Best dog breeds

Australian Shepherd wins 65% of its duels and tops the Dogs ranking ahead of Golden Retriever.

A clear 25 ELO points separate Australian Shepherd from Golden Retriever at the summit, the widest gap in the top tier of this ranking. Belgian Shepherd secures third place with 1315 points after 448 duels, more than any other contender in the top 5. Labrador Retriever follows at rank 4 with 1290 points, while Siberian Husky completes the top 5 with 1286 points after 368 duels. The narrow margins between these breeds suggest that community preferences remain closely contested, with no single breed dominating by a wide margin. The bottom tells a different story: Yorkshire Terrier sits at rank 20 with 1017 points, while Chihuahua at rank 18 and English Setter at rank 19 hover just above it. The 334-point spread between the most beloved breeds and the stragglers reveals how divided opinions become across the full spectrum.

This ranking draws from 5891 duels cast by 96 players across 20 contenders, updated on 11 October 2026. Each vote refines the hierarchy, and the gaps remain narrow enough that a few dozen duels could reshuffle the order. Cast your own vote and see whether your favorite breed climbs or falls.

Updated on October 11, 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 →