Messi vs Ronaldo in the Champions League: 129 vs 140 goals.

Ronaldo has scored 140 Champions League goals to Messi's 129 — an 11-goal margin, and the competition's all-time record. He has one more title, five to four, and one more final, six to five. On the headline measures this is the clearest single-competition win either player has over the other anywhere on this site.

The gap widens in the knockout rounds and narrows nowhere. Ronaldo has 90 knockout-stage goals to Messi's 70, and 4 goals in finals to Messi's 1. Three of his five titles came in a row at Real Madrid between 2016 and 2018, the only three-peat of the modern era, and the 2013–14 campaign that produced the tenth European Cup also produced a single-tournament record of 17 goals.

One measure runs level and none runs the other way. They are tied on hat-tricks, 8 each. On finals, Messi won four of five and Ronaldo five of six — so even the conversion rate, the narrowest reading available, goes to Ronaldo rather than, as this page once claimed, to Messi. This is the one competition on this site where Messi does not lead on a single headline measure.

The assists are near-identical: 42 to 40 in Ronaldo's favour, which is within the margin of how different compilations attribute a second assist. Of the two players' combined 269 goals in the competition, Ronaldo's share is 52% — a smaller edge than the career-goals figure might suggest, and a reminder that Messi's 129 would itself be the all-time record if Ronaldo had never played.