A tier list should have five to six tiers for most topics. Five — S, A, B, C, D — is the standard ranking scale, and it’s what our maker loads by default; six adds an F row for the genuinely bad. Go past seven rows only when you’re ranking 40+ items and can defend every extra band.
There is no single right answer, but there is a sweet spot. Here is how many tiers a tier list should have — and when to break the rule.
Most tier lists use five rows — S, A, B, C, D. It is enough to separate the great from the bad without splitting hairs, and it reads cleanly at a glance. If in doubt, start with five.
The convention borrows from school grading — letter grades arranged best to worst — with S bolted on as a special band above A. Because five or six bands is how most people already read a grading scale, that count feels normal on sight, which is exactly why our maker loads five rows (S through D) as its default. Six is the other common ranking scale: S through F, with F reserved for the truly rough.
The letters themselves have their own story — S is often traced to Japanese grading, where it marks something special or superb — and we unpack that in what S tier means and tier list letters explained. For the full sequence of ranks and levels from top to bottom, see tier list ranks in order. And if stacked bands aren’t your format at all, an iceberg chart sorts by obscurity instead of quality — a different tool for a different argument.
Add E and F (or extra rows) when you have many items or want finer distinctions — competitive rankings often go S through F. Just know that more tiers means more agonizing over close calls.
Variants like S+ or SSS show up in gacha and tournament rankings, where a deep character pool needs finer separation at the very top. They work — you can add rows here and label them anything — but past seven tiers the difference between adjacent tiers gets hard to defend. When one item sits alone on its own row just so nothing shares its glory, the ranking has stopped saying much, and that defeats the point.
Three or four tiers work great for short lists or quick gut-checks — even a simple “Good / Okay / Bad” split. Fewer tiers makes the ranking faster and the verdict clearer.
A tier list with 3 tiers is about as compressed as an opinion gets while staying readable. Two tiers is really a yes/no sort — useful when the call is subjective and you’d rather not argue gradations, less useful when readers want to know how much better one pick is than another.
In the tier list maker you can add, rename, recolor or remove tiers whenever you like — so start with five and adjust as you go.
Nothing locks you to letters, either. Tier rows take custom labels — “Goated / Mid / Trash” for games, “Must play / Skip” for a backlog — and you can delete rows or drag and drop them into a new order after the template is already full. Row colors follow a warm-to-cool ramp whatever the count; tier list color codes has the exact hexes and tier list colors covers choosing your own.
A better guide than any fixed rule: look at how many items you’re ranking and aim for a spread that gives each row a job. Ten items across five tiers is two per tier — thin, so drop to three or four rows. Forty items across five tiers gives real separation without any single row turning into a wall of icons.
Items per tier don’t have to land evenly, and the unranked tray is your escape valve — anything you can’t place honestly can sit below the board until you can.
However many rows you land on, be stingy with S. When everything ends up in S, the row stops meaning anything and the middle of your board sits empty — readers learn more from an honest B than a crowded S. Keeping S rare is what makes the list worth arguing about.
Pick one axis and stay consistent, too. Power, enjoyment, quality — any of those criteria works, but switching between them mid-board produces a ranking nobody can follow. And it’s fine to leave a tier empty: a bare D row says “nothing here deserves this” louder than deleting the row would.
Five (S, A, B, C, D) is the standard and works for most topics. Use more for fine distinctions, fewer for quick or short lists.
Yes — add as many as you need. Just remember more tiers means more close calls to decide.
Even two or three works for a quick good/bad split. There is no hard minimum.
A standard tier list has five: S, A, B, C, D, running best to worst. Six-tier versions add F at the bottom, and competitive scenes sometimes stack S+ or SS above S. There is no fixed ceiling — the count is whatever the ranker set up — but five is what you will see most often.
S is the top tier, then A down to D (or F): S for the best, A for great, B for good, C for average, D for weak. Tier list letters explained breaks down each letter and where the system came from.
As many as you want. The maker starts you with five rows and lets you add, rename or delete rows without limit — there is no plan or cap. In practice most lists stay readable up to about seven; beyond that, neighboring rows start to blur together.
Dragging items into ranked rows, best row on top, is the entire mechanic. What is a tier list starts from zero if the format is new to you.
S tier — it sits above A. Tier list ranks in order walks the full sequence from S down.
Yes. An empty tier is information: it tells readers that nothing you ranked deserves that band. Ranking guides commonly note it is fine to leave a D or F row bare rather than force weak picks into it. If the gap bothers you, delete the row — but leaving it often makes the stronger statement.
Farasat is an engineer who designs websites and builds practical online tools in his spare time. He created Tier List Maker after using other ranking sites that asked for an account, stamped watermarks on downloads, or simply did not work well on a phone. He is not a professional gamer or a self-described tier-list expert — he builds and maintains this site himself, fixes issues, and adds features based on what visitors actually ask for.