Messi vs Ronaldo penalties: goals, misses and conversion rates

Ronaldo has more penalty goals in the site’s 21 September 2026 record: 184 to Messi’s 114. He also has the higher conversion rate in that record, approximately 83.6% against 76.5%. These are penalties taken during matches. Shootout kicks are excluded.

That answers the main search, but it leaves an important detail hanging: the number of misses is almost identical. Messi has 35 unsuccessful attempts and Ronaldo 36. How can that happen when one player has scored 70 more penalties? The answer is opportunity, and the denominator makes it visible.

Goals and attempts belong in the same table

The goals and attempts follow the site’s reviewed snapshot, attributed to the penalty statistical reference. Unsuccessful attempts are calculated as attempts minus goals; conversion is goals divided by attempts. “Unsuccessful” covers the combined total, not a claim that every kick went wide rather than being saved or hitting the woodwork.

Ronaldo took 71 more penalties in this sample and scored 70 more. Looking only at the misses would conceal that difference. Looking only at the goals would conceal the success rate. A good comparison keeps all three: goals, attempts and conversion.

What does the percentage gap mean?

The difference is about 7.1 percentage points. It describes how the recorded attempts turned out. It is not a forecast that Ronaldo will score exactly seven more than Messi from their next hundred kicks.

Penalty outcomes are affected by the circumstances of individual attempts, and a career average does not preserve those circumstances. It also combines different phases of a player’s career. For a narrower question about a particular competition, select that competition on the penalty comparison page.

Keep the terminology precise when quoting the result. A percentage-point difference subtracts one percentage from the other. A relative percentage increase is a different calculation. Mixing those descriptions can make a modest-looking arithmetic error sound like a much larger performance claim.

Do shootout penalties count as career goals?

A penalty converted during normal time or extra time counts as a goal in the match. A successful kick in a post-match shootout determines the shootout result; it is not added to the player’s match goal total under this site’s career counting rules.

That distinction is particularly relevant when revisiting a World Cup knockout match. A player can score during the game and convert again in the shootout without being credited with two goals in his career tally. Separate the two events before comparing penalty records.

The table above deliberately leaves shootouts out of both the numerator and denominator. Adding shootout goals while keeping only in-match attempts would produce a meaningless conversion rate.

What changes when penalties are removed from career goals?

Using the same dated career snapshot, Messi has 930 goals and Ronaldo 979. Subtract their in-match penalty goals and the resulting non-penalty totals are 816 for Messi and 795 for Ronaldo.

This is a change of category. It does not make a penalty worth less in a match, and it does not rewrite the overall scoring record. It shows why the words attached to a statistic matter: Ronaldo leads total career goals in this snapshot, while Messi leads the non-penalty subset.

Nor should that subset be called “open-play goals.” It still includes direct free kicks and goals from other set-piece situations. The goals comparison and free-kick record help keep those categories distinct.

A useful way to settle the actual question

If the question is who has scored more penalties, the answer here is Ronaldo. If it is who converted a larger share of his recorded attempts, the answer is also Ronaldo. If it concerns non-penalty scoring, use the separate totals and name them accurately.

Carry the cutoff date with any figure you share. This article explains the September 21 snapshot; the updates page is the place to check for subsequent changes.