The paper recipe
Paper is crafted by placing 3 sugarcane in a single horizontal row in a crafting table. It does not matter which row you use: top, middle and bottom all work. The recipe produces 3 paper per craft, so the conversion is a perfect 1:1 with no material waste.
No tools are required to craft paper and there are no secondary ingredients. Sugarcane is a fully renewable resource that grows naturally beside water across most biomes, which makes paper one of the most sustainable materials in the game for large-scale projects.
- Works in the 2×2 inventory grid
- No
- Requires a crafting table
- Yes
- Yield
- 3 paper per 3 sugarcane
- Available in
- Java & Bedrock
- Tools required
- None
Crafting it step by step
If you have never made paper before, the whole process takes under a minute once you have found a water source.
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Step 01
Collect 3 sugarcane
Find sugarcane beside water and break the second block from the bottom, leaving the base in the ground so it regrows.
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Step 02
Open a crafting table
The 2×2 grid in your inventory is not big enough. You need the full 3×3 grid a crafting table provides.
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Step 03
Fill one horizontal row
Place the 3 sugarcane side by side across any single row. Vertical or diagonal placements will not produce anything.
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Step 04
Take your 3 paper
Drag the output into your inventory. Repeat as many times as you need, since the ratio never changes.
Where to find sugarcane
Sugarcane spawns naturally adjacent to water blocks in most biomes. It grows as tall green stalks 1 to 3 blocks high, always touching a water source at the base. If you are struggling to find it, head to any river, lake shore or beach, as these are the most reliable spawn locations. The four scenes below are the terrain shapes worth scanning for, drawn as you would see them from the shore.
Rivers
The most reliable biome for sugarcane. River banks are lined with it in almost every seed, so following a river usually finds you some within a minute or two.
Beaches and shores
Ocean beaches and lake shores frequently spawn sugarcane, especially at the waterline where sand meets water.
Desert oases
Desert biomes spawn sugarcane near any water source, which makes oases particularly valuable. You will often find large clusters around desert wells and lakes.
Swamps
Swamps have heavy water coverage and spawn sugarcane throughout. The dense water channels make them an excellent early-game source.
Harvesting tip. Always break the second block from the bottom, not the base. Breaking the bottom block destroys the whole plant. Breaking the one above it leaves the base intact so the sugarcane regrows on its own, giving you a permanent renewable supply from a single plant.
Sugarcane farming for large-scale paper production
If you need paper in bulk, whether for bookshelves, an enchanting setup or a server library, farming sugarcane beats foraging by a wide margin. Sugarcane grows up to 3 blocks tall and takes roughly 18 minutes per growth stage. Unlike most crops, bone meal does not work on sugarcane in Java Edition, so automation is the way to scale production rather than brute force. The two cross-sections below show the layouts worth building, viewed from the side.
Basic manual farm
Dig a water channel one block deep, then plant sugarcane on dirt or sand beside it. Harvest the top two blocks and leave the base. No replanting is needed, because the base regrows by itself. A checkerboard water layout fits the most plots into the space you have.
Automated observer farm
Place observers facing the sugarcane. They detect growth and trigger pistons, which push and break the top blocks, and hoppers underneath collect the drops. Once built it is entirely hands-free and keeps running while you play elsewhere.
Optimal farm design
- Water layout. Alternate water and farmland in a checkerboard pattern to maximise how many sugarcane plots fit per water block placed.
- Sand or dirt. Sugarcane grows at the same rate on both, so use whichever you have more of. There is no growth speed advantage either way.
- Multi-level farms. Stacking layers vertically triples production in the same floor space. Each layer needs its own water source row and its own observer and piston system.
How much paper do you actually need?
Before you start building a farm, it helps to know the target. The table below lists the common paper sinks, the sugarcane they consume and how many crafts that is.
| Goal | Paper needed | Sugarcane needed | Crafts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full enchanting setup (15 bookshelves) | 135 | 135 | 45 |
| 1 map | 8 | 8 | 3 |
| 1 firework rocket | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 1 cartography table | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 1 book | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 64 books (1 stack) | 192 | 192 | 64 |
| Full server library (est. 500 books) | 1,500 | 1,500 | 500 |
Books also require 1 leather each, so a full enchanting setup needs 45 leather on top of the 135 paper. Factor a cow farm into the plan if you are working towards level 30 enchanting.
Everything paper is used for in Minecraft
Paper is rarely the end product. It is an input into some of the most useful items in the game, which is why a steady supply matters more than a one-off stack. Each recipe below shows what a single craft costs you in paper.
Books and enchanting
3 paper + 1 leatherCraft books from 3 paper and 1 leather for bookshelves, enchanted books, written books, and books and quills. A full enchanting setup needs 45 books, which is 135 paper.
Maps and navigation
8 paper + 1 compassMake maps from 8 paper and 1 compass for locator maps, or 9 paper for a blank map. Maps matter most on large survival and multiplayer worlds.
Fireworks
1 paper + 1 gunpowderFirework rockets take 1 paper and 1 gunpowder, plus optional firework stars for effects. They are the fuel for elytra flight and the centrepiece of server events.
Cartography table
2 paper + 4 planksCraft a cartography table from 2 paper and 4 wood planks. Use it to clone maps, zoom out, lock a map and add banner markers, which is handy for server map rooms.
Banner patterns
Paper + bannerPaper is an ingredient in certain banner patterns when combined with other items, useful for faction flags and decorative banners on roleplay servers.
Villager trading
Paper to emeraldsLibrarian villagers accept paper in exchange for emeralds. On servers with an active economy, a large sugarcane farm becomes a renewable emerald income.
Paper on multiplayer servers
On multiplayer servers, paper stops being a personal crafting material and becomes shared community infrastructure. Enchanting setups need a serious paper investment, player-run economies use paper as a trading commodity through librarian villagers, and large roleplay or creative servers build entire libraries that run into thousands of books.
Education servers
Students write research projects and documentation as written books, so a large shared sugarcane farm quickly becomes community infrastructure.
Roleplay servers
Lore books, in-game newspapers, quest text and library builds all need large paper reserves to keep going.
Economy servers
Paper to emerald trading through librarian villagers is a viable passive income, so big farms turn into serious money-makers.
Survival SMP
Full enchanting setups, elytra firework fuel and community map rooms all depend on a reliable shared paper supply.
If you are planning that kind of build, a shared world needs to stay online for it to be worth the effort. Our Minecraft server hosting runs on hardware in our own UK data centre, with automatic backups so a library built over months is never one corrupted chunk away from disappearing.