Automatic farms are what turn a Minecraft world from a survival grind into an engine: passive gold and XP, bulk gunpowder, renewable totems, endless paper. This page is the index to every farm build we cover, version-pinned to Minecraft 26.2 Java Edition, so you can pick the one you need and jump straight to the full guide.

Every farm here is built on the same handful of mechanics: mob spawning rules, the mob cap, chunk loading, and AFK placement. If you understand those once, every farm makes sense. The shared-mechanics section at the bottom links the deep dives.

New to farms? Start with the mob XP farm. It teaches the spawning rules (light level, mob cap, the 24 and 128 block spheres) that every other mob farm reuses, and it is the most generally useful build to have running.

Mob and XP farms

These farms spawn hostile mobs in a controlled space and funnel them to a kill point. They share the same spawning mechanics; the differences are in what spawns and how you bias for it.

  • Mob XP farm - a dark-room tower that collects XP plus gunpowder, bones, string, and arrows from common hostile mobs. The foundation build; learn this first.
  • XP farm - the experience sources ranked for 26.2, the player-kill XP rule, and a working dark-room grinder. Start here if levels are your goal.
  • Gold farm - passive gold and one of the best XP rates in the game, from zombified piglins on the nether roof. Teaches the player-kill rare-drop rule.
  • Creeper farm - bulk gunpowder for rockets and TNT, using a two-block spawn height and the cat-avoidance trick to bias spawns to creepers.
  • String farm - string from a spider spawner or a general mob farm, with the climb-proof funneling spiders need.
  • Raid farm - the only renewable source of totems of undying, plus emeralds, by triggering and farming raids. The most advanced build here.
  • Iron farm - passive iron from a compact panic-based village design (three villagers, a zombie, and a golem kill chamber).
  • Iron golem farm - the village-detection variant of the iron farm. Different spawning trigger from the panic design above.
  • Blaze farm - blaze rods for brewing and beacons plus fast XP, from a caged nether fortress spawner. The gate to the late game.
  • Wither skeleton farm - wither skulls for beacons, plus coal and bones, from dark nether fortress platforms.
  • Enderman farm - the best XP farm in the game and endless ender pearls, from the empty outer End islands.
  • Guardian farm - bulk prismarine, sea lanterns, fish, and top-tier XP from an ocean monument. The biggest build here.
  • Slime farm - slimeballs for sticky pistons and slime blocks, from an underground slime chunk.

Resource and crop farms

Redstone-driven farms that harvest blocks automatically. No mob spawning; these run on growth ticks and observers.

  • Automatic sugar cane farm - an observer-and-piston design that harvests cane for paper and sugar. A great first redstone farm.
  • Automatic crop farm - harvest wheat, carrots, and potatoes with villager labor or redstone.
  • Automatic cactus farm - the simplest fully automatic farm, no redstone: cactus that breaks itself for green dye and fuel.
  • Automatic bamboo farm - the fastest-growing plant, harvested by observer and piston for endless fuel and scaffolding.
  • Melon and pumpkin farm - one observer-and-piston design for both, feeding food, Healing potions, and emerald trades.
  • Tree farm - endless logs and renewable charcoal, from a fast manual bone-meal grinder to piston harvesters.
  • Nether wart farm - the base ingredient for every potion, grown on soul sand with no water or light. Build it before you brew.
  • Bee and honey farm - honey bottles and honeycomb on autopilot, using a dispenser and a campfire so the bees stay calm.

Villager farms

Villagers power trading, iron, and more. These guides cover breeding and trading infrastructure.

  • Villager breeder - a renewable supply of villagers for trading halls and iron farms, using the willingness mechanic.
  • Villager trading hall - organize villagers for efficient, cheap trades once you have a breeder feeding it.
  • Best villager trades, ranked - which professions are worth locking in (Librarian for Mending, Cleric for rotten flesh) and which to skip entirely.
  • Emerald farm - the best villager trades for emeralds and how to feed them with a renewable supply. The payoff layer of the village economy.

Shared mechanics every farm relies on

Most "my farm does not work" problems come down to one of these:

  • Spawning and the mob cap. Mob farms only run when spawns happen in your farm and nowhere else. The Mob Spawner Optimizer lets you place your AFK point and platforms and see which blocks are actually spawn-eligible. A mob switch suppresses spawns elsewhere so your active farm claims the whole cap.
  • Chunk loading. A farm only ticks while its chunks are loaded. The chunk borders and forceload guide explains ticket levels and why /forceload is what passive farms need.
  • Render vs simulation distance. Mobs vanish or stop ticking when you back away because of simulation distance, not render distance. The render vs simulation distance guide covers the setting that actually matters.

Running farms on a server

Large farms tick a lot of entities, which is the most common source of TPS drops on a multiplayer server. If you run several big farms, size the server for the entity load: our Server RAM Calculator estimates the memory you need, and the hosting comparison ranks hosts on real high-entity performance rather than marketing.

Sources & further reading: