Best Stranger Things characters

Max leads the Stranger Things ranking with 1321 ELO points over 1027 duels, ahead of Dustin and Steve.

The top three contenders cluster tightly, but the sharpest gap appears between ranks 2 and 3, where 21 ELO points separate Dustin from Steve. Max wins 63% of her duels, a commanding performance that sets her apart at the summit. Dustin follows with 1302 points and a 61% win rate across 1055 duels, while Steve claims third place with 1281 points. Robin sits just below Eleven in fifth place despite a lower win rate of 51%, while the show's protagonist herself lands at rank 5 with 1274 points after 1132 duels. At the bottom, Billy languishes in last place with a 30% win rate and 1007 points, trailed closely by Jonathan at rank 12 with just 1018 points, suggesting these characters have struggled to win over the community.

This ranking draws on 13106 duels submitted by 408 players across 13 contenders. The figures reflect votes recorded as of 10 October 2026. Head to VAINKEURZ to cast your own votes and shape the leaderboard: every duel shifts the standings, and the next update could shuffle the order. Who deserves the top spot in Hawkins? Your vote counts.

Updated on October 10, 2026

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.

How our rankings are made →