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3D 4x4 Cube Puzzle Simulator

Play with the online 4x4 simulator on your computer or on your phone.

Pull any sticker and the layer under it turns with you, clicking into place once you pass a third of a turn. Grab nearer the middle for an inner slice.

The buttons scramble the cube or switch to full screen.

➤ Online Solver
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Error messages appear here when a cube is not colored properly.
3D preview: drag to rotate
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⟲ ◀ ▶ » 2.0 s/move Back to scramble
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4x4 Cube Solver

Get a complete solution for any scrambled 4x4 with the reduction method.

Paint the colors of your cube onto the net, press Solve and follow the moves.

Use the palette, the turn buttons or a typed algorithm. Lowercase or w means a wide turn.

➤ Stopwatch
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4x4 Cube Timer

Practice speedcubing on the big cube!

Hold your Space button or the clock until it turns green, then release to start. Press again to stop.

With scramble generator and instant statistics.

➤ Tutorial

How to Solve the 4x4 Cube?

The beginner's reduction method in five steps: make the big cube behave like a 3x3, solve it like one, and fix the two parity cases. Every diagram below shows the exact position it talks about.

A stickerless 4x4 cube on a corner, green face up, red and white faces showing

The 4x4, sold as the Rubik's Revenge, hides about 7.4 quattuordecillion positions - a 46-digit number. Don't let that scare you: the whole trick is reduction. First build the six centers, then glue the split edges together into pairs. From that moment the 4x4 turns exactly like a 3x3, and everything you know from the classic cube works.

The method below follows the same road as the excellent Ruwix 4x4 guide - keep it open in another tab if you want a second explanation of any step.

You should already know how to solve the 3x3. If not, start with our 3x3 tutorial first.

Rw

How to Read the Moves

The 4x4 uses the 3x3 letters - F front, R right, U up, L left, D down, B back - plus one new idea: a move can also grab an inner layer.

R
outer layer only

Rw
two layers together

Rw R'
inner layer only

A plain letter turns clockwise, an apostrophe (') counterclockwise, a 2 means a half turn. A w after the letter (Rw) takes the face and the inner slice next to it. When a sequence needs the inner slice alone, we write it as the pair Rw R' - and you can type it into our solver the same way.

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The Color Scheme

On the 4x4 the centers can move - nothing anchors them! Before building, learn where each color must go: white opposite yellow, green opposite blue, red opposite orange. And it is not enough to keep opposites apart: hold white up and green toward you, and red must be on the right.

from the front

the same cube from behind

Not sure while building? Find any corner piece: its three stickers always show a valid meeting of three faces. The corners cannot move off their diagonals, so they are your compass.

1

Solve the Centers

Each face needs a 2x2 block of one color in the middle - 24 center pieces in total, four per color. Build them in this order: white first, then yellow on the opposite face, then the four side colors according to the scheme above.

The working unit is the 1x2 bar. Join two centers of the same color into a bar, stand the bar in the right column of the front face, make (or find) the second bar on top, and stack them:

two white bars…

➔

…make a center

Rw U2 Rw'

The first two centers are free - nothing else is built yet, turn anything you like. From the third center on, protect your work: turn a wide layer out of the way, drop the bar in, turn that same layer straight back. The finished centers only leave their faces for a moment.

all six centers done

checked from behind

Double-check the scheme before moving on - a swapped pair of centers is invisible now but ruins the last layer later.

Ruwix Guide Next Step
2

Pair the Edges

Every edge of the 4x4 is split into two wing pieces. The goal of this step: join the halves of all 12 edges into solid pairs that travel together.

The main trick pairs two edges at once. Turn the outer layers (they never break centers) until the halves of one edge sit in the two top spots of the front-left and front-right edges, and the halves of another edge fill the two bottom spots - like the orange-green and red-green halves here:

matching halves at matching heights

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both edges solid

Dw R F' U R' F Dw'

The opening Dw carries the halves together, the middle three moves swap a finished pair out of the way, and the closing Dw' puts the centers back.

The head-on case. Sometimes the two halves refuse to line up: the same colors are there, but stacked the opposite way. Compare the picture below with the one above - the red halves are now on top. Use this sequence instead:

stacked the wrong way round…

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…the flip pairs them

Uw' R U R' F R' F' R Uw

Both sequences may stir up the top layer corners - that is fine, corners are step 3's problem. The same two pictures also solve the last two edges, where there is no spare edge left to borrow.

Ruwix Guide Next Step
3

Solve It Like a 3x3

Squint at the cube: each center block is one big center, each edge pair is one big edge. The reduction is complete - and from now on you turn only the outer faces. Never a lone inner slice, or you tear the pairs apart again.

Solve it with the beginner method you already know, in the usual order:

1. White cross - the four white edge pairs around the white center.
2. White corners - finish the first layer.
3. Second layer edges.
4. Yellow cross, then the yellow corners.

Every 3x3 sequence works move for move. The full walkthrough, with its own diagrams, is in our 3x3 tutorial.

Nine times out of ten the cube is now solved. If the last layer produces something a 3x3 could never show, that is not a mistake - it is a parity, and the last two steps cure it.

3x3 Tutorial Next Step
4

OLL Parity - a Flipped Edge

You are making the yellow cross, but only one or three yellow edges will come up - never all four. On a 3x3 that is impossible; on the 4x4 it means an edge pair got glued together "inside-out".

Hold the flipped edge at the front of the top face and run:

Rw2 R2 B2 U2 Lw L' U2 Rw' R U2 Rw R' U2 F2 Rw R' F2 Lw' L B2 Rw2 R2

It looks long because this page spells out every inner slice as a pair - each Rw R' is one inner-slice turn. Older guides write the same algorithm as r2 B2 U2 l U2 r' U2 r U2 F2 r F2 l' B2 r2, using a convention where a lowercase letter means the inner slice on its own. Do not type that shorter form into the box above: here, as in official WCA notation, a lowercase letter is the wide turn, so it would run a different algorithm and scramble your centers. It flips the front edge and touches nothing else.

Then finish the yellow cross and the corners as usual. This parity shows up in about half of all solves, so learn to spot it early.

Ruwix Guide Next Step
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PLL Parity - Two Edges Swap

Everything is oriented, but the last layer will not permute: exactly two edge pairs want to trade places - straight across or side by side - and no 3x3 sequence can do it. That is the second and last 4x4-only case.

Hold the two edges at the front and the back of the top face and run:

Rw2 R2 U2 Rw2 R2 Uw2 Rw2 R2 Uw2 U2

This swaps the front and back top edges and leaves everything else alone. If your two edges sit next to each other instead of across, do a normal 3x3 edge cycle first (for example R U' R U R U R U' R' U' R2) so they end up opposite, then run the parity sequence.

Two corners swapped instead of edges? Same medicine: run the sequence above, and the leftover position becomes a normal 3x3 case you can finish as usual.

Ruwix Guide Next
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What Next?

You now own the reduction method, and it scales: the 5x5, the 6x6 and every bigger cube is solved exactly the same way - centers, edges, then 3x3. Only the building takes longer.

Practice against the clock with our timer, or let the solver walk you through a scramble you are stuck on. For deeper theory - piece counts, notation variants, the history of the Rubik's Revenge - read the Ruwix 4x4 article we referenced throughout this tutorial.

3x3 Tutorial First Step
➤ Back to top

Online 4x4 Cube Puzzle Simulator, Solver, Timer and Tutorial

Free online 3D 4x4 cube puzzle simulator, reduction-method solver, speedcube timer and a five-step tutorial for beginners.
The 4x4 is also sold as the Rubik's Revenge or Master Cube, and it works like the classic cube, with movable centers and split edges.

The 4x4 is the natural next step after the 3x3. 🎲 It has 56 moving pieces and about 7.4 quattuordecillion possible positions - a number with 46 digits. Yet if you can solve the classic cube, you are already most of the way there: the reduction method turns the big cube into a 3x3 in two extra steps.

Spin the cube in the simulator

The simulator at the top of the page is a full 3D cube. Pull a sticker and its layer turns with your finger, snapping home once you are a third of the way round; grab next to the middle and you get an inner slice instead. Drag the background to spin the whole cube around. The Scramble button mixes it up, and the full screen button gives you a bigger view. Nothing you do here can break anything, so twist away.

Stuck? The solver shows a way out

Copy the colors of your scrambled cube onto the net in the solver, then press Solve. The program solves the cube the way a human does: centers first, then edge pairs, then the 3x3 stage, including both parity fixes. The solution usually runs to 120-165 moves - step through them one by one and your cube ends up solved. If a sticker combination is impossible, the solver tells you what looks wrong.

Race the clock

⏱️ Hold down the space bar, let go, and the timer starts. Press again to stop. On a phone, tap the clock instead. You get a fresh 45-move scramble for every solve - the same length competitions use, and the timer keeps your best time, your average, and your averages of 5 and 12, the same numbers speedcubers use at competitions. Your times stay saved in your browser.

Learn the whole solution in five steps

🎓 The tutorial below teaches the reduction method: build the six centers, pair the twelve edges, solve the result like a 3x3, and fix the two parity cases if they show up. The very same reduction method then scales straight up to the 5x5. If you know the classic cube, most people can learn this in a weekend.

What makes the 4x4 different from the 3x3?

Here is how the two cubes compare:

4x43x3
Moving pieces5620
Possible positionsabout 7.4×1045about 43 quintillion
Parity cases2none
Record single15.18 s
Tymon Kolasiński, 2025		2.76 s
Teodor Zajder, 2026

World records as recorded by the WCA, checked August 2026. They move often - the live list lives at worldcubeassociation.org.

OnlineCube.com also has the full 3x3 version and the little 2x2 version, each with its own simulator, solver, timer and tutorial. If the big cube feels like too much, those pages are the place to warm up.