. Understanding them is the first step to diagnosing and preventing player-facing lag.
What is TPS?
TPS stands for ticks per second. Minecraft's game loop runs at a target of 20 ticks per second, one tick every 50ms. Each tick processes mob AI, redstone, block updates, player movement, and everything else that makes the world simulate.
If your server can't finish a tick within 50ms, the next tick gets pushed back. Over time this adds up and players start experiencing rubber-banding, delayed block interactions, and mobs that feel unresponsive. At 10 TPS the game feels like it's running at half speed.
clan.me records the three TPS averages that Paper exposes: 1-minute, 5-minute, and 15-minute. The 1m average reveals transient spikes; the 15m average shows the sustained load your server is actually running under.
What is MSPT?
MSPT stands for milliseconds per tick. Where TPS tells you the outcome, MSPT tells you the cause. Each tick must complete in under 50ms to maintain 20 TPS. If MSPT regularly exceeds 50ms, TPS will fall.
MSPT is a more sensitive signal than TPS. A server sitting at 19.8 TPS looks fine on the surface, but if MSPT is averaging 48ms you're one world-border expansion or plugin update away from degradation.
Reading the numbers
| TPS | MSPT | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 20.0 | <50ms | Healthy, headroom to spare |
| 18–19 | 40–55ms | Mild load, noticeable under peak players |
| 15–17 | 55–80ms | Degraded, players will feel rubber-banding |
| <15 | >80ms | Severe lag, investigate immediately |
What causes low TPS?
The most common culprits, roughly in order of frequency:
- Entity count: too many mobs, items, or projectiles in loaded chunks. clan.me tracks entity count per world so you can see exactly which world is responsible.
- Redstone: complex or constantly-updating circuits tick every single game tick with no throttle.
- Chunk generation: players exploring ungenerated terrain hits the disk and CPU hard and causes brief but sharp TPS drops.
- Poorly optimised plugins: a plugin running synchronous database queries on the main thread will tank TPS under load.
- Heap pressure and GC pauses: when Java's garbage collector runs a full collection it stops the world briefly. If your heap is undersized for your player count, GC pauses happen frequently and drag TPS down.
On the dashboard
The clan.me analytics dashboard plots 1m TPS and MSPT over time on a shared chart, so you can visually correlate dips with player count peaks or scheduled tasks. Hover any data point to see the exact reading and player count at that moment.
Set a TPS drop alert in the Alerts tab to be notified by email, webhook, or in-game message as soon as 1m TPS falls below your threshold, rather than finding out from players in chat.