If you have played osu! for more than a few days, you have encountered the term PP — performance points. You have probably seen other players chase high PP scores, heard about "pp farming," and wondered what this metric actually means and how you can earn more of it. This guide explains everything from the ground up.

What Are Performance Points?

Performance Points (PP) are osu!'s primary skill ranking metric. Unlike older ranking systems that simply counted total score, PP attempts to measure how well you play, not just how much you play. Every time you complete a beatmap, osu! calculates a PP value for that play based on multiple factors. These values are combined across your best plays to produce your total PP, which determines your global rank.

The system was introduced to address problems with the original score-based ranking, where players could climb ranks by replaying easy maps thousands of times. PP changed the incentive: a single excellent performance on a hard map is worth more than hundreds of mediocre plays on easy maps.

How is PP Calculated?

Each play generates PP based on four primary components:

• Aim PP: Rewards accurate cursor movement — how precisely you hit circles and follow sliders. Maps with large jumps and complex patterns give more Aim PP.
• Speed PP: Rewards fast, consistent tapping. High-BPM stream sections and maps with dense note patterns contribute most to Speed PP.
• Accuracy PP: Rewards precise timing. The closer your hits are to the center of each timing window, the more Accuracy PP you earn. This component scales steeply — going from 95% to 99% accuracy can increase your Accuracy PP by 40% or more.
• Strain: A measure of how sustained and demanding the difficulty is throughout the map, built into the Aim and Speed calculations.

These components are combined with a weighted formula, then multiplied by:

• Your star rating — higher-rated maps give exponentially more base PP
• Your combo — full combos are significantly better than plays with misses
• Your mod multiplier — HD (+6%), DT (+12%), HR (+10%), FL (+12%)

The Weighting System — Why Your Total PP is Not the Sum of All Plays

This surprises many new players: your total PP is not the sum of all your plays. osu! uses a weighting system where each play contributes less and less to your total based on its position in your best-play ranking.

Your best play counts for 100% of its PP value. Your second-best counts for 95% (0.95×). Your third-best counts for ~90.25% (0.95²). And so on down to your 100th play, which counts for only about 0.6% of its value. This means improving your weakest top-100 plays gives you more total PP than replaying easy maps that are already in your list.

What Affects Your PP on a Single Play?

Understanding which factors most dramatically affect PP helps you make better decisions about what to practice:

• Star rating has the largest impact. PP scales faster than linearly with star rating — a 7★ map gives roughly 3× the PP of a 5★ map at equivalent accuracy.
• Accuracy above 97% gives disproportionate bonuses. The Accuracy PP component uses an exponent of 24 — meaning small accuracy improvements at the high end give large PP gains.
• Combo breaks are very costly. A single miss near the end of a map can cost you 10–20% of the PP you would have earned from a clean FC.
• Mods multiply everything. The mod multiplier is applied after all other calculations, so it scales with star rating, accuracy, and combo together.

How to Earn More PP

Effective PP farming is not about playing the most maps — it is about choosing the right maps and playing them well:

• Target maps 0.5–1 star above your comfortable level. You should be able to achieve 95%+ accuracy. Maps that are too hard will give low PP due to poor accuracy and combo breaks.
• Focus on accuracy. Even No Mod plays with 98–99% accuracy on a 6★ map can outperform modded plays with 90–92% accuracy on the same map.
• Learn Hidden first. HD's 1.06× multiplier is the easiest to acquire and stacks with everything else.
• Build toward Double Time. DT's 1.12× multiplier makes it the highest single-mod PP booster and the second most important skill to develop for rank climbing.
• Use the PP calculator before grinding. Estimate whether a potential play would improve your top 100 before spending hours on it. If the potential play ranks below your current 100th play in weighted value, it will not improve your total PP at all.

Common PP Misconceptions

Several beliefs about PP are widespread but incorrect:

• "I need to play with mods to get good PP." False. High-accuracy NM plays on difficult maps are very competitive. Mods help, but they are not required.
• "Score matters for PP." Score does not directly affect PP. Two plays with identical accuracy, combo, star rating, and mods give identical PP regardless of raw score.
• "All my plays add to my total PP." Only your top 100 weighted plays contribute meaningfully. After the 100th play, the contribution is negligible.
• "Playing more maps always helps." Playing many maps below your level does essentially nothing for PP once they are outside your top 100.