Spider-Man power ranking: is Tom Holland the strongest?

I'm ranking every Spider-Man from the bottom of the food chain up to the strongest ever put on screen: live action, animated, and the multiverse. My verdict is that Tom Holland's MCU Spider-Man sits at number one, Tobey Maguire's original is second, and Spider-Noir is the weakest of the 14.

Spider-Man is one of the most iconic superheroes out there. Every few years someone new puts on the mask, swings through a different version of New York and makes it their own. Here is how all of them compare.

14. Spider-Noir: Ben Reilly is a legit Spider-Man past his prime

Spider-Noir is Ben Reilly in 1930s New York. He is an aging private detective and a retired superhero, deliberately framed as past his prime. The Amazon show is built on a Spider-Man who's over the hill and dragged back into the costume life against his better judgment.

The feats reflect that: street level threats, a grounded villain and a toned down Spider-Man. The Spider-Verse animated version is more capable, but he's still the least physically impressive of that crew. Combined, he's a legit Spider-Man with all the abilities, but the weakest version of those abilities on this list.

13. Scarlet Spider: another Ben Reilly with a higher ceiling than his feats

Scarlet Spider is also Ben Reilly, from a different universe, with the same name and completely different energy. The Spider-Verse version exists almost entirely as comedic meta commentary on '90s comics angst. He broods, monologues his own thought bubbles out loud and strikes dramatic poses in the rain.

Power-wise, he's a full Peter Parker clone with all the standard abilities. He never shows anything beyond them. I put him slightly above Spider-Noir because at least the ceiling is there, even if the feats aren't.

12. Spider-Man India: charming, but operating at the baseline

Mumbai's Spider-Man is genuinely charming and one of the more likable additions in Across the Spider-Verse. He has the standard spider power set, good agility and enough skill to be a legit member of the Spider Society.

His feats are limited to what we see in one movie, and nothing suggests he's operating above the baseline. He's a solid Spider-Man in his own universe, not a standout on this list.

11. Spider-Ham: Toon Force makes Peter Porker invincible, when it works

Spider-Ham is where Toon Force enters the conversation. Peter Porker is a cartoon character operating within a live-action adjacent multiverse, and Toon Force is a broken ability when it's active. He pulls out cartoon mallets, survives things that would destroy anyone else through pure cartoon logic, and operates outside the normal rules of physics entirely.

The reason he's not higher is consistency. Toon Force is hilarious and unpredictable, but it isn't entirely reliable in a fight. When it works, he's functionally invincible. When it doesn't, he's more of a pig in a Spider-Man costume. Mid-tier is exactly where he belongs.

10. Peni Parker Parker: the Spider-Mech is the heavy hitter, not the pilot

Here's the thing about Peni Parker. She's the child with a psychic link to a giant Spider-Mech, and I'm ranking the full package. The mech is a legitimate heavy hitter, with enormous physical strength and enough durability to take serious punishment. Her psychic connection to the suit means her reaction time is faster than any normal mech pilot's.

She's a genuine threat alongside the Spider Society's heaviest hitters. The limitation is that without the suit, she has no notable abilities of her own. The power lives in the machine. As a full package, she ranks here. As a pilot alone, she'd be at the bottom.

9. Spider-Punk: Hobie punches above his weight with creativity

Spider-Punk is one of the most creative fighters on this list, even if he's not the most powerful. Hobie operates with an anarchist power set, a guitar that functions as a weapon, gadgets, and a fighting style that's deliberately unpredictable and anti-establishment in every sense.

His feats in Across the Spider-Verse are impressive. He holds his own in fights, and his tactical creativity lets him punch above his weight class consistently. He's not here on raw power. He's here because in a fight, he makes the most of everything he has and then some.

8. Peter B. Parker: elite potential he doesn't always use

Peter B. Parker is theoretically one of the most powerful Spider-Men on this list. He's a full-powered Peter Parker who's been doing this for over 20 years. The ceiling is real.

The problem is what we see. Into the Spider-Verse deliberately presents him as out of shape, unmotivated and running on fumes. He's been through a divorce, he's gained weight, and his fighting style reflects someone who's gotten lazy because he's good enough to get by without trying hard. By the end of the movies, he shows genuine flashes of what he's capable of, and what he's capable of is elite. The potential is there; he doesn't always use it.

7. Spider-Woman: Jessica Drew is underrated and underused

Jessica Drew is one of the most underrated spider people on this list, and Across the Spider-Verse doesn't give her nearly enough time to show why. On top of the standard spider powers, she brings a venom blast, concentrated bioelectric strikes powerful enough to stun superhumans.

She also has pheromone manipulation that can induce fear or attraction in anyone around her. And she's trained in hand-to-hand combat across multiple martial arts, which most spider people can't say.

6. Ghost-Spider: Gwen is one of the most technically refined fighters in the Spider-Verse

Gwen is one of the most technically refined fighters in the Spider-Verse movies, and it's not close. Her movement style is built around dance: fluid, precise, constantly in motion. In practice, that translates into a fighting technique that's harder to track and counter than most of the Spider Society's. She keeps up with Spider-Man 2099 in exchanges that most spider people don't survive.

Her base power is standard spider powers, without the unique additions someone like Miles brings. But her technical ceiling and her consistency put her firmly in the top half. Ghost-Spider is the fighter you want on your side when the situation requires someone who can go the distance against opponents above her weight class.

5. The Amazing Spider-Man: Andrew Garfield is the most gifted acrobat

Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker is maybe the most naturally gifted of the three live-action Peters. His agility and reflexes are demonstrably better on screen, and his movements feel beyond human in a way that Tobey's and Tom's don't always. He's the most acrobatic and the most fluid, and in a pure hand-to-hand fight he's probably the hardest to land a clean hit on.

The reason he's fifth is threat scaling. Andrew's Peter fought street level to enhanced humans, and his villains cap out around Electro at his most powerful. Tom and Tobey have been tested against threats that operate at a different scale entirely, and their feats reflect that. Andrew's is probably the most gifted acrobat and the fastest, most agile Spider-Man on this list. He hasn't been pushed to the limits the others have.

4. Miles Morales: a unique power set and a ceiling that rises with the stakes

Miles is the most unique Spider-Man on this list because his power set is different from everyone else's. Every other spider person has some variation of super strength, speed, wall crawling and spider sense. Miles has all that plus two more abilities. The first is the venom blast, a concentrated bioelectric shock that has staggered opponents significantly stronger than him. The second is invisibility, full camouflage that makes him effectively undetectable, which in a multiverse full of spider sense wielders is a bigger advantage than it sounds.

The most important thing about Miles isn't his power, though; it's his ceiling. When the stakes are personal and his conviction is absolute, he's shown feats that suggest he operates above his normal levels in ways that are hard to quantify. He escaped the entire Spider Society at once and broke out of 2099's physical restraints. Those aren't only strength feats. They're moments where his determination amplifies what his body can do, and they put him in the conversation with the strongest spider people alive.

3. Spider-Man 2099: Miguel O'Hara doesn't pull his punches

Miguel O'Hara is the most physically powerful Spider-Man in the Spider-Verse, and he makes sure you know it by consistently overpowering people. He has paralytic venom fangs that can incapacitate opponents regardless of their power, razor-sharp talons that let him climb walls and work as natural weapons in close quarters, and an accelerated healing factor.

Critically, he doesn't pull his punches. Every other spider person on this list has Peter Parker's moral framework baked into their fighting style to some degree. Miguel operates without it. He hits as hard as he can immediately, and the results show. In Across the Spider-Verse, he physically dominates almost every fight we see him in. He catches Miles, who had just escaped an entire army of spider people, and nearly ends the fight through sheer physical power.

He runs the Spider Society with the authority of someone who knows he's the strongest person in the room. Within his own universe, Miguel O'Hara is the ceiling. Across all of them, he's elite, but not quite the top.

2. Tobey Maguire: the original Spider-Man stopped a speeding train

Tobey Maguire is the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, the original, the one that started it all. Even two decades later, he's still one of the strongest Spider-Men around. His version has one of the highest ceilings for strength, speed and durability, and it shows up almost every time he's on screen.

Peter stopped a multi-ton speeding train moving at 80 mph with his strength alone. Granted, it took everything he had, but if that's all he has, that's a whole heck of a lot. That single feat puts him above almost every other Spider-Man out there. He's incredibly fast, strong, tough and experienced, having been Spider-Man for multiple decades. You can't argue with that level of experience.

Then he shows up in No Way Home and more than holds his own against every villain there, and against the other two Spider-Men too. He even stops a bloodlusted Tom from landing a death blow on the Green Goblin, more than matching Tom's strength in that moment. With great power comes great responsibility, and this version of Spider-Man has a whole heck of a lot of both.

1. Tom Holland: the MCU Spider-Man is the most powerful on the big screen

Number one has to be Tom Holland, the Spider-Man of the MCU, for a few reasons. First, his spider sense is easily the best of any Spider-Man here; he can take out threats with his eyes closed, relying solely on it. Second, he has access to better tech and weapons than anyone else, from versatile web shooters to the Iron Spider armor, whose four additional arms make him a true spider-man.

Third, he's fought the widest array of threats and probably has the most experience. That runs from super soldiers in Civil War, to almost any Spider-Man villain the other Spider-Men have faced, to the Hulk, to traveling to space and battling Thanos and his alien army.

Lastly, there's Brand New Day, where he's upgraded. After embracing his mutations, Spider-Man is significantly stronger, tougher and faster than he's ever been, and he can create organic webbing. He is, without a doubt, the most powerful Spider-Man we've seen on the big screen, and as of this ranking, he's number one.