Best Furnace Fuel in Minecraft

Quick answer

• Lava bucket smelts the most: 100 items from one bucket.
• Block of coal = 80 items, dried kelp block = 20, blaze rod = 12, coal = 8.
• For a never-ending supply, set up a kelp farm and turn it into dried kelp blocks.

Not all fuel is equal. One lava bucket does the work of more than 12 pieces of coal. Here's what's actually worth putting in your furnace.

Furnace & Fuel CalculatorCalculate Minecraft smelting fuel, time and leftovers using furnaces, smokers or blast furnaces→

Fuel ranked

Fuel	Items smelted	Good for
Lava bucket	100	Big batches, and you keep the bucket
Block of coal	80	Stacking up loads of fuel in few slots
Dried kelp block	20	Renewable fuel from a kelp farm
Blaze rod	12	Only if you have spares from a blaze farm
Coal or charcoal	8	Everyday smelting
Logs or planks	1.5	Your first night, nothing else
Bamboo	0.25	Emergencies (4 bamboo per item)

Why coal blocks beat coal

9 coal smelts 72 items. Craft them into 1 block of coal and it smelts 80. That's about 11% more for free, and it saves inventory space.

The kelp trick

Dried kelp blocks are renewable, but there's a catch. You have to smelt kelp to get dried kelp first, and that costs fuel.

Still worth it with an automatic kelp farm, because you never have to mine anything.

Furnace, smoker or blast furnace?

• Furnace: smelts anything, 10 seconds per item.
• Smoker: food only, twice as fast.
• Blast furnace: ores and metal gear only, twice as fast.

Smelt faster with more furnaces

Fuel doesn't speed anything up. More furnaces do. 8 furnaces fed by hoppers smelt a stack of iron in about 80 seconds instead of over 10 minutes.

Cheat sheet

• Best fuel: lava bucket (100)
• Best stackable fuel: block of coal (80)
• Best renewable fuel: dried kelp block (20)
• Use a blast furnace for ores and a smoker for food

Furnace & Fuel CalculatorCalculate Minecraft smelting fuel, time and leftovers using furnaces, smokers or blast furnaces→