Mob XP drops and the level formula are version-stable. The version selector only changes the furnace smelting XP values, which are read live from the recipe data.
XP orbs dropped when a mob is killed by a player. Looting does not change XP; carried equipment adds 1 to 3 XP per equipped item.
| 12,000 | Boss | |
| 500 | Boss | |
| 50 | Boss | |
| 20 | Nether | |
| 20 | Hostile | |
| 10 | Nether | |
| 10 | Hostile | |
| 10 | Hostile | |
| 10 | Hostile | |
| 10 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Nether | |
| 5 | Nether | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Nether | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Nether | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Hostile | |
| 5 | Nether | |
| 4 | Slime | |
| 4 | Slime | |
| 3 | Hostile | |
| 3 | Hostile | |
| 2 | Slime | |
| 2 | Slime | |
| 1 | Slime | |
| 1 | Slime | |
| 0 | Passive |
Click a non-boss mob to load it into the farm calculator. Slimes and magma cubes are split by size (1, 2, 4) since XP scales with size.
A thrown bottle o' enchanting releases 3 to 11 XP (about 7 on average).
| Furnace smelt | XP each |
|---|---|
| ... | |
| ... | |
| ... | |
| ... |
Furnace XP is granted only when you collect the output, not while it smelts, and these values are read straight from the recipe data.
Most hostile mobs drop 5 experience orbs when killed by a player. Blazes, guardians, elder guardians, evokers, and breezes drop 10, while piglin brutes and ravagers give 20. Slimes and magma cubes scale with size (1, 2, or 4). The Ender Dragon is the jackpot at 12,000 XP on its first defeat. Looting never affects XP; only equipment a mob is carrying adds 1 to 3 bonus orbs per item.
Every mob has a fixed XP reward baked into the game. The common overworld threats (zombie, skeleton, creeper, spider, enderman, witch, drowned, husk, stray, pillager, vindicator, phantom, shulker) all give 5 XP. The high earners are the blaze, guardian, elder guardian, evoker, and breeze at 10 XP, and the piglin brute and ravager top the list at 20 XP each. The endermite and vex are unusually low at 3, and the iron golem drops none at all. Slimes and magma cubes are special: their XP scales with size, so a huge one gives 4 while the small splits give 1 each, which is why the table above lists them by size.
Two things people get wrong: Looting does not increase XP (it only boosts item drops), and a mob that spawned wearing armor or holding a weapon drops 1 to 3 extra orbs per equipped piece on top of its base reward. Mobs also only drop their full XP when a player lands the killing blow within a few seconds; fall damage, lava, and natural despawns give little or nothing, which matters for farm design.
| Mob | XP per kill | Where it spawns |
|---|---|---|
| Piglin Brute | 20 | Bastion remnant |
| Ravager | 20 | Raids, pillager outposts |
| Breeze | 10 | Trial chambers |
| Blaze | 10 | Nether fortress |
| Guardian / Elder Guardian | 10 | Ocean monument |
| Evoker | 10 | Woodland mansion, raids |
| Zombie / Skeleton / Creeper | 5 | Overworld, spawners |
| Enderman | 5 | The End, Nether warped forest |
| Endermite / Vex | 3 | Ender pearl, evoker summon |
| Slime / Magma Cube (huge) | 4 | Swamps, slime chunks, Nether |
This page is about mob drops and farm throughput. If you want to convert between raw XP points and levels or plan enchanting and anvil costs, use the XP Calculator instead.
