The twelve questions people ask most, answered from our own database.
Every figure on this page is pulled live from the same database that powers our stat pages, so the answers here and the tables there can never disagree. Where reputable sources differ, we say so rather than pretending there is one settled number.
Cristiano Ronaldo has scored more. Our database records 965 goals for Ronaldo and 900 for Messi across their senior careers. Ronaldo is also two years older and has played roughly 1015 recorded appearances to Messi's 899, so the gap narrows considerably when you compare them at the same age rather than on the same date.
Lionel Messi, with 8 to Cristiano Ronaldo's 5. Messi holds the outright record for the most Ballon d'Or wins by any player in the award's history.
Our data has Messi on 160 and Ronaldo on 140. Ronaldo is very widely cited as the competition's all-time leading scorer, and different sources count qualifying rounds and the old European Cup differently, which is the usual reason two reputable sites disagree on this number.
Messi, comfortably. Our season data records 347 assists for Messi against 233 for Ronaldo. Assist totals vary more than goal totals between sources because there is no single universal definition of an assist.
Messi. His best recorded calendar year in our data is 82 goals; Ronaldo's best is 69. Messi's 2012 is widely recognised as the record for most goals in a calendar year.
By raw goals, Messi — his best recorded season is 73 goals against Ronaldo's 61. You can compare any two seasons directly on our season pages.
Messi, by a distance: 459 LaLiga goals to Ronaldo's 311. Messi spent his entire prime in Spain, while Ronaldo split his career across England, Spain, Italy and Saudi Arabia.
Messi has. He captained Argentina to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, winning the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player. Ronaldo has not won a World Cup, though he did win the 2016 European Championship and the 2019 Nations League with Portugal.
Our records have Messi scoring for 4 teams including Argentina, and Ronaldo for 6 including Portugal. Ronaldo's willingness to move leagues is one of the strongest arguments his supporters make for his adaptability.
It depends entirely on which opponents you count, which is why we publish the record against every individual club rather than a single cherry-picked list. Messi has the better record against Athletic Bilbao and Valencia; Ronaldo's is better against Sevilla and Juventus.
Three reasons, and they are all legitimate. Sources disagree on whether to include friendlies and youth-team matches; on how to treat goals in competitions that were later annulled or replayed; and on the exact cut-off date of the data. We state what our database contains and let you see every individual goal, so you can judge for yourself.
That is genuinely a question of what you value, not of who is right. If you weight Ballon d'Or awards, assists and peak seasons, you get Messi. If you weight raw goals, longevity, international goals and success across four different leagues, you get Ronaldo. Our GOAT Calculator lets you set the weightings yourself and see what your own criteria produce.