What is the PPLNS window and how long is it?

The PPLNS window is the set of recent mining shares your pool counts when it divides a block reward. Its length is usually measured in shares or submitted work, not a fixed number of hours, so how long it lasts depends on the pool’s rules and how quickly miners submit work.

What the window counts

PPLNS means Pay Per Last N Shares. A share is a piece of mining work you send to a pool to prove that your device is contributing. Most shares do not create a Monero block, but they let the pool measure your contribution.

When the pool finds a block, it looks back over its reward window. Your payment depends on how much of the counted work belongs to you.

Think of it as a moving line of tickets:

• New shares enter at the front.
• Older shares eventually fall out of the back.
• When a block is found, the shares still inside the window determine who gets paid.

A share can count toward more than one block reward if the pool finds several blocks before that share leaves the window. It can also earn nothing if no block is found while it remains eligible.

How long the window lasts

There is no single PPLNS window length that applies to every Monero pool.

A pool might define its window as:

• A fixed number of shares.
• An amount of work tied to Monero’s network difficulty, which measures how hard it is to find a block.
• A pool-specific variation that uses a time limit or other rules.

Pools can also accept shares with different difficulty levels. In that case, they generally count the work those shares represent, rather than treating every share as an equal ticket.

For a work-based window, the rough calculation is:

Window duration = work included in the window ÷ pool’s work rate

The pool’s work rate is its hashrate, meaning how many mining calculations its miners perform each second. More pool hashrate generally fills the same work-based window faster. Less hashrate makes it take longer.

Monero’s roughly two-minute block time does not mean your pool has a two-minute PPLNS window. That block time applies to the whole network.

Reading a pool’s window setting

You may see a setting such as “PPLNS 2× network difficulty.” This generally means the pool counts recent work equal to twice the average work needed to find a network block.

For example, if a pool were expected to find one block every three hours, a window covering twice that work would span roughly six hours at a steady hashrate. That is an illustration, not a prediction for a particular pool.

Check the pool’s explanation for:

• What “N” measures.
• Whether shares are weighted by difficulty.
• Whether the window changes as network difficulty changes.
• Whether the displayed duration is an estimate or a fixed rule.

What happens when you start or stop

When you start mining, your shares gradually build up inside the window. You do not necessarily need to fill an entire window before earning a reward.

When you stop, your existing shares may remain eligible until newer work pushes them out. You could therefore receive rewards after disconnecting.

The window is separate from block maturity, payout thresholds, and payment schedules. It determines which work earns a share of a reward—not when that reward reaches your wallet.

The bottom line

Check your pool’s own PPLNS definition. Unless it explicitly uses a fixed time window, any duration in hours is an estimate that can change as mining activity changes.