Redstone Timing Calculator

How this is calculated

THE TWO UNITS ARE THE WHOLE PROBLEM. Minecraft runs at 20 GAME TICKS per second, so one game tick is 0.05 seconds. A REDSTONE TICK is two game ticks, or 0.1 seconds. Repeaters are configured in redstone ticks - a repeater on its lowest setting is 1 redstone tick, and on its highest is 4 - so a repeater at full delay holds the signal for 0.4 seconds. Mixing the two units is the usual reason a build runs at half or double the intended speed. THE ARITHMETIC IS EXACT AND FIXED BY THE GAME. 20 ticks per second is the engine's rate, not an approximation, so every figure here is definitional rather than measured. Redstone ticks x 2 gives game ticks; game ticks ÷ 20 gives seconds. ⚠️ THAT RATE IS THE TARGET, NOT A GUARANTEE. A server or a client under load runs below 20 ticks per second, and everything redstone slows down proportionally - a clock timed at exactly 3 seconds runs longer when the tick rate drops. This matters for any build whose output you are counting per hour, because the rate you calculate is a ceiling rather than a promise. Timings taken from a laggy world will not match. WORK BACKWARDS FOR A TARGET DELAY. If you want a specific interval, the repeaters-needed figure tells you how many at full delay it takes - and the remainder tells you what is left over, which is what the lower delay settings are for. Getting an exact interval usually means several repeaters at 4 plus one set lower, and the leftover figure is the setting for that last one. NOT EVERY DELAY COMES FROM REPEATERS. Comparators, observers, droppers and torch chains all carry their own timings, and the extra-ticks field is there for those. A torch burnout is a common source of delay in older clock designs and behaves differently from a repeater. ⚠️ ONE-WAY CHAIN OR FULL LOOP MATTERS. This calculates the delay along the chain you describe. If your clock is a loop where the signal travels the same repeaters to return, the full period is that delay counted for the round trip - enter the whole loop, not half of it, or every rate figure comes out at double what you will actually see. THE ITEMS-PER-HOUR FIGURE IS AN UPPER BOUND. It assumes the mechanism fires on every pulse and never jams, misses or runs out of input. Real farms fall short of it, and the gap is the interesting part of tuning them.

Common questions

What is the difference between a game tick and a redstone tick?

A game tick is the engine's update step and there are 20 of them a second, so one is 0.05 seconds. A redstone tick is two game ticks, or 0.1 seconds, and it is the unit repeaters are configured in - a repeater on its lowest setting holds for 1 redstone tick and on its highest for 4, which is 0.4 seconds. Mixing the two is the usual reason a build runs at half or double the intended speed, and it is easy to do because technical documentation and commands generally use game ticks while the block you are right-clicking uses redstone ticks.

Is 20 ticks per second guaranteed?

No - it is the target rate, not a promise. A server or a client under load runs below 20 ticks per second, and everything redstone slows down in proportion, so a clock calculated at exactly 3 seconds runs longer when the tick rate drops. This matters most for any build whose output you are counting per hour, because the rate here is a ceiling. It also means timings measured in a laggy world will not match the arithmetic, and a farm that seems to underperform is sometimes reporting the server's health rather than a design fault.

How do I build a specific delay?

Work backwards, which is what the last two outputs are for. Each repeater at full delay holds 0.4 seconds, so the repeaters-needed figure tells you how many whole ones fit inside your target, and the leftover tells you the setting for one more. A 3-second delay is 30 redstone ticks: seven repeaters at 4 gives 28, leaving 2, so an eighth repeater set to 2 completes it exactly. A leftover of zero means your target lands neatly on full-delay repeaters and needs no partial one.

What about comparators, observers and torches?

They all have their own timings and none of them are repeaters, which is why there is a separate field for extra delay. Observers, comparators and dropper-hopper mechanisms each behave differently, and torch burnout - the basis of several older clock designs - works on a different principle again. Add their contribution in redstone ticks to that field. It is worth measuring an unfamiliar component in a test build rather than trusting a remembered figure, because several changed across versions.

Do I enter the whole loop or half of it?

The whole loop. This calculates the delay along the chain you describe, so if your clock sends a signal round a circuit and back, the period is the entire round trip. Entering only half means every rate figure comes out at double what you will actually observe, which is a mistake that looks plausible right up until you count the output. If you are unsure, time it in game against the calculated figure - a clock that runs at exactly half your predicted rate is almost always this.

Why is items-per-hour an upper bound?

Because it assumes the mechanism fires on every single pulse and never jams, never misses, and never runs out of input - which no real farm manages. Hoppers back up, mobs fail to spawn, items take time to travel, and chunk loading interrupts everything. The honest use of the figure is as a ceiling to measure against: if your farm produces well under it, the gap tells you something is limiting the mechanism rather than the clock, and that is usually the more productive thing to tune.

Can I make a clock slower than a few seconds?

Yes, but chains of repeaters get impractical quickly - a one-minute delay needs 150 repeaters at full setting, which is a lot of space and a lot of chunk to keep loaded. Longer intervals are usually built differently, using hopper clocks where items move between hoppers and the count sets the period, or comparator-based designs. The arithmetic here still applies to whatever the timing components are: convert everything to redstone ticks and the seconds follow.

Take it further with AI

Copy this into ChatGPT or Claude with your own numbers filled in. It hands over the figures this calculator worked out, so the answer is built on real arithmetic instead of a guess.

I used the Redstone Timing Calculator at https://www.bfcbrilliance.com/tools/minecraft-redstone-clock-calculator.

What I entered:
- Repeaters in the chain (repeaters): ___
- Delay setting on each (redstone ticks): ___
- Other delay in the chain (redstone ticks): ___
- Delay you actually want (s): ___
- Items produced per pulse (items): ___

What it calculated:
- Delay of your chain: ___
- In redstone ticks: ___
- In game ticks: ___
- Pulses a minute: ___
- Items an hour at that rate: ___

Use those figures as given — they are already worked out, so please don't recalculate or estimate your own. Help me turn them into a plan: what to buy or do, in what order, roughly what it should cost, and the mistakes people most often make with this job.

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