The connecting record
shownDragon Ball (manga) · ch. 384–385
Cell beat Vegeta in Dragon Ball (manga).
The Final Flash blows away Cell's arm and the right side of his torso, which he regrows; Vegeta is knocked out of his transformed state and unconscious before Trunks steps in.
What each of them is ranked on
The winner · Cell · rank 11
Perfect form — anime · manga
The most instructive absence on the page. He is the apex threat of an entire era and there is no well-attested official figure for him anywhere — the numbering had already been dropped by the time he arrived, so the franchise's central villain of the period was never priced at all. What he does is shown clearly enough: he holds the field against everyone present until a boy who had not been the protagonist takes it off him.
shownDragon Ball Z · Cell Games Saga
Defeated by Gohan after overwhelming the assembled fighters. — 1993
Beaten · Vegeta · rank 6
manga · anime · films
Ultra ego is the more interesting of the two late states because it is built on a different principle — damage taken converts into output, so the longer he loses the harder he hits. It is manga-only and has never been animated. The record shows the mechanism working, then shows it insufficient against the Frieza who closes that same arc, inside the arc that introduced it.
shownDragon Ball Super (manga) · Granolah the Survivor arc
Fights in ultra ego, converting damage sustained into power. — 2022
shownDragon Ball Z · Buu Saga
Sacrifices himself in an attempt to destroy Majin Buu. — 1994
What this does not settle
One fight in one work. It is the only result the record gives between these two, and it is evidence about that meeting and nothing wider — not a general matchup, not a rematch, and not a ranking of its own.
The ladder above it is argued from everything either of them has been shown doing; this page is argued from one citation.
Where the two disagree, the disagreement is the point, and it stays visible rather than being resolved by whichever of them happens to be on this page.