Ronaldo and Messi lead the Champions League scoring charts, but the race for third is heating up. Ronaldo has scored for Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Juventus, while Messi has scored for Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain.
The UEFA Champions League, which began in 1992/93, has become synonymous with the world's best strikers, with Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Robert Lewandowski all racking up impressive goal totals.
Ronaldo and Messi are the only players to date to have scored more than 100 goals in the competition, and neither, like the remaining players in the all-time European Cup/UEFA Champions League top ten, played in the competition when it was still known as the European Cup.
That competition, first contested in 1955/56, was all knockout ties, with no group stage, meaning players had fewer matches per season to score in; Real Madrid won the inaugural edition with just seven games, while Chelsea won the 2020/21 UEFA Champions League with 13.
Alfredo Di Stéfano, the competition's all-time leading scorer, scored 49 goals in just 58 appearances, a goals-per-game rate that none of the modern greats can match.
All time Top scorers in the UEFA Champions League (excluding qualifying)
Cristiano Ronaldo is the all-time leading scorer in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA club competitions, as well as the most prolific in senior international football history.
On 14 February 2018, he became the first player in UEFA Champions League history to score 100 goals, doing so in his 144th appearance.
Ronaldo has won the competition four times with Real Madrid and once with Manchester United, and he is the only player to have scored in three UEFA Champions League finals. He, like Messi, has eight UEFA Champions League hat-tricks.