Pixar Movies Tier List: All 31 Films Ranked (2026)

The Complete Pixar Tier List

Pixar has released 31 feature films as of July 2026, and this tier list ranks every one of them from S-tier to D-tier. That includes the studio's two 2026 releases, Hoppers (March 6) and Toy Story 5 (June 19), which most Pixar rankings still have not added. Toy Story, Toy Story 3, WALL-E and Up lead S-tier; Cars 2, Cars 3 and Incredibles 2 make up D-tier.

Thirty years, thirty-one films, more tears than any animation studio has earned. Pixar's catalog is the most consistently great filmography in modern Hollywood, which makes ranking it unusually hard. Build your own definitive Pixar ranking in Shortlist.

Each film below also says where to watch it in the US, checked October 7, 2026 (JustWatch). Rights move, so those lines disappear rather than guess once that check is over three weeks old.

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Every Pixar Movie by Box Office, Budget and Return

The four worst-performing films in Pixar's history are the four it never properly released in cinemas. Turning Red (0.12x), Luca (0.26x), Onward (0.71x) and Soul (0.81x) hold the bottom four places in the return column below, and all four are pandemic-era releases. Three of them went straight to Disney+ with no original US theatrical run at all: the only US theatrical dates TMDB records for Soul, Luca and Turning Red are re-releases in 2024, years after the films came out. Onward opened on 6 March 2020 and was on digital fourteen days later, because cinemas closed underneath it. Their grosses are real numbers that measure something other than what the rest of this column measures, and a ranking that quietly sorts them against Finding Nemo is publishing a comparison that does not exist.

Below is the same 31 films as the tier list above, re-sorted by worldwide gross, with the budget and the return multiple beside it. Across the whole studio the 31 films have grossed $19.400B worldwide against $5.061B in production budgets, a blended 3.83x, with 6 of them past a billion dollars.

On that 2.5x reading 22 of the 31 films clear the bar. Elemental misses it at 2.48x, which is close enough to be a rounding error rather than a verdict, and its reputation has recovered accordingly. Strip out the four Disney+ releases and Pixar's theatrical record is close to spotless, which is the more interesting fact: the studio's reputation for a slump is built substantially on films that were never given a chance to earn.

The best return in Pixar history is still the first film: Toy Story turned $30.0M into $962.3M in 1995, a 32.08x return. That is more than three times the next best, Finding Nemo at 10.00x, and it is a number no modern animated film can reach because no modern animated film is made for $30.0M. Toy Story 5 is the most expensive film the studio has ever made at $250.0M, 8.3x the budget of the original, and it returned 4.55x. Both are in the top tiers of this list. The money column and the quality column are not the same column, and neither of them is your list.

Toy Story 5 reached Disney+ on 23 September 2026, 96 days after its 19 June theatrical opening. That gap is the whole distance the studio has travelled since 2020. Onward had fourteen days, Soul and Luca had none, and the four films that went that way sit at the bottom of the table above. Toy Story 5 got a full cinema run first, grossed $1.136B, and arrived on streaming as a film people have already argued about. Where it lands on your own list is the question, and it is one this page cannot answer for you.

Pixar Movies in Order

Pixar releases films in chronological order: there's no "watch order" debate, just the calendar. The studio's creative arc is roughly: Toy Story through Toy Story 3 (1995-2010) is the golden age; Cars 2 (2011) marks the start of an experimental decade; Inside Out (2015) and Coco (2017) prove the studio still has its peak gear; Inside Out 2 (2024) signals a comeback.

The New Pixar Movies: Elio, Hoppers and Toy Story 5

Three Pixar films have arrived since Inside Out 2, and the story they tell is that critics and box office have stopped agreeing.

