Sword Damage Calculator

How to use it

1. Choose the weapon and the target type.
2. Set Sharpness or Smite and Bane, critical hits and Strength.
3. Compare every material: damage per hit, hearts and damage per second.

Good to know

• A critical hit (falling) multiplies the base damage, not the enchantment bonus.
• Wait for the attack cooldown: spam-clicking deals much less damage.
• Smite beats Sharpness only against undead.

Related: Sharpness vs Smite, Best sword enchantments, and the enchantment calculator for the cheapest anvil order.

How melee damage works

A fully charged hit deals the weapon's attack damage. A critical hit (while falling) multiplies that by 1.5. Enchantments are added on top: Sharpness adds 3 at level V, Smite and Bane of Arthropods 12.5 against their targets. Strength adds 3 per level. Attack damage and speed here come from the game's item data.

How to read the table

• Attack is the weapon's base damage from the game data, before any bonus.
• Speed is how many fully charged attacks you can make per second.
• Per hit adds your enchantment, the critical bonus and Strength to the base.
• Hearts is per hit divided by two, since one heart is 2 health.
• Per second is per hit times speed. It assumes you wait for a full charge every time.

Copper tools sit between stone and iron. A copper sword hits for 5, like stone, but it has 190 durability against 131 for stone. It also takes enchantments far better, with enchantability 13 against 5.

Worked example: a netherite sword

A netherite sword has 8 attack damage. Sharpness V adds 0.5 per level plus 0.5, which is 3. So a fully charged hit deals 8 + 3 = 11 damage, or 5.5 hearts.

A critical hit multiplies only the base: 8 × 1.5 + 3 = 15. Strength II adds 6 to the base before the critical bonus, so a crit with Strength II deals 24.

Damage per second is damage per hit times attack speed. The sword swings 1.6 times a second, so it deals 17.6 per second. A netherite axe hits for 13 but swings only once a second, so it deals 13 per second. Still, the axe has one trick the sword lacks: a hit on a raised shield disables it for 5 seconds.

Attack cooldown

Each swing needs a full charge of the attack meter. A sword recharges in 0.63 seconds, and a netherite axe in 1 second. The calculator always assumes a full charge.

If you click early, the base damage drops to 0.2 + 0.8 × charge². So a half-charged hit keeps only 40% of the base, while the enchantment bonus scales with the charge itself. For example, a half-charged netherite sword hit with Sharpness V deals 4.7 instead of 11.

When a hit counts as critical

• You must be falling, so jump and hit on the way down.
• The attack meter must be nearly full, above 90%.
• You can't be sprinting, swimming, climbing a ladder or vine, or riding a mob.
• Blindness blocks critical hits too.
• Look for the star-shaped particles: they show the hit was critical.

Smite, Bane and the right target

Smite adds 2.5 per level against undead mobs, so Smite V adds 12.5. A netherite sword with Smite V hits a zombie for 20.5, against 11 with Sharpness V. Undead include zombies, skeletons, drowned, phantoms, withers and zombified piglins.

Bane of Arthropods works the same way against spiders, cave spiders, bees, silverfish and endermites. Both only help against their mobs, and they exclude Sharpness. So for one all-round sword, Sharpness still wins. See Sharpness vs Smite vs Bane for the full comparison.

Common mistakes

• Expecting Sharpness on the mace or the trident. They can't take Sharpness in survival, so the calculator leaves it out for them.
• Judging the mace by this table. Its real damage comes from the smash attack, so use the mace damage calculator instead.
• Reading the spear row as its best hit. The table shows a normal jab with 5 base damage for netherite, not the charged attack you get while moving fast.
• Forgetting the target's armor. These numbers are before armor, so run big hits through the armor calculator to see what lands.
• Comparing per-hit damage only. Against crowds or fast mobs, damage per second matters more. See the best sword enchantments for a full build.