The Most Popular Spells in 2024 5e

I'm very nearly lying on the homepage of 5e Spellbook Builder when I say you're not being tracked.

Your data does live on your device, and not on some server. There's no Google Analytics, no Facebook Pixel, I do not know your email address. That's all true. You are not being tracked.

But the spells you are adding to your spellbooks are.

I believe in good web experiences, and in building this experience, I realized one thing that could make it even better: spell popularity.

So while I don't know anything about you I do want to know what spells you add to your spellbooks.

I keep a simple count. For each spell, how many times its been added to spellbooks is being recorded. As the data accumulates and more people build out their spellbooks, it becomes a very accurate representation of the game's most popular spells.

The Analysis

So let's dive into the 5e's 10 most popular spells — the spells that have been added to player's spellbooks more than any others.

The top 10 most popular spells in 5e (as of April 2026)

These are aboslutely the spells you see frequent most character's spellbooks. They're all spells available to multiple classes, which increases their popularity.

And unsurprisingly, the list is comprised of cantrips and level 1 spells — the spells any casting character immediately has access to when starting a new character. Lower level spells will always be more frequently added, on average, than higher level spells, so it makes sense the most desirable cantrips and level 1 spells are the games most popular spells of all time.

So what might be a more interesting list? The spells that are most picked relative to the rest of their spell level. Let's take a look at the top 10 based on that criteria.

The top 10 most popular spells for their spell level (as of April 2026)

Now we see spells from level 2, 3 and 4.

This truly feels like a list of the most coveted spells in D&D, and authoritatively it is for the users of 5e Spellbook Builder.

There are spells higher than level 4 that stand out from the rest of their respective level too, but they simply don't rise up above these ones as much and don't make the top 10. At the higher spell levels, spell choices start to become a lot more varied and personal, where the lower levels feature more "must-have" spells for players.

The new features

It's been fun analyzing the data, but I also wanted to release new features for everyone to enjoy:

You can now sort spells by popularity
You can see a more detailed ranking of a spell's popularity on its detail page

Sorting spells by popularity allows you to see which spells are most picked by players. You can affirm that Resistance really is a lousy spell, as it is proven to be one of the least chosen cantrips in the game.

And it's really interesting to do things like find out the most popular level 4 damage spell in the game (it's Blight, as of the time of this writing), or see what spells are rarely used in the game to build more unique spellcasting characters.

Some data limitations

So we know this data is useful, but the simplicity of the data also has its flaws, and I want you to be aware of them.

Higher-level spell data reliability

The data gets orders of magnitude less frequent