The Different Types of Minecraft Lag

Several different types of lag can occur on a Minecraft server, and the causes behind each one are quite different. Understanding which kind of lag you’re actually dealing with is the first step to troubleshooting it and improving your server’s performance.

Connection Lag (Latency / Ping)

Connection lag is the delay, or ping, between a player’s device and your server. The higher the ping, the more lag that player experiences. High latency usually means your server is physically located far away from that player, since data simply takes longer to travel a longer distance.

If possible, it’s best to position your server as close as you can to where most of your players are located. If your players are spread out across the world, try to find a central location roughly between everyone and place your server there instead, to keep the average ping as low as possible for the group as a whole.

This type of lag only affects individual players based on their own location and connection, it has nothing to do with your server’s actual performance, and no amount of optimization on the server itself will fix it.

Client Lag

Client lag is measured in FPS (frames per second), which should not be confused with TPS. FPS measures how smoothly a player’s own device can render and process game frames.

FPS depends entirely on client-side performance, the player’s computer, graphics settings, and hardware, and is not influenced by your server’s performance at all. A player with low FPS on a powerful server isn’t experiencing server lag; their own device is simply struggling to keep up, and the fix lies in adjusting their in-game video settings or upgrading their hardware, not anything on the server side.

Server Lag

Server lag, also called TPS (Ticks Per Second) lag, is the one type of lag you, as the server owner, actually have direct control over. You can measure it by checking your server’s TPS rate, using the /tps command.

Here’s roughly how to interpret your TPS reading:

TPS range	What it means
20	Your server is running perfectly. No changes needed.
19.95 – 19.99	Lag is likely unnoticeable. Most servers run perfectly fine in this range.
18.00 – 19.94	Each tick takes slightly longer than usual to complete. In most cases, this still isn’t noticeable to players and can be safely ignored.
16.00 – 17.99	Worth investigating. It’s recommended to start looking into the underlying cause before it gets worse.
Below 16.00	Lag may become visible to players. It might not be very obvious right at 16 TPS, but the lower it goes, the more apparent it becomes.

If you find your server consistently dropping into the lower ranges, see our guide on understanding server TPS for a deeper look at what causes TPS drops and how to prevent them.

What You Can and Can’t Control

It’s worth remembering that server lag (TPS) is the only type of lag you have direct control over. There are things you can do to reduce the impact of connection lag, like choosing a better server location, but ultimately, where a player is physically located, and the quality of their own internet connection, are outside your control. The same goes for client lag, which comes down entirely to the player’s own hardware and settings.

Focusing your troubleshooting on TPS, the one factor you can actually improve, is almost always the most productive place to start.