Nobody asks which Hulk. They ask about the Hulk, and then argue because they are each thinking of a different one. So every entry here is one character, ranked from the state where they actually did the most — not the highest power level anyone has put on the page for them. A stronger form that was never used for anything is listed, and it is not the one the rank comes from.
The honest answer to who is strongest in Marvel is the Beyonders, and the honest reason is that they are the only ones who finished. They killed the Living Tribunal, then collapsed the entire multiverse by design, and the fix was somebody else salvaging what was left. Nearly everything else here is a threat that got interrupted.
Crowd ranking opens once enough matchups are in. Until then this is the evidence column alone — 20 ranked entries, argued from 54 citations.
Offices rather than people. Two of them have been killed, which tells you the job title is not the protection it sounds like.
Sits above the Living Tribunal and everything the Tribunal judges. He has no feats because nothing has ever opposed him, and the books are only half joking about who he is — he turns up drawn as Jack Kirby.
The Living Tribunal is said to answer to a power above himself. — 1967
Appears to Reed Richards wearing Jack Kirby's face. — 2004
The other end of the same being. It lives at the bottom of the Below-Place, it wants everything that exists to stop, and its route into this universe is the Hulk: every gamma death goes through its door and comes back wrong. It is up here rather than ranked because it almost never acts as itself — it works by possession. In one far-future timeline it wore the Hulk as the Breaker of Worlds and killed Franklin Richards, then Galactus, then everything else, because what it wants is to be alone.
Named as the inverse of the One Above All, dwelling at the base of the Below-Place.
In the far future it kills Franklin Richards, Galactus and Mister Immortal, until nothing else is left alive. — 2019
Possesses the Leader, who has stolen Banner's body, and is fought directly when it manifests.
The multiverse's judiciary, and the clearest demonstration on this page that rank and power are different things. He outranks nearly everyone in Marvel and was still found dead, killed by beings who did not recognise the court.
Introduced as the arbiter who maintains balance across the multiverse. — 1967
His body is discovered dead on the Moon, with no explanation for two years. — 2013
Not a being in the universe. The universe, given a shape so that characters have something to argue with. Thanos has beaten him and taken his place, and when the Chaos King came for everything, Eternity declined to fight on the grounds that they would both stop existing — which says less about him than about what this list is actually measuring.
Introduced as the personification of the universe itself. — 1965
Is defeated by Thanos wielding the completed Gauntlet, who then takes his place.
Not "threatened the multiverse". Ended it, or held what was left of it, or rewrote a species and made the rewrite stay.
They killed the Living Tribunal, they killed Celestials, and then they collapsed the entire multiverse to a schedule, universe against universe, until one was left. Nobody else here completed a plan that size. The contested tag is for the obvious objection: they barely qualify as characters, they have no dialogue, and their motive is never explained. The wreckage is still on the page.
Named as the killers of the Living Tribunal and the cause of the incursions destroying the multiverse. — 2015
The multiverse ends, leaving one patchwork world assembled from the survivors.
The most consequential character in Marvel that nobody puts on these lists. He starts as a man who is frightened of his own hands, and ends as the Beyonders' demolition charge — a version of him inside every universe, which makes him the mechanism the multiverse was destroyed with. He is also where Doom's godhood came from: he switches it off mid-fight, and then gives it to Reed Richards to rebuild the multiverse with.
A Molecule Man exists in every universe as the Beyonders' means of destroying it. — 2015
Cuts Doom off mid-fight, then hands the power to Reed Richards to rebuild with.
Everyone cites the Gauntlet. The Gauntlet is his second-best day. Holding the Heart of the Universe he erases all of existence, is talked out of it, and then puts the universe back exactly as it was including the people he had already killed. Then he erases himself, and Adam Warlock is the only one left who remembers any of it happened. The screen version does the smaller, better-told take on the same arc.
Wields the Heart of the Universe, erases all existence, then restores it whole.
Erases half of all living things with a gesture, then defeats Eternity.
Completes the Gauntlet and erases half of all life across the universe.
When the multiverse finished collapsing, Doom took what was left, stitched it into a single patchwork world and ran it as a god for eight years while the survivors were made to forget there had ever been anything else. He did not generate the power and it gets taken back off him. He is still the only person here who has been personally in charge of everything that exists.
Takes the Beyonders' power, assembles Battleworld from dead universes, and rules it as God Emperor.
Holds it together for eight years, having rewritten what its people remember.
When Onslaught apparently killed most of Earth's heroes, Franklin had already built them a working universe to be alive in, and it ran for a year of publishing before anyone worked out where they were. He was a child. The books are consistent that this is nowhere near his ceiling.
The pocket world the apparently dead heroes have been living in is revealed as his creation.
The mature Franklin restores and empowers Galactus, who becomes his herald. — 2012
Three words. "No more mutants" stripped the powers of roughly 98% of the mutants on Earth in an afternoon and left 198 of them, and the X-books spent a decade being about the hole it made. Before that she rewrote the world into one where mutants ruled and everybody simply remembered it that way. The screen version takes a town, which is the widest gap on this page.
Rewrites reality into a world ruled by mutants, with everyone's memories rewritten to match.
Strips the powers of roughly 98% of the world's mutants with one sentence; the survivors are later counted at 198.
Holds the town of Westview and its 3,892 residents inside a constructed reality against their will.
No character in Marvel has a wider spread between his worst state and his best, which is why arguing about "the Hulk" never resolves — everyone is holding a different one. He is this high for one property nobody else has: he cannot be permanently removed. Death is a door and it opens back the way he came, every time, and the proof is that his body is still walking around after the heat death of the universe. The asterisk is that by then it is not him walking. Breaker of Worlds is the One Below All wearing the corpse, Banner's soul having been destroyed to make room, which is why this entry is ranked from Devil Hulk instead — a possession only counts as your peak while you are still in there.
In the Ninth Cosmos the One Below All destroys Banner's soul, takes the body, and reshapes it into the Breaker of Worlds.
As Maestro, rules the last city on a post-nuclear Earth, having absorbed the radiation that killed everyone else.
Defeats the assembled heroes and occupies Manhattan.
Returns from every death through the Green Door, which opens onto the Below-Place.
Each of these can edit what is true inside their reach. What separates them from the tier above is reach, and how long the edit survived.
She eats a star. Not metaphorically and not off-panel: the D'Bari sun goes supernova with her inside it, five billion people die in the system, and the story treats that number as the reason she cannot be allowed to live. It is still the cleanest single act of destruction anyone in these books has been shown committing.
Consumes the D'Bari star, which goes supernova and kills the five billion people in the system. — 1980
The Shi'ar respond by treating her as a threat to the galaxy requiring her execution. — 1980
Predates the light. He forged a sword out of living darkness, took the head off a Celestial with it, and made the symbiote species out of his own body; when he finally arrived in person he covered the Earth and put most of its heroes under his control. Contested because nearly all of this was fitted into existing history in 2018, and a very good retcon is still a retcon.
Forges All-Black from living darkness and decapitates a Celestial with it.
Blankets Earth in darkness and takes control of most of its heroes.
A planetary death toll accumulated steadily across billions of years, framed by the books as metabolism rather than malice. Enormously destructive and almost never in control of anything, including himself, which is a different problem from the ones ranked above him.
Introduced preparing to consume Earth, with the worlds already eaten described rather than seen. — 1966
Given an origin as Galan of Taa, the sole survivor of a world killed by plague. — 1969
What comes out when the most powerful telepath alive absorbs the rage of the man he has just lobotomised. Onslaught took on the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men together, and stopping it required most of them to walk into it and apparently die — which is the event that produced Franklin's pocket universe seven entries above.
Xavier shuts down Magneto's mind, and Magneto's rage floods into his own. — 1993
Is stopped only when the assembled heroes throw themselves into him and are apparently killed.
A reality warper introduced as a joke and then played entirely straight. He rewrote a whole Earth into a distorted cartoon of itself, and the only thing that could stop him was the superhuman-killing machine he had built himself, which had to drag his counterpart into un-space where there was no reality left to edit. Reach, not output: he is nobody in a fight and he ended a planet anyway.
The Earth-238 Jaspers warps that world into a distorted version of itself, and builds the Fury. — 1982
His Earth-616 counterpart is killed by the Fury, dragged into un-space where there is nothing left to alter. — 1984
A collaborator out of a conquered future who got a look inside Galactus's own systems, rebuilt himself from what he found there, and then killed most of the assembled Avengers and Guardians in one engagement. He loses only because he chooses to stop, and the story ends with the heroes standing among their own resurrected dead, unsure they were right.
Kills most of the assembled Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy in one engagement. — 1978
Obtains his power by accessing Galactus's own systems aboard his ship.
A god of evil who concluded that existence itself was the mistake and set about correcting it from the outside in. He is the only entry here that Eternity declined to fight — not out of fear, but because Mikaboshi is the nothing that Eternity is defined against, and killing him would end them both. He is this far down for the opposite reason to everyone above him: Hercules put every single thing he destroyed back.
Overruns the realms of the dead and kills Nightmare; Eternity refuses to face him at all.
Amadeus Cho calculates that he has by then consumed most of the multiverse.
Planet-scale and upward, which has never once been enough on its own.
The baseline version is a god who has been fighting for a thousand years and it is nowhere near the top of his range. Rune King Thor gave up his second eye and hanged himself on the world tree to learn what the runes were, came down with enough of it to end the loop Asgard had been dying inside since the beginning, and then put the power away. The screen version's ceiling is a good afternoon at a forge.
Gives up his remaining eye and hangs himself on Yggdrasil for the runes, then unmakes the cycle of Ragnarök. — 2004
Withstands the full output of a neutron star to forge Stormbreaker.
Given a fraction of Galactus's power and sent ahead to find him meals, which he did, for years, before refusing. The Power Cosmic lets him restructure matter and cross galaxies. What he is remembered for is the one time he would not use it as instructed, and what that cost him.
Endowed with the Power Cosmic by Galactus and employed to locate inhabited worlds for consumption. — 1966
Turns on Galactus over Earth, and is stripped of his freedom of space and confined here for it. — 1966
He was genetically engineered to pilot a Celestial-killing machine and the machine turned him down — it wanted his brother. So he built his own one, eight reactors of it, and took that into a fight with the Dark Celestials instead. That is the whole character in one anecdote. On screen he takes the six stones off Thanos and uses them, which kills him — Banner had worn the same gauntlet an hour earlier and lived, so this is not a durability feat. It is a nerve feat, and so is the other one.
The Aspirants' Godkiller rejects Tony as a pilot; his brother Arno was the intended one.
Pilots the Godkiller Mk II, of his own construction, against the Dark Celestials. — 2018
Takes the Infinity Stones into a gauntlet of his own making and uses them, dying of it.
Written as having the power of a million exploding suns, which is marketing, and then given one act that is not: he takes hold of Ares in front of a live audience and pulls him into two pieces. The Void is why he is down here. He is a containment problem rather than a combatant, and every story about him is about who is standing by to switch him off.
Tears Ares apart with his hands in the middle of a battle.
His power is described as that of a million exploding suns.
The most consequential person here who is, on paper, a man with one power. He pulls the adamantium out through Wolverine's skin without touching him, and he has held nations to a deadline more than once. Down here because one power, however well used, has a ceiling the entries above it do not.
Extracts the adamantium from Wolverine's skeleton out through his skin, at a distance. — 1993
Seizes the Cape Citadel missile base single-handed in his first appearance. — 1963
Last, and here on one property only: he cannot be removed. Thanos cursed him with immortality out of jealousy, which means the strongest being on this page personally guaranteed that the weakest one outlives him. Every other entry here can be beaten by being killed. Nobody on this list has worked out what to do about Wade, and the one time a writer let him off the leash he cleared his entire universe.
Thanos, jealous that Death loves him, curses him with life so the two can never meet. — 2002
As Dreadpool, kills every hero and villain in his own continuity.
Nothing in that filter. Try Everything.