Computer Requirements: How Many Phones per PC
How many phones one computer can run depends less on the CPU than on how the phones are connected. This page gives recommended configurations, the measurements behind them, and what to check before you add more phones.
Minimum
- Operating system: Windows 10+, macOS 13+, or Ubuntu 22.04+ (64-bit).
- CPU: 4 cores.
- Memory: 8 GB RAM.
- Disk: an SSD.
Recommended phones per computer
| Computer | Example CPUs | Memory | Recommended phones |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | 4 cores / 8 threads (Intel Core i3-12100, AMD Ryzen 3 4100) | 8 GB | 15–25 |
| Mainstream | 6 cores / 12 threads (AMD Ryzen 5 5600, Intel Core i5-12400) | 16 GB | 40–50, up to 60 |
| High-end | 8 cores or more (AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, Intel Core i5-13600K) | 32 GB | 60–80 |
| More than 80–100 phones | — | — | Split the phones across several computers |
How many phones run tasks at the same time is also limited by your license's device concurrency, shown on the license screen in the app.
What these numbers are based on
We measured a Windows PC with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 (6 cores / 12 threads), 32 GB RAM and an NVMe SSD while 21 phones ran Super Marketing tasks:
- The whole computer used 11–14% CPU, of which TikMatrix itself used about 7%.
- TikMatrix used about 1.5 GB of memory in total.
- That works out to roughly 0.04 CPU threads and 70 MB of memory per phone. Most of the CPU goes to drawing the live screen previews in the device grid.
Load is not constant. It peaks when all phones start at once, when videos are transferred to the phones for posting, and when you open a device in Big Screen at high resolution. The recommendations above leave 3–5 times the measured load as headroom for those peaks.
What limits you first: connections
Before the CPU runs out, the connection to the phones usually does:
- Wi-Fi (wireless ADB): keep 20–30 phones per access point and use 5 GHz. To add more, add access points or move phones to USB. An overloaded access point shows up as phones going offline or tasks timing out, especially while posting videos.
- USB: use powered USB hubs with about 10 ports each, and plug the hubs into different USB controllers on the computer (for example, rear ports and front ports) instead of chaining them on one port.
- One computer, one ADB server: every phone on a computer shares the same ADB server. Beyond 80–100 phones it becomes the bottleneck, which is why larger farms should use several computers.
See Connect to Devices for USB and wireless setup.
Reduce the load per phone
- In Screen Cast Settings, choose a low Small Screen Resolution (240 or 360) and a low FPS. The screen previews are the largest CPU cost when many phones are connected.
- Make sure the computer's graphics driver is installed. Without a working graphics driver, the screen previews are drawn by the CPU instead.
Add phones in steps
Add about 10 phones at a time and watch Task Manager (Activity Monitor on macOS) while tasks run. If CPU stays below 70% at peak and tasks fail no more often than before, add the next batch.