How to Trade with Villagers in Minecraft and Get Cheap Deals

Walk up to a villager that has a job and use it (right-click, or tap on mobile). The trade menu opens with a list of offers. Pick one, put in what it asks for (usually emeralds or a stack of something), and take the result. Trading earns you XP, earns the villager XP toward its next level, and over time makes it cheaper.

This page is about the trading itself: getting emeralds, leveling villagers, restocking and discounts. For the list of jobs and the block that gives each one, see all villager jobs and workstations. For villager behavior and stats, see the villager page.

Who you can trade with

Only villagers with a profession trade. You can tell by their clothes: a librarian has glasses and a book, a farmer a straw hat, a butcher an apron. Two kinds have nothing to offer:

• Unemployed villagers wear a plain brown robe. Place a workstation near one and it takes that job.
• Nitwits wear a green coat and never take a job. On Java they shake their head when you try; on Bedrock nothing happens.

The wandering trader, the blue-robed visitor with two llamas, also trades but works differently. It has no levels, never restocks and leaves after a while. It’s the main source of name tags since 26.1 (1 emerald each), plus saplings, flowers, dyes and other rare-ish blocks.

Getting emeralds

You need emeralds for almost every useful purchase, and mining emerald ore won’t keep up. The good news is that every villager job has at least one trade that buys something from you. On Java, novice-level buy trades include:

Villager	Buys (for 1 emerald)
Fletcher	32 sticks
Librarian	24 paper
Cleric	32 rotten flesh
Farmer	20 wheat, 26 potatoes, 22 carrots or 15 beetroot
Fisherman	20 string or 10 coal
Shepherd	18 wool
Armorer	15 coal

Bedrock’s amounts are similar but not identical.

The best emerald sources are the ones you can farm without effort. Sticks come from any tree farm. Paper comes from a sugar cane farm, and that pairs perfectly with librarians: sell them paper, buy enchanted books back. Rotten flesh piles up at any zombie farm.

Leveling villagers up

Every villager has five levels, shown by the badge on its belt: Novice (stone), Apprentice (iron), Journeyman (gold), Expert (emerald) and Master (diamond). Each trade fills the progress bar at the top of the trade menu. When it fills, the villager glows with a short burst of regeneration and unlocks new offers.

Java adds up to two new trades per level, for up to 10 in total. Bedrock fills fixed slots, so the number varies by job.

The quickest way to level a villager is to repeat its cheapest trade. A librarian buying 24 paper per emerald levels up fast if you have a chest of paper. The trades worth leveling for:

• Librarian: enchanted books at every level, including Mending. Prices run from 5 to 64 emeralds depending on the enchantment and level. Master librarians also sell candles (the name tag trade was replaced in 26.1).
• Armorer, toolsmith, weaponsmith: enchanted diamond gear at Expert and Master. That’s diamond armor and tools without mining a single diamond.
• Cleric: ender pearls and bottles o’ enchanting at the higher levels.
• Farmer: golden carrots, the best regular food in the game.

Locking in trades

A villager’s offers aren’t fixed until you trade with it. Before your first trade, break its workstation and place it again to reroll the job’s novice offers. This is how players hunt for a Mending librarian: break and replace the lectern until Mending shows up, then buy something to lock it.

After one trade, the job and the offers are locked for good. Breaking the workstation afterward doesn’t change the job or the offers, though the villager needs a workstation again before it can restock.

Restocking

Each trade has a limited stock, often 12 or 16 uses. When it runs out, the offer is crossed out (Java shows a red X, Bedrock turns the slot red). Villagers restock up to twice per day, but only by working at their own workstation during work hours.

• Java: the villager needs to reach its workstation.
• Bedrock: it also needs a bed it’s linked to. It doesn’t have to sleep in it, but no bed means no restock.

This is the most common reason a trading hall stops working: a villager boxed in a cell with its workstation out of reach, or on Bedrock, with no bed claimed.

Prices also rise with demand. If you buy out a trade every day, the price goes up after the next restock. Leave it alone and it drifts back.

Discounts

Prices drop as a villager’s opinion of you improves. Three things move it:

1. Trading. Every trade gives a small, temporary boost.
2. Curing a zombie villager. This is the big one. A villager you cure gives you a large permanent discount, often bringing trades down to a single emerald. Nearby villagers give you a smaller discount too: on Java through gossip, on Bedrock to villagers within about 16 blocks. Curing the same villager a second time adds nothing. Our zombie villager cure guide covers the steps and the zombify-and-cure trick.
3. Hero of the Village. Win a raid and you get this effect for a while. It cuts prices by 30% at level I, rising 6.25% per extra level (from bad omen levels) to 55% at level V, from every villager in the village. On Java, villagers also throw you gifts while it lasts.

Hurting villagers does the opposite. On Java, attacking or killing them raises your prices and spreads through the village, and iron golems may turn on you. On Bedrock, negative reputation doesn’t raise prices.

Java and Bedrock differences

• Offers: Java picks two random trades per level; Bedrock uses fixed slots with a random pool for each. Prices and some items differ, so a Bedrock librarian won’t match a Java guide exactly.
• Restocking: Bedrock villagers need a linked bed to restock; Java villagers don’t.
• Bad reputation: raises prices on Java only.
• Nitwits: on Bedrock, some baby villagers grow up as nitwits; on Java they only appear in generated villages or from cured zombie villagers.
• Trade rebalance: Java has an optional Villager Trade Rebalance experiment that ties librarian books to the village’s biome and changes other trades. It’s off unless you turn it on when creating a world, so most guides (and this one) describe the default trades.

Building a trading hall

Once you’ve found good trades, you’ll want more villagers in one place. Breed villagers with spare beds and food, move them into small cells with a workstation each, and keep a zombie handy if you plan to cure them for discounts. A hall of five librarians with different books, a cured armorer and a cured toolsmith covers almost everything you’d otherwise mine or enchant for, and the Mending book alone pays for the effort.