What are Entities in Minecraft? Everything You Need to Know.

Entities are dynamic objects in the world: mobs, players, dropped items, projectiles, minecarts, armor stands, and more. Unlike blocks, which are static parts of the terrain, entities can move, interact with other entities, and respond to physics like gravity and collisions. Too many entities in one area cause server lag because each entity requires CPU time every tick to update its position, AI, and interactions.

What Are Entities?

In Minecraft's code, entities are objects that exist independently from the block grid. They have positions that can be anywhere in 3D space (not locked to block coordinates), and they update constantly as the game runs.

Common entity types:

• Mobs: Hostile and passive creatures. Zombies, skeletons, creepers, cows, pigs, villagers. Each mob has AI that calculates pathfinding, target detection, and behavior every tick.
• Players: Every connected player is an entity. Players are the most complex entities because they involve multiplayer synchronization, inventory management, and client server communication.
• Items: Dropped items when you break blocks or die. These float in the world for 5 minutes before despawning. Item entities are extremely common and a major source of entity lag.
• Projectiles: Arrows, snowballs, fireballs, tridents, and anything thrown or shot. Projectiles calculate collision detection and trajectory physics every tick until they hit something or despawn.
• Vehicles: Minecarts, boats, and horses (when ridden). These have collision physics and respond to terrain like rails or water.
• Other objects: Experience orbs, falling sand/gravel, TNT (after ignition), armor stands, item frames, paintings, end crystals, and more. Anything that exists in the world but isn't a block is likely an entity.

How Entities Cause Lag

Every entity requires processing power every server tick (50 times per second). When you have hundreds or thousands of entities loaded at once, the cumulative processing demand causes TPS drops and lag.

• What the server calculates per entity per tick:
• Position and movement: Where is the entity, is it moving, what direction, what speed
• Physics: Gravity, collisions with blocks and other entities, water flow
• AI behavior: For mobs, this includes pathfinding, target selection, attack decisions, breeding checks
• Interactions: Can players or other entities interact with this entity right now
• Damage and health: If the entity takes damage, process knockback, health reduction, death
• Spawning and despawning: Check if conditions exist to spawn new entities or remove old ones

A single cow in a field is negligible. A thousand cows in a 10x10 area brings the server to its knees. This is called entity cramming, and it's a common cause of server crashes on farms.

Entity Types and Their Impact

Not all entities cause equal lag:

• Lightweight entities: Experience orbs, projectiles mid flight, falling blocks. These have simple physics and no AI.
• Medium entities: Passive mobs (cows, chickens, sheep). They have AI but it's relatively simple (wander, eat grass, breed).
• Heavy entities: Hostile mobs (zombies, skeletons, endermen). Their AI includes pathfinding to chase players, attack decisions, and target detection across long distances.
• Very heavy entities: Villagers. Their AI is extremely complex, involving job sites, gossip systems, trading, breeding, and navigation. A village with 50 villagers can cause more lag than 200 passive mobs.
• Tile entities vs normal entities: Tile entities are special blocks like chests, hoppers, and furnaces. They used to be called entities but are now considered blocks with extra data. Normal entities (mobs, items, minecarts) cause more lag because they move and have physics. However, thousands of hoppers checking for items constantly can still cause significant lag.

Identifying Entity Lag

Use profiling tools to see if entities are causing your lag:

Spark profiler:

/spark profiler start
(wait 30 seconds)
/spark profiler stop

The report shows what's consuming tick time. Look for sections labeled "entity tick" or "entities." If entities consume more than 30% of tick time, you have entity lag.

Timings (Spigot/Paper):

/timings on
(wait a few minutes)
/timings paste

Check the "Entity Tick" section. High numbers indicate entity lag.

In game symptoms:

• Mobs teleporting or stuttering
• Items taking forever to pick up
• Projectiles freezing mid air
• TPS dropping when you enter certain chunks

Reducing Entity Lag

Clear dropped items regularly:

Use ClearLag or similar plugins to remove dropped items every 5 to 10 minutes. Configure it to warn players 30 seconds before clearing so they can pick up important drops.

Limit mob spawning:

In spigot.yml or paper-world-defaults.yml, reduce spawn limits:

textspawn-limits:
  monsters: 50
  animals: 10
  water-animals: 5
  ambient: 5

Lower numbers mean fewer mobs, less lag, but also fewer mob farm outputs.

Use entity stacking plugins:

StackMob or similar plugins merge multiple entities of the same type into one entity. Instead of 50 individual chickens, you have one "chicken x50" entity. This drastically reduces entity count while preserving gameplay.

Set entity activation ranges:

In Paper config, entities far from players don't need to update every tick:

entity-activation-range:
  animals: 16
  monsters: 24
  raiders: 32
  misc: 8

Entities outside these ranges update less frequently, saving CPU time.

Limit entities per chunk:

Use Entity Manager or LagFixer plugins to set hard limits. For example, maximum 20 mobs per chunk and 50 items per chunk. When limits are reached, new entities don't spawn or get removed.

Remove unnecessary entity farms:

Mob grinders with hundreds of mobs waiting to be killed are major lag sources. Limit farm sizes or use plugins to cap entities in farm chunks specifically.

Pre-generate your world:

New chunk generation spawns entities (passive mobs in new areas). Pre-generating eliminates this real time entity spawn lag.

Clear experience orbs quickly:

XP orbs are entities that accumulate at grinders. Use plugins that convert XP to bottles or directly into player levels to avoid thousands of floating orbs.

Entity Limits by Server Type

• Small survival (5 to 20 players): 500 to 1000 total entities is healthy. Above 2000 starts causing issues.
• Medium server (20 to 50 players): 1000 to 2000 entities. Above 3000 causes noticeable lag.
• Large server (50+ players): 2000 to 4000 entities. Requires aggressive entity management above this.
• Minigame servers: Keep it under 500. Most minigames don't need many mobs, and dropped items should clear instantly.

Check your current entity count with:

/minecraft:execute in minecraft:overworld run data get entity @e

Or use Spark/Timings reports which show entity counts per dimension.