Two Numbers, Two Different Games
The official osu! wiki describes performance points as a ranking metric built from the difficulty of each beatmap and your performance on it, calculated from four core values: aim, speed, accuracy and strain. Each of the four game modes has its own algorithm and its own pp total, and aim is not part of the osu!taiko or osu!mania calculations at all. Your pp total is what places you on the performance rankings.
Profile level works nothing like that. The wiki’s total score page states that level is based solely on your total score: the sum of every score you submit, including failed attempts. Reaching level 100 takes 26,931,190,827 total score, and every level past 100 takes another 99,999,999,999. The osu! FAQ is blunt about what level means: it grants no advantage and no handicap — a level 100 player and a level 1 player differ only in skill and experience. Chase pp for rank; level is just a playtime odometer.
How PP Weighting and Bonus PP Work
Only your best plays move your rank, because pp uses a weightage system. The wiki gives the formula as total pp = p × 0.95^(n–1), where p is a play’s full pp value and n is its place in your Best Performance list. Your top play counts at 100%, the next at 95%, and so on down; the wiki’s own example turns top plays of 110, 100, 100, 90 and 80pp into weighted values of roughly 110, 95, 90, 77 and 65pp. Deep in the list, older plays fall below 1% of their value and effectively stop counting.
On top of that sits bonus pp for breadth: up to 413.894 bonus pp for setting scores on 1,000 different ranked maps, following the formula 416.6667 × (1 – 0.995^min(N, 1000)). The wiki notes that about 137 ranked scores already earn half of that bonus, so it arrives fast early and crawls later. A new account should treat those first hundred-plus ranked clears as free pp that has nothing to do with skill.
| Route | What it pays | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| New top plays | Weighted at 100% down to 95% for the next places | Scores that beat your current Best Performance entries |
| Bonus pp | Up to 413.894pp at 1,000 ranked scores; half by ~137 scores | One score each on many different ranked maps |
| Accuracy gains | An 80% full combo can be worth only 2/3 of a 95% play (wiki) | Cleaner hits on maps you already combo |
| Profile level | Level 100 at 26,931,190,827 total score | Any submitted play, passes and fails alike |
Ranking Up, Stage by Stage
Starting out. Play a wide variety of ranked beatmaps and bank the bonus pp above while you learn. The wiki’s own improvement advice is to play efficiently, settle on a play style that works for you, and build a handful of exceptional scores rather than farming hundreds of merely okay ones. At this stage almost any ranked full combo lands in your top plays, so variety beats repetition.
Climbing. Once easy maps stop paying — the weighting system is why, since new plays must beat the weighted value of what sits at the bottom of your top list — shift to maps slightly above your comfort zone and protect your accuracy on them. The wiki stresses that even 1% of accuracy makes a massive difference, and that full combos and SS plays give tremendous score. Short, retry-heavy sessions on one hard map pay less than consistent S grades across several maps near your limit.
Pushing higher. Your top plays now decide everything, so each session should hunt one or two scores capable of entering the top of the list at full or near-full weighting. Everything below that is practice: longer maps, streams and jump patterns that build the aim, speed and strain skills the algorithm prices, even when the plays themselves earn nothing yet.
Accuracy, Grades and Mods
Accuracy in osu! is a straight judgement count: a 300 is worth 100%, a 100 is worth 33.33%, a 50 is worth 16.67% and a miss is worth 0, per the wiki’s accuracy page. That is why accuracy dominates pp: the performance points wiki notes that a full combo at 80% accuracy can sometimes be worth only two-thirds of a score set at 95%. Grades tell the same story — in osu! an S needs over 90% 300s, at most 1% 50s and no misses, and an SS is a perfect 100%; silver S and SS grades require Hidden, Flashlight or Fade In.
Mods are the other lever, and the wiki ties each family to a core value. Double Time and Half Time change a map’s speed value directly. Hidden, Hard Rock and Flashlight make aim harder and, because the algorithm leans so heavily on accuracy, significantly raise the pp of high-accuracy plays. The practical use is replaying maps you can already full combo with HD or HR added: the map is the same, but a clean modded play is priced as a harder achievement. The trap is the reverse — the wiki warns you can actually lose pp when a higher-score play with worse accuracy overwrites a cleaner one, because total score decides which play is kept while pp follows the accuracy.
Only Ranked beatmaps award pp. The wiki’s beatmap category page is explicit: Qualified maps have leaderboards but award no pp and their scores are wiped when they leave Qualified, and Loved maps have leaderboards but no pp either. Hours spent on a favourite Loved map build skill and total score, never rank.
The 2024 and 2025 PP Updates
The pp algorithm is recalculated periodically, and the wiki warns that totals can jump up or down when a rework deploys. The October 28, 2024 update removed combo scaling for osu!: plays with the same number of misses now earn about the same pp wherever the misses fall, though misses cost more overall, with extra weight on the first miss that breaks a full combo. The same update improved rhythm complexity scoring and made sliders feed accuracy pp through slider head accuracy.
The October 29, 2025 update for osu!, taiko and catch raised the ceiling on the precision bonus: the small-circle bonus that starts at CS 5.5 used to cap at CS 6.5 and no longer does, so high-CS maps gained across the board — the news post lists Disasterpeace’s I Am Only a Man [Irre’s Extra] with DTHR rising from 9.33 to 11.12 stars. It also buffed rapid velocity changes such as cut streams, removed the same-rhythm requirement for angle bonuses (a gain for tech and DT alt patterns), rebalanced Hidden bonuses at high approach rates, and estimated slider breaks from ScoreV1 values so stable scores with hidden slider breaks stopped being overpaid. If your rank moved in late 2025 without you playing, that recalculation — which reprocessed every visible score — is why.
Common Mistakes
- Chasing profile level as if it were skill. Level comes from total score, fails included, so it measures time played, not rank.
- Grinding one easy map repeatedly. Weighting cuts each lower play by 5% a step, and plays deep in your list count for under 1%.
- Setting pp goals on Qualified or Loved maps, which award no pp at all.
- Overwriting a clean play with a higher-score, lower-accuracy one and losing pp in the process.
- Adding Double Time or Hard Rock before you can hold accuracy without them; the mod bonus only pays on accurate plays.
- Panicking when a pp rework moves your total. The October 2025 recalculation shifted ranks in both directions by design.
More osu! Guides
For the earning side of progression — which maps and habits build pp fastest once you understand the system — see our osu! performance farming guide. Game background, modes and rankings context live on our osu! game page. There is no buying guide for osu!: the game sells no power or progression, and pp cannot be purchased, so any site offering to sell rank or pp is selling account access against the game’s rules — the only route up the leaderboard is the weighted one above.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did I stop gaining pp from maps I used to farm?
Weighting. Each play below your top score counts for 5% less per place, and old plays eventually fall under 1% of their value. New pp has to come from plays that beat the weighted value at the bottom of your Best Performance list, or from the bonus pp for scoring on more ranked maps.
How much pp do you get just for playing lots of ranked maps?
Up to 413.894 bonus pp, reached at 1,000 ranked maps with a score set. The wiki’s formula is 416.6667 × (1 – 0.995^min(N, 1000)), and roughly 137 scores earn half of the maximum.
Does profile level do anything in osu!?
No. Level is based solely on total score — every submitted score counts, including failed attempts — and the osu! FAQ states there is no advantage or handicap at any level. Level 100 takes 26,931,190,827 total score.
Sources
Checked October 16, 2026. Game systems change with patches, so confirm numbers in game.