XP does not buy levels at a flat rate. The cost to go from level L to level L+1 follows three bands taken straight from the game code: 2L + 7 below level 15, 5L - 38 from 15 to 29, and 9L - 158 from level 30 up. That means level 0 to 1 is only 7 XP, level 14 to 15 is 35, the band switches so level 15 to 16 is 37, and by level 30 to 31 each level already costs 112 and keeps climbing by 9 every level after.
| Level band | XP per level | Cost at band edges | Feel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 14 | 2L + 7 | 7 to 35 | cheap early levels |
| 15 to 29 | 5L - 38 | 37 to 107 | moderate |
| 30 and up | 9L - 158 | 112 and rising | 9 XP more each level |
Adding those costs up gives the cumulative totals that matter for farming: level 15 is 315 total XP, level 16 is 352, level 30 is 1,395, and level 50 is 5,345. The jump from 30 to 50 alone is 3,950 XP, nearly triple the cost of reaching 30 from scratch, which is why most players farm to 30, spend it enchanting, and repeat rather than banking high levels.
The farm calculator multiplies your kills per hour by the mob's XP reward to get XP per hour, then walks the level formula upward from your starting level to count how many whole levels that buys. Because each level costs more than the last, the same XP per hour yields fewer levels the higher you start. As a baseline, 1,000 zombies per hour at 5 XP each is 5,000 XP per hour, which takes you from level 0 to level 48 (with 212 XP into level 49). Start that same hour at level 30 and you gain far fewer levels because every level past 30 costs 112 or more.
For comparison, the tool reads real furnace smelting XP from the recipe data: an iron ingot is worth 0.7 XP, a gold ingot 1, and cooked food 0.35, all collected when you take the item out of the furnace, not while it cooks. A thrown bottle o' enchanting releases 3 to 11 XP (about 7 on average). Stacked against a mob farm those trickle in slowly: the same 5,000 XP per hour would need about 7,143 iron smelts or roughly 714 bottles, which is why a dedicated mob farm is the fastest route to enchant-ready levels.
In practice, blaze farms (10 XP each) and guardian farms (10 XP each) hit the highest sustained rates, while a basic mob spawner or a dark mob-grinder of 5 XP mobs is the easy early-game option. Enderman platforms in the End reach level 30 fastest of all when you can attack safely, since spawn rates there are very high.
Most hostile mobs drop 5 experience orbs when killed by a player: zombies, skeletons, creepers, spiders, endermen, witches, and pillagers all give 5. Blazes, guardians, elder guardians, evokers, and breezes give 10, while piglin brutes and ravagers give 20. Endermites and vexes give 3. Slimes and magma cubes scale with size, dropping 1, 2, or 4. Passive mobs like cows and pigs give 1 to 3, and the iron golem gives 0.
Reaching level 30 from level 0 takes 1,395 total experience points. This is the sum of every per-level cost from 0 to 29 using the in-game formula. Level 30 is the enchanting cap, so it is the level most players farm toward before using an enchanting table.
The Ender Dragon gives the most by far: 12,000 XP the first time you defeat it, then 500 on each respawn. Among repeatable kills, piglin brutes and ravagers lead at 20 XP each, followed by blazes, guardians, elder guardians, evokers, and breezes at 10 XP. Blaze farms and guardian farms are still the standard high-rate XP sources because those mobs are far easier to farm at scale.
No. Looting only increases item drops, never experience. The only way a mob drops extra XP is if it spawned carrying equipment such as armor or a weapon: each equipped item adds 1 to 3 bonus XP when that mob is killed. The base XP reward itself is fixed per mob type.
The XP needed to go from level L to L+1 has three bands: 2L + 7 below level 15, 5L - 38 from 15 to 29, and 9L - 158 from level 30 up. So level 0 to 1 costs 7 XP, level 14 to 15 costs 35, level 15 to 16 costs 37, and level 30 to 31 costs 112. Each level past 30 gets 9 XP more expensive than the last.
Mob farms scale much faster. A single iron smelt gives 0.7 XP and a gold smelt gives 1, while one common mob gives 5 and a blaze gives 10. Smelting and cooking XP is a useful side benefit when you process ore and food, but for raw levels per hour a mob farm wins, which is why the calculator above compares the two side by side.
Planning levels and enchanting instead? Or browse more Minecraft tools: