Building Materials Calculator - Blocks, Stacks and Shulkers

Stacks, Shulker Boxes and Block Totals

A full stack of a stackable block is 64 blocks, and a shulker box holds 27 stacks, so one full shulker box is 27 times 64, or 1,728 blocks. To pack any total, divide by 1,728 for full shulker boxes, split the remainder into stacks of 64, and the rest is loose blocks. So 2,000 blocks is 1 shulker box, 4 stacks and 16 loose blocks.

The calculator does this split automatically. Enter a shape and its size and it returns the total block count as the headline number, then the same total expressed as shulker boxes plus stacks plus leftover, which is exactly how you would carry and place the material. The two secondary readouts show the total as a decimal number of stacks and of shulker boxes, useful when you are deciding how many trips or how many boxes to bring.

These figures are stable across every Minecraft version: 64 to a stack and 27 slots to a shulker box have not changed. The one caveat is non-stacking and partial-stacking items. Beds, signs, doors, boats, eggs, snowballs and similar items do not stack to 64, so the stack and shulker math applies to ordinary building blocks like stone, planks, glass, concrete and bricks.

A quick mental shortcut: one shulker box of a single block type is 1,728 blocks, which is exactly a solid 12 by 12 by 12 cube, or a 41 by 41 single-layer floor with a little to spare. When a project needs more than a double chest can comfortably hold, thinking in shulker boxes keeps the logistics simple.

How the Shape Counts Are Worked Out

Rectangular shapes use exact whole-block formulas. A solid cuboid is length times width times height. A hollow cuboid is that volume minus the interior box of (L-2)(W-2)(H-2), which leaves a one-block-thick shell, so a 10 by 10 by 5 box is 500 minus 8 times 8 times 3, which is 500 minus 192, or 308 blocks. The Walls shape is the four outer walls with no floor or ceiling: the perimeter, counting each corner once as 2L + 2W - 4, multiplied by the height. A 10 by 10 footprint 5 high is 36 times 5, or 180 blocks.

Curved shapes cannot be counted with a tidy formula because Minecraft places blocks on a grid, so the calculator counts them block by block. It builds a grid the size of the diameter, places the center of the shape in the middle, and fills a block when the center of that block sits inside the radius. This is the same block-center method used by sphere and circle generators that builders rely on, so the result matches what you would actually place. A solid sphere 5 blocks across comes out to 81 blocks, 7 across to 179, and 11 across to 739. Hollow spheres, domes and tubes then drop every block whose six neighbors are all filled, leaving just the visible shell.

The stepped pyramid sums the area of each square layer, shrinking the side by twice the inset per level until it reaches the tip, and the hollow version keeps only each layer's outline ring. Every dimension input is capped at 256 blocks so the block-by-block counting stays instant.

Estimating Material for a Whole Build

Real builds are made of several shapes, so the practical approach is to break a project into pieces, count each one, and add up the totals. A simple house, for example, is a Walls shape for the four walls, a Floor shape for the base, another Floor for a flat roof, and a few rows for trim. Count each part, note the totals, and you have a shopping list before you mine a single block.

1. Pick the shape that matches the part you are building and enter its size.

2. Read the total and the shulker box plus stack breakdown, and write it down.

3. Repeat for each part, then add the totals and round up a little for mistakes and offcuts.

Two extra tips. Mixed-material builds need a count per material, so run the calculator once for each block type, for instance stone for the walls and glass for the windows. And it is worth carrying about ten percent extra of the main block, since misplacements, slope corrections and a wider foundation than planned all eat into a tidy count.