Minecraft Reference & Calculators — Set 4

Naturally spawning hostile mobs spawn in a spherical shell between 24 and 128 blocks away from any player. Hostile mobs outside the 128-block radius despawn instantly, while those further than 32 blocks have a 1 in 800 chance to despawn each game tick.

On Bedrock Edition with a simulation distance of 4 chunks, mobs spawn between 24 and 44 blocks from the player. At a simulation distance of 6 chunks or higher, the spawning sphere expands to between 24 and 128 blocks from the player.

A monster spawner block activates only when a player stands within a spherical radius of 16 blocks. Once active, the cage attempts to spawn mobs within a horizontal area of 9x9 blocks centered on the spawner and ±1 block vertically.

You can adjust the mob spawn and despawn range on a dedicated Java server by modifying the simulation-distance setting in the server.properties file. In singleplayer, changing the Simulation Distance slider in Video Settings directly adjusts this active boundary.

Standard hostile mobs require a minimum spherical distance of 24 blocks from any player to spawn naturally. Mobs cannot spawn closer than 24 blocks unless generated by an active monster spawner cage, an ongoing raid, or a Nether portal event.