# The 32 Greatest Magicians of All Time

> Vaudeville escape artists, Las Vegas showmen and close-up wizards who fool you inches away. A century after Houdini, who still owns the stage?

*By YPB Team · Published October 31, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-32-greatest-magicians-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Harry Houdini** — score 1000/1000
   The legendary escape artist whose daring feats made his name a synonym for the impossible.
2. **Howard Thurston** — score 782/1000
   Kellar's successor whose spectacular stage show was the largest of the golden age of magic.
3. **David Copperfield** — score 782/1000
   The most commercially successful magician ever, famed for vanishing the Statue of Liberty.
4. **Penn & Teller** — score 657/1000
   The loud-and-silent duo who reinvented Las Vegas magic by revealing and subverting its secrets.
5. **Siegfried & Roy** — score 586/1000
   The German-American duo whose white tigers made them Las Vegas icons for decades.
6. **Doug Henning** — score 586/1000
   The Canadian showman who revived magic as theatre with Broadway's The Magic Show.
7. **Harry Kellar** — score 532/1000
   America's dean of magic, whose grand touring illusion show dominated the late 1800s.
8. **Bartolomeo Bosco** — score 532/1000
   The Italian cups-and-balls virtuoso who was Europe's most famous conjuror in the early 1800s.
9. **Horace Goldin** — score 532/1000
   The illusionist who patented and popularised sawing a woman in half.
10. **Mark Wilson** — score 532/1000
   The pioneer of televised magic with the 1960s series The Magic Land of Allakazam.
11. **Criss Angel** — score 469/1000
   The illusionist behind Mindfreak, which made magic a hit reality-TV format.
12. **Harry Blackstone Sr.** — score 469/1000
   The Great Blackstone, famed for his floating light bulb and vanishing birdcage.
13. **Adelaide Herrmann** — score 469/1000
   The Queen of Magic, who ran her own illusion show for decades after her husband's death.
14. **Shin Lim** — score 469/1000
   The card magician who won both Penn & Teller: Fool Us and America's Got Talent.
15. **Ricky Jay** — score 469/1000
   The master card manipulator and scholar of magic history.
16. **Dante** — score 397/1000
   Harry August Jansen, whose touring revue Sim Sala Bim was one of the last great full-evening shows.
17. **Fred Kaps** — score 397/1000
   The Dutch master who remains the only three-time winner of the FISM Grand Prix.
18. **Harry Anderson** — score 397/1000
   The comic con-man magician and Night Court star who championed street-style magic.
19. **Dai Vernon** — score 397/1000
   The Professor, the most influential sleight-of-hand artist of the 20th century.
20. **Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin** — score 397/1000
   The French clockmaker widely called the father of modern conjuring.
21. **Tommy Cooper** — score 313/1000
   The fez-wearing comic magician whose tricks went hilariously wrong on purpose.
22. **John Henry Anderson** — score 313/1000
   The Great Wizard of the North, the Scottish showman who pioneered big-scale publicity for magic.
23. **David Blaine** — score 313/1000
   The street magician and endurance artist who brought close-up magic to television.
24. **Lance Burton** — score 313/1000
   The elegant Las Vegas headliner celebrated for his dove act and sleight of hand.
25. **Joseph Dunninger** — score 313/1000
   The Amazing Dunninger, America's most famous mentalist on radio and early TV.
26. **Chung Ling Soo** — score 213/1000
   The American illusionist who posed as a Chinese conjurer and died performing the bullet catch.
27. **Derren Brown** — score 213/1000
   The British mentalist whose psychological illusions redefined television magic.
28. **Dynamo** — score 213/1000
   The Bradford street magician whose show Magician Impossible became a global hit.
29. **James Randi** — score 213/1000
   The Amazing Randi, escape artist turned world-famous debunker of psychic fraud.
30. **John Nevil Maskelyne** — score 213/1000
   The English inventor-magician who ran London's Egyptian Hall, England's home of magic.
31. **Paul Daniels** — score 213/1000
   The British TV magician whose Paul Daniels Magic Show ran for 15 years.
32. **Alexander Herrmann** — score 0/1000
   Herrmann the Great, the devilish-looking star of 19th-century stage magic.

Tags: celebrities, performances, magic, magicians