Last updated: 3 September 2026

Balatro Joker Tier List Every Joker Ranked

Balatro has 150 Jokers, and no single run ever sees all of them — so "best Joker" always depends on what's already in your build. This tier list cuts through that by ranking Jokers on a narrower question: independent of build, how much does this card raise your ceiling and how reliably does it do it? The placements below reflect where multiple community rankings agree, cross-checked against each Joker's actual effect text, not just one site's opinion.

01How This Tier List Works

Rarity is the first filter worth understanding, because it caps how strong a Joker can be. Balatro sorts Jokers into four rarities — Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Legendary — and as a rule, Legendaries and top Rares have the highest ceilings, while Commons are cheap, reliable role-players rather than run-carriers.

The second filter is scaling versus flat effects. A flat Joker (like a fixed +Mult) does the same thing on Ante 1 and Ante 8. A scaling Joker starts weak but compounds — some track a stat that grows every round, others multiply based on something else you're already doing (selling cards, playing certain hand types, holding certain cards). The S-tier below is dominated by scaling and copy-effect Jokers precisely because they're the ones capable of turning a normal hand into a run-ending score.

One honest caveat: a few Legendary Jokers (Chicot is the clearest example — it disables every Boss Blind's effect) get ranked anywhere from S+ to mid-tier depending on the source, because their value is entirely conditional. Chicot is dead weight against a Boss Blind that barely affects you, and a run-saver against one that would otherwise wreck your hand. Cards like that are called out separately below rather than forced into a single tier.

02S Tier — Build-Defining

These are the Jokers that consistently show up at the top of independent community rankings. Pick any of them up and restructure your build around them if you can.

• Blueprint (Rare) — copies the ability of the Joker to its right, every round, for free. It effectively gives you a second copy of whatever your best Joker already is. The value scales automatically with the rest of your build, which is why it tops nearly every independent ranking.
• Brainstorm (Rare) — copies the ability of your leftmost Joker instead of the one to its right. Functionally Blueprint's twin; the choice between them usually comes down to which side of your Joker row you want to duplicate.
• Triboulet (Legendary) — every scored King or Queen gives X2 Mult. In a hand built around face cards, that compounds multiple times per hand rather than once, and it needs no setup beyond keeping Kings and Queens in your deck.
• Perkeo (Legendary) — creates a Negative copy of one random consumable you own at the end of each shop. Negative copies don't take up consumable slots, so this quietly doubles your Tarot/Spectral/Planet economy over a run for free.
• Vampire (Uncommon) — gains X0.1 Mult permanently for every scoring Enhanced card played (and removes that card's Enhancement in the process). In an Enhanced-card-heavy deck this snowballs into a huge multiplier by the late Antes.
• Cavendish (Common) — a flat X3 Mult with only a 1-in-1000 chance of being destroyed at the end of a round. For a Common, that's an enormous multiplier with a risk low enough to mostly ignore.
• Campfire (Rare) — gains X0.25 Mult for every card you sell, resetting when you beat a Boss Blind. Pairs naturally with an economy build that's already cycling Jokers and cards through the shop.
• The Duo / The Trio / The Family (Rare) — X2 Mult if your hand contains a Pair, X3 for Three of a Kind, X4 for Four of a Kind, respectively. Any one of the three turns a build already leaning on that hand type into a serious scorer, since the multiplier applies on top of everything else.

03A Tier — Reliable Workhorses

Consistently ranked just below S tier: strong, but either a little more conditional or a little less explosive than the cards above.

• Steel Joker (Uncommon) — gains Mult based on how many Steel Cards are in your full deck. Needs you to be running Steel enhancements to pay off, but scales with deck size rather than needing to trigger repeatedly in a single hand.
• Canio (Legendary) — gains X1 Mult permanently whenever a face card is destroyed. Some rankings place it in S tier for its ceiling; it lands here because unlike Vampire or Cavendish it needs an active source of face-card destruction to get going, which not every build has.

04B Tier — Situational but Useful

Solid role-players. Worth taking if they fit your build or if nothing better is on offer, but not worth reshaping a run around.

• Hiker (Uncommon) — permanently adds Chips to a played card every time it scores. It's a slow burn: strong if you keep the same cards in your deck across many rounds, less impressive in a run that's constantly adding new cards.
• Smiley Face (Common) — flat +Mult for every scoring face card. Reliable in any face-card-leaning hand, but purely additive rather than scaling, so it gets outpaced by multiplicative effects in the late Antes.

05C Tier and Below — Niche or Skippable

These show up consistently near the bottom of independent rankings — not unplayable, but rarely worth prioritizing over the tiers above when you have a choice.

• Splash (Common, C tier) — makes every played card count toward scoring, not just ones that are part of the scored poker hand. Useful in a handful of unusual builds that want to score dead cards, dead weight in a normal hand.
• Marble Joker (Uncommon, D tier) — adds a Stone Card to your deck at the start of each round. Stone Cards add Chips but no rank or suit, which can actively hurt hand types that depend on scoring specific ranks or suits.