Play count
Play count is the number of plays osu! has recorded for you in a given game mode — the osu! API describes the field as the number of maps played. A passed play always counts; a failed attempt counts too, as long as it got far enough to be treated as a real attempt rather than an instant restart. Retries on the same beatmap count separately, and plays on unranked but submitted maps count as well. Play count measures volume only: it drives medals and the play-history graph on your profile, but it has no direct effect on pp or rank.
What actually counts as a play
Not every attempt is registered. A passed play always counts. A failed attempt counts only if it got far enough to register as a real attempt, and rapid repeated submissions are suppressed.
osu!(stable) applies its own length validity checks before a score is recorded. The practical consequence is the same on both clients: hammering the retry key before the first notes arrive does not inflate your play count, and a genuine attempt that dies halfway through does.
Where play count appears
Play count is stored per game mode, so your osu!standard and osu!mania counts are separate figures, and it is aggregated in three ways that are visible on a profile.
- Lifetime total — the number shown in the profile header statistics.
- Monthly totals — each play is filed against the month it was started in, which is what the play-history graph on your profile draws.
- Per-beatmap totals — each play is also counted against the individual difficulty, which is what the Most Played Beatmaps list ranks.
Play count also unlocks the Dedication medals, which in the osu! game mode are awarded at 5,000, 15,000, 25,000 and 50,000 plays. The other three modes do not use play count for that category at all — osu!taiko counts drum hits, osu!catch counts caught fruit and osu!mania counts key presses.
Play count does not earn pp
The most common misreading of play count is that grinding it raises your pp. It does not. Profile pp is the weighted sum of your best plays plus a bonus term, and that bonus is calculated from the number of ranked scores the server counts for you — capped at 1,000 — not from your raw play count. The current server-side calculation adds:
416.6667 × (1 − 0.995min(n, 1000))
where n is that score count. It works out at roughly 164 pp at 100 scores, 383 pp at 500, and 414 pp at 1,000, against an asymptote of 416.6667 pp that the min(n, 1000) cap prevents you from reaching — the real maximum is 413.894 pp. The exact base has changed over the years, but the ceiling has stayed in the same place.
So a player with 200,000 plays spread across 400 distinct ranked maps receives the bonus for 400 scores. The plays themselves are worth nothing until one of them becomes a top play.
Play count against play time
Play count ignores map length entirely. A 40-second difficulty and a seven-minute marathon each add exactly one. Play time counts the seconds instead, which makes the pair informative together: a high play count against modest play time describes someone grinding short maps or retrying heavily, while the reverse describes someone playing long maps through.
The two statistics also share their validity rules, since the same check decides whether an attempt is tracked for count and for time. A restart three seconds into a map adds nothing to either. Comparing the ratio across sessions is a reasonable way to see whether your practice habits have shifted, without reading anything into either number on its own.
Play count in a TrackMyOsu session
TrackMyOsu refreshes your stats every 60 seconds while a session is running and records play count in each snapshot alongside pp, rank and the score totals.
See also
- Play time — Cumulative seconds spent in osu! gameplay, reported per game mode.
- Total score — Every submitted score added together, including failed attempts and repeats.
- Medal — A one-off osu! achievement unlocked for a specific feat, across eight categories.
- Top play — One of the highest-pp scores on your profile; best performance keeps one per beatmap.
Related guides
Longer explainers that use this term: browse all osu! guides, or start with Understanding osu! pp, How to read your osu! stats and Star rating explained.
Sources
Definitions follow the official osu! wiki and the ppy/osu source. Session figures come from TrackMyOsu's own tracked-session database.
By carrot12_. Last updated 2026-08-13.
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