Villager trades by tier: Expert has the most, Master has the fewest
291 villager trades across 15 professions in 26.2. Level 4 carries 93 of them and level 5 only 27 — and there are 2.5× more ways to spend emeralds than to earn them.
"Level them to Master" is the standard advice, and the trade tables do not support it. Every number here is counted from Mojang's shipped villager trade data for 26.2 — the same files the browser on this page reads — with the Wandering Trader's 97 offers excluded, since it has no profession and no levels.
291 trades, and the peak is tier 4
| tier | trades |
|---|---|
| 1 · Novice | 44 |
| 2 · Apprentice | 70 |
| 3 · Journeyman | 57 |
| 4 · Expert | 93 |
| 5 · Master | 27 |
Expert carries more than three times what Master does. Master is the narrowest tier in the game — it is where a handful of specific offers unlock, not where the catalogue opens up.
That reframes the levelling grind. Getting a villager from Expert to Master is worth doing when you want one of those 27 specific trades and not otherwise; the breadth you are probably picturing already arrived at tier 4.
Max uses has only three values
Across all 291 trades there are exactly three restock limits:
- 12 uses — 184 trades (63%)
- 16 uses — 91 trades
- 3 uses — 16 trades
So the default mental model of "about a dozen before it locks" is right for roughly two thirds of everything, and the interesting cases are the 16 trades capped at 3. Those are the ones that will lock almost immediately if you trade against them in bulk, and they are worth identifying before you build a trading hall around one.
The economy runs one way
- 207 trades cost emeralds — you are buying.
- 81 trades give emeralds — you are selling.
Two and a half times as many ways to spend as to earn. A villager hall that only buys will run dry, and the 81 selling trades are the constraint on the whole system, not the 207 buying ones. Work out your emerald income first; the spending options will still be there.
Profession breadth is wildly uneven
Counting every trade a profession can ever offer:
shepherd 86 · mason 46 · cartographer 31 · fisherman 16 · armorer 15 · librarian 15 · farmer 14 · toolsmith 13 · fletcher 12 · leatherworker 12 · butcher 11 · cleric 11 · weaponsmith 6 · smith 3
Shepherd alone is nearly a third of every villager trade in the game, because it has an offer for each wool and dye colour. Weaponsmith has six. If a profession feels thin, that is usually because it genuinely is — not because you have not levelled it far enough.
Reading it in the tool
The browser on this page filters all 388 rows — the 291 above plus the Wandering Trader's 97 — by profession and level, with what each side wants and gives. The Wandering Trader is worth looking at separately: it is the single largest trade list in the game and it belongs to no tier at all.