The Strongest Sword Art Online Characters, Ranked

Wondering which character in Sword Art Online is strongest? In this guide, we’ll be taking a look at the top contenders and ranking them from strong to strongest. But be warned, a few spoilers are inevitable in a list like this. So if you haven’t finished the series, you might want to come back and check it out after you have!

#16 Klein

While not necessarily the flashiest, Klein is a solid fighter who is there with Kirito since the very beginning – battling bad guys, joining respectable guilds, and eventually gaining impressive powers in the War of the Underworld arc.

#15 Lady Fanatio

Lady Fanatio has a lot of personal hangups that get in her way when fighting. However, she was able to go head to head with Kirito for a while at least, and in the War of the Underworld Arc she displays incredible power when facing down hordes of monsters. Her greatest power is her Heaven Piercing Sword which she uses to utterly melt her foes.

#14 Heathcliff

The founder of SAO and creator of the seed technology is certainly strong. However, much of his power comes from a hack in the system that prevents him from ever depleting his health below a certain number. When that is lifted, he becomes vulnerable enough for Kirito to defeat him (with a little help from his friends).

While that might make him sound not super strong, Kirito only manages to defeat Heathcliff after essentially dying. And Kirito is arguably at his strongest during this fight so that’s an impressive feat on the part of Heathcliff.

#13 Death Gun

Death Gun has one of the sickest intros of any bad guy in SAO. His presence, indeed, is terrifying, acting as a quiet nightmare in a world ruled by guns and player killing. However, his most terrifying ability is to kill players in real life when he kills them in game.

Death Gun feels almost invincible when we meet him. Indeed, he’s an insanely skilled fighter, capable of going toe-to-toe with Kirito. While his mystery is slowly stripped away piece-by-piece to reveal who he really is, the process of achieving that is one of the most exciting murder mysteries in shonen anime.

#12 Eiji

We meet Eiji in Ordinal Scale and he comes back with a bang in the main anime where he successfully fights and holds off Poh for a while – long enough to keep Poh at bay while we wait for Kirito to come around. While clearly not the strongest fighter of all, when boosted by Yuna, Eiji can hang in there with the best of them.

#11 Yuuki

Yuuki is a character whose strength does not get the credit it deserves. While you might notice a trend in this list to use Kirito as the measuring stick by which to judge how strong a particular character is, it is what it is.

Yuuki, however, is able to defeat Kirito in a duel thanks to a technicality based on speed. Indeed, while she lacks the raw power Kirito has, her speed is incredible, and she’s strong enough to beat Asuna as well thanks to her powerful, original skill.

Part of Yuuki’s power is thanks to how much time she spends in virtual reality. She doesn’t just visit – she lives in these worlds, granting her unusual power compared to other players.

#10 Alice

Alice may be the central character in the Alicization arc (with the name of the arc being about her), but she’s not necessarily the strongest. She’s still deadly in battle with a powerful sword skill that allows her to manipulate it into countless small petals capable of both offensive powers and defensive abilities.

Her strongest feat, however, was when she was able to gather all of the lives of the fallen during the War of the Underworld arc to vanquish a legion of mages.

She’s not as strong as the goddesses fully powered up, but she’s just a step below and one of the strongest Integrity Knights second only to Berculi.

#9 Sinon

Sinon is one of the strongest characters in the Gun Gale Online world, with her strongest weapon being her hecate which she can use to devastating effect. However, she’s somewhat held back by her past trauma, not able to move on from things she was forced to do IRL despite them being largely in self-defense.

She gets a pretty significant buff when she heads over to the Underworld. Here as a goddess she is able to turn her hecate into a powerful blast of energy strong enough to blow the arm off of one of SAO’s biggest bad guys.

#8 Eugeo

Eugeo doesn’t seem like much at first, but eventually he’s able to rise up through sheer hard work to be able to do battle with integrity knights who are as strong as Berculi.

While we never get to see Eugeo reach his full peak in terms of power, his power remains in the hands of Kirito who uses it to incredible and devastating effect.

Beyond just his power, Eugeo has one of the biggest impacts on the anime. In a way, he changes Kirito, helping our main hero make the final evolution from a solo battler to a guy who fights and dies for those he loves.

Eugeo is a major catalyst for the Alicization arc that encompasses two seasons.

#7 Berculi

Berculi’s fight against Gabriel in his emperor form is one of the best fight sequences in SAO. In this battle, Berculi shows of his greatest feats, including an ability that not only allows him to cut forward in time, but backwards as well. It’s a deadly ability capable of overcoming the powers Gabriel gets just from having been incarnated as the big bad guy in the Dark Territory, and a fitting swan song from the original Integrity Knight.

#6 Leafa

Throughout the majority of Sword Art Online, Leafa is known more for her heart than her power. However, when she makes it into the Underworld as a goddess, she gets some of the craziest abilities we’ve seen anyone ascertain in the entire SAO universe. Her strongest power is the ability to regenerate her life no matter how badly she is beaten.

Additionally she has impressive attack power capable of destroying legions. She may not be as fully overpowered as her brother Kirito, but she certainly does the family name proud with her combination of power, kindness, and heart.

#5 Gabriel

Gabriel is one cold killer, willing to sacrifice anyone to meet his own sick needs. Within the SAO universe he is able to manifest himself in more than one shape, with his most deadly being that gained via what appears to be a Gun Gale Online account. When ported over to the Underworld, he becomes a demon of destruction.

Gabriel is so strong at his strongest form that almost no one can stand against him. However he has one glaring weakness that inevitably bumps him down this list hierarchy – he’s so evil he can’t withstand a good dosage of goodness. This backfires pretty badly against him in the end.

#4 Poh

Poh’s one sick puppy. However, in a tragic backstory that does nothing in the ways of making us like him any better, it is at least explained why he is a sick scumbag with genocidal tendencies.

Be that as it may, he’s also one of SAO’s strongest villains, capable of withstanding some of the best fighters thrown at him. Eventually it takes Kirito fully buffed up to vanquish him.

Speaking of Poh, man was it satisfying to watch him get his butt handed to him when Asuna took him on using her powerful Mother’s Rosario skill gained from Yuuki. Poh only manages to hang on via some “dark aura” exploit that doesn’t really make any sense.

#3 Quinella

The Administrator is not only one of SAO’s most terrifying characters in regards to her power, she is also one of its most beautiful. In fact, we get introduced to her alluring, beautiful side first, before she becomes something of a parody of her own self, conducting her battles nude and resembling more of machine than a woman. If you are familiar with the story of the Odyssey, the Administrator is essentially a siren. Only, Eugeo doesn’t plug his ears up and fall pray to her, eventually dying as a direct result.

Dramatic allusions aside the Administrator’s powers are incredible. She is able to turn human souls into powerful slaves, effectively creating an army of hyper powerful slaves to do her bidding against the dark territories. She even manages (as an AI) to find a way up and out of her world into the real one, and is only foiled last minute from achieving her aims by a creepy little clown guy.

While we come face-to-face with some big baddies in the second part of season three, Quinella feels like the most authentic – a true creation of the artificial world capable of wrecking havoc on the humans that created her in a way we haven’t seen since 2001 A Space Odyssey and Hal 9000.

If you needed any further proof of her power – it took the combined force of Kirito, Alice, and Eugeo to take her down.

#2 Asuna

In other lists ranking SAO characters by their power that I’ve seen, Asuna tends to end up a little lower down than this. However, whoever wrote those lists must not have seen her absolutely destroy via her strongest incarnation to date: as the Goddess Stacia of Creation.

Essentially Asuna’s power in her goddess form is to have literal power over the world itself (hence the creation bit). She can manipulate land structures, causing great chasms to form, and more. Indeed, it’s unknown just how far her powers of manipulation extend as she’s limited by a severe downside to her abilities: they take so much effort to muster that they could potentially kill her if they go to far.

We’ve never seen a character in SAO given this kind of power, and what is more she gains further power through a pair of wings that enable her to fly, and via the original sword skill given to her by Yuuki. When combined, Asuna becomes essentially unstoppable.

#1 Kirito

Clearly Kirito is going to end up at the top of any strongest SAO characters list. The guy is unstoppable. No matter what world he finds himself in, no matter how the odds are stacked against him, he always manages to come out on top. Although he is most known for his unmatched ability with swords, his real talent lies in quickly adapting to any MMO he finds himself in.