Prison, skyblock, OneBlock or gens: which grind fits you

Prison, skyblock, OneBlock and gens are four versions of the same promise: start with almost nothing and grind an economy upward. Pick prison for a fast, simple loop of mining and ranking up, skyblock to build a whole base from scratch on an island, OneBlock for a guided take on skyblock where a single block feeds you, and gens for a tycoon game where machines earn while you trade and upgrade.

All four are small niches on our list, and most of their players sit on a few networks that run several of them at once. Right now 9 of the 21 listings with any of these modes have been playable in the last week. The skyblock, prison, OneBlock and gens lists show which ones are up.

One warning holds for all four: they depend on a fair store more than most modes, because nearly every advantage in them is a number someone could sell.

The four grinds in one table

Every server changes the details, so treat the table as the shape of each mode, not a promise about any one server.

Prison: ranks and mines

Prison is the most direct of the four. You mine in the best mine your rank allows, sell the blocks, and buy the next rank, from A up to the last rank, often called Free. At the top, prestige resets your rank in exchange for a permanent bonus, and the climb starts again.

The whole mode runs on one line of arithmetic: money per minute is blocks per minute times sell price times your multiplier. Because the three multiply, the best upgrade is whichever one is cheapest to double, which is usually your pickaxe. That makes prison the most readable grind of the four, and the one where a paid multiplier hurts fairness the most.

Our full explainer, how prison servers work, covers ranks, prestige math, enchants and the signs of a fair server.

Skyblock: your island

Skyblock began as a survival challenge map that Noobcrew released in September 2011: one small island, one tree, one chest and the void underneath. Servers turned it into a multiplayer mode where everyone gets their own island in a shared void world, usually with plugins such as BentoBox (its skyblock mode is called BSkyBlock), SuperiorSkyblock2 or IridiumSkyblock.

What servers add to the original map:

• Island level. Blocks on your island have point values, and the total sets your level. /island level (or /is level) recalculates it, and /island top shows the leaderboard. Expensive blocks count for more, so top islands are as much vaults as bases.
• Teams. You can invite friends to share an island with /island team invite <player> on BentoBox servers, or /is invite <player> on many others. Coop and trust settings let visitors help without owning the island.
• Upgrades. Bigger island borders, more team slots and better generators, bought with money or island points. On many servers the cobblestone generator can be upgraded to produce ores too, which changes the whole economy of the mode.
• Challenges. Tasks such as "collect 64 cactus" that pay rewards and guide what to build next.

One naming trap: Hypixel SkyBlock is a large RPG with its own items, skills and dungeons. It shares the name, not the gameplay. This section is about classic island skyblock.

Your first hour on a skyblock island

Commands below are the BentoBox forms, with /is as the short alias. Most skyblock plugins use similar ones, and /is help lists your server's versions.

1. Create your island with /island create or simply /is. If a menu offers several starting islands, the classic one is the safest for a first try.
2. Look before you break anything. Open the chest and read what you got. Do not dig the dirt under the tree, because dirt is scarce until you can make more.
3. Harvest the tree carefully. Break the logs, let the leaves decay, and catch every sapling and apple. Replant at once. One tree is your whole wood supply at the start.
4. Build a cobblestone generator. Dig a short channel, put water at one end and lava at the other, and let them meet in the middle. Flowing lava that touches water makes cobblestone, but water that flows onto the lava source turns it into obsidian, so check where the water will run before you pour the lava. Obsidian means your lava is gone, and lava is hard to replace this early. BentoBox and some other plugins let you scoop fresh obsidian back into lava with an empty bucket, but servers can switch that off, so do not count on it.
5. Expand with cobblestone. Widen the island and add a railing at the edges. Anything that falls into the void is gone for good, and if you fall in yourself, your inventory goes with you on most servers.
6. Start farms. More trees first, then any crops from the chest. Sugar cane needs dirt or sand right next to water. Light up your island with torches, so mobs spawn somewhere else instead of on your farms.
7. Set your home and read the menus. /island sethome, /island settings for what visitors may do, /island challenges where challenges are installed, and the server's shop or /shop to see what sells.
8. Invite friends early. Players on one island share every farm and generator, so a team island grows much faster than two solo ones, and one of you can farm while the other builds.

By the end of the first hour you should have a working generator, a growing tree farm and a slightly bigger island. Everything after that compounds: more cobblestone means more space, more space means more farms, and more farms mean more money for upgrades.

OneBlock: one block, many phases

OneBlock became famous in 2020 as a map by IJAMinecraft. You stand on a single block in the void. Break it and it comes back as something else: dirt, logs, ore, sometimes a chest or a mob. As you break more, the block moves through phases, each with its own blocks and creatures, so the world arrives in a set order instead of all at once.

On servers the usual plugin is AOneBlock, part of BentoBox. Its documentation lists the phases from Plains, Underground and Winter through Ocean, Jungle, Swamp, Dungeon, Desert, The Nether, Plenty, Desolation, Deep Dark and The End, with newer biome phases after that. When you finish the last phase, the default is to start over from the first, though servers can change that. Useful commands:

• /ob count shows how far you are in the current phase.
• /ob phases opens a menu of the phases.
• /ob check marks the magic block with particles, and puts it back if it has gone missing.

How it differs from skyblock in practice:

• Skyblock gives you a kit and asks you to make it last. OneBlock gives you a steady stream and asks you to keep up with it.
• The early game is gentler. You never run out of blocks, because the block always comes back. The danger is the void: mobs appear on top of the block, and one knockback at the wrong moment sends you and everything you carry into the void. Build a floor around the block before anything else, and leave space above it for whatever spawns there.
• Later it becomes skyblock. Once you have a platform, farms and a generator, the late game looks a lot like a skyblock island, with island levels and upgrades on many servers.

OneBlock suits players who like a sense of chapters. If you prefer to plan everything yourself from the first minute, classic skyblock fits better.

Gens: generators and tycoons

Gens, short for generators, is the most like a tycoon game of the four. You place generators, blocks that drop items every few seconds, sell what they make, and spend the money on upgrades: a higher tier for each generator, more generator slots, sometimes a bigger plot. The numbers grow fast, and much of the game is deciding whether to upgrade what you have or buy more of it.

Where the details matter:

• Offline income. On many servers generators only work while you are online, and sometimes only while you are near them. Some pay out while you are away. This decides whether gens fits your schedule, so check it first.
• Slot caps. The number of generators you can place is usually tied to your rank or level. If more slots are sold in the store, the store is selling income.
• PvP or peaceful. Some gens servers add PvP areas, events and raids on rival teams, others are purely peaceful.
• Commands differ. There is no single standard gens plugin, so the commands are whatever your server set up. /help and the server's Discord are the fastest guide.

Gens carries the highest pay-to-win risk of the four, because the whole loop is buying more income. A fair gens server sells cosmetics and convenience. A server that sells generator slots or permanent boosters is selling a head start that free players can never close.

Which one fits you

• You want progress you can see every minute: prison. Rank ups come quickly and the math is simple.
• You like building and planning: skyblock. Your island is your own design, and good farms pay off for months.
• You want direction without a rulebook: OneBlock. The phases tell you what comes next.
• You like idle games and trading: gens. Machines do the grinding, you make the decisions.
• You play with a group of friends: skyblock or OneBlock, where a shared island is the point.
• You can only play an hour a day: prison or OneBlock, which reward short sessions. Gens only suits you if generators earn while you are offline.
• You hate pay to win: any of them, on the right server. Read the store before you join. Our guide to making money within Mojang's rules explains what servers may sell, and how to choose a Minecraft server shows how to check uptime and player counts at your hours.

The numbers

We ping every listed server once a minute. Right now 4 prison servers are playable with 515 players, 7 skyblock servers with 751, 4 OneBlock servers with 608, and 2 gens servers with 83.

Mode	Listed	Playable now	Players now	Players, 7 day average	Busiest hour	Votes, 30 days
Economy	48	23	968	1,622	15:00 UTC	8,436
Skyblock	15	7	751	935	15:00 UTC	2,907
OneBlock	9	4	608	762	15:00 UTC	3,170
Prison	9	4	515	704	15:00 UTC	2,815
Gens	5	2	83	116	20:00 UTC	0

A server tagged with three modes counts in all three, so the rows overlap and do not add up to the network total.

Measured 19 Oct 2026, 22:55 UTCHow we measure

As of 18 October 2026, for the 7 days to 17 October:

Add up the first four rows and you get about 2,460 players. The last row says about 920 (live: 960). The difference is the most important fact about these modes on our list:

• The same networks run several of them. 4 of the 9 running listings carry two or more of the four tags, and they hold about nine in ten of the players. Live: 4 of 9 running listings carry more than one of these modes.
• One network holds most of the players. The biggest listing averaged about 570 players and carries fifteen tags, prison, skyblock and OneBlock among them. It also received about four in five of the votes in the last row. These numbers count players on servers that offer a mode, so the real number inside each mode is lower.
• Afternoons in Europe are busiest. Over the 28 days to 17 October, prison, skyblock and OneBlock servers all peaked around 15:00 UTC and were quietest around 02:00 to 03:00 UTC, with about half as many players. That is mostly the big network's own rhythm. Gens peaked later, around 21:00 UTC, and its busiest server declares the United States. In your time zone the four modes together peak at 15:00 UTC.
• Weekends are about 15% busier than weekdays for prison, skyblock and OneBlock, and about 23% for gens.
• Bedrock is common. At 00:54 UTC on 18 October, 6 of the 9 running listings also answered on their Bedrock port, though the biggest one is Java only. Live: 6 of 9. The Bedrock list shows every server that answers on Bedrock now, and our guide to joining a server on Bedrock shows how to add one.
• Few servers declare a season. Only two listings state a season length at all: one running server says five weeks for its skyblock, and one that has not been playable lately says 30 days. Ask on the server's Discord when the next reset is before you start a long grind.

Duplicate listings are counted once, and one listing that answered only with its host's "server not found" page is not counted as running. The wider economy servers, which share the money-first design of these modes, are in the chart above for comparison. How we measure is on the methodology page, and how every mode compares is in Minecraft game modes by the numbers.