• Elio (June 20, 2025): 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and a $154 million worldwide gross against a budget reported at $150 million or more. It opened to $20.8 million, the lowest opening weekend of any Pixar film ever. A good movie that almost nobody saw in a theater.
• Hoppers (March 6, 2026): an original from We Bare Bears creator Daniel Chong, and at 94% the studio's best-reviewed film in years. A college student transfers her consciousness into a robotic beaver and accidentally starts an animal uprising.
• Toy Story 5 (June 19, 2026): Andrew Stanton directing, 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a premise with actual teeth: a tablet becomes Bonnie's favorite toy, and the gang has to reckon with a screen they cannot compete with.

Both 2026 films sit in A-tier above. Neither has had the years of rewatching that pushed WALL-E and Up into S-tier, and tier lists should say so rather than pretend a four-week-old film has settled. Rank them yourself and see where they land.

How to Build Your Own Pixar Tier List

The card above builds one in a few taps and no scoring, which is the only way this works for Pixar: every one of these films is a 4 out of 5, so star ratings tell you nothing, and "WALL-E or Inside Out?" tells you everything.

Thirty-one films is too many to hold in your head, so let the app hold them. In Shortlist you add every Pixar film, or filter to the ones you have actually seen, tap through the matchups, and get a full tier list with a share link for the family group chat.

The same head-to-head method works for any franchise or genre. See our movie tier list guide for the full approach.

Two different things get scored around this page. The S to D tiers above are editorial, and S means a film that held up rather than one that reviewed well on opening weekend. The score you see in the app is a different number: it is built from the head-to-head comparisons you make, scaled to 0 to 10, not from critic averages. How Shortlist scores work sets out the whole method.

This website uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB.

The Best and Worst Pixar Movies: The Consensus

Pixar's catalog has unusual agreement among critics, fans, and Rotten Tomatoes, even when individual rankings differ.

• Consensus best: Toy Story 3, WALL-E, or Up. The trio that defined Pixar's late-2000s peak.
• Most acclaimed by critics: Inside Out. 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. The most ambitious film the studio has made.
• Most underrated: Ratatouille. Frequently overlooked in "best Pixar" lists, often a top-three pick when fans actually rewatch.
• Most divisive: Cars. Either a comfort classic or the studio's weakest era starter.
• Consensus worst: Cars 2. The clearest dip in quality the studio ever took.

Should You Include Pixar Sequels in Your Ranking?

Pixar's sequels are an interesting tier list problem. Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 are both arguably better than the original. Cars 2 drags down a franchise. Incredibles 2 can't match the original. Inside Out 2 almost does. A complete Pixar ranking includes all of them, including the Cars trilogy, which most fans would rather forget.

What About Pixar Shorts and Disney+ Specials?

Pixar's shorts catalog (Bao, Lava, the SparkShorts program) and Disney+ originals (Soul, Luca, Turning Red) are technically separate from the theatrical features list. We've included the Disney+ titles because they're full feature films. The shorts are a different ranking entirely. You can build that one in Shortlist too.

Pixar Tier List FAQ

How many Pixar movies are there?

As of July 2026, Pixar has released 31 feature-length films, starting with Toy Story in 1995 and most recently Toy Story 5 on June 19, 2026. That count includes the three Disney+ original features (Soul, Luca, Turning Red) but excludes shorts and the SparkShorts program. The next release is Gatto, scheduled for March 5, 2027.

What is the newest Pixar movie?

Toy Story 5, released June 19, 2026 and directed by Andrew Stanton. It is the second Pixar film of 2026, after Hoppers on March 6.

What's the best Pixar movie of all time?

The most common picks are Toy Story 3 (2010), WALL-E (2008), and Up (2009), the "late-2000s Pixar peak." Critics often add Ratatouille and Inside Out to the same tier. Your specific #1 usually depends on which one you saw at the most emotionally vulnerable age.

What's the worst Pixar movie?

Cars 2 is the consensus pick, the only Pixar film with a "rotten" Rotten Tomatoes score. Cars 3 and The Good Dinosaur typically round out the bottom three.

What order should I watch Pixar movies in?

Release order is the only order that matters. Pixar films aren't set in a shared universe (with the exception of the connected Toy Story sequels and a fan theory about the "Pixar Theory"). Watch in release order, or skip directly to the tier you trust most.

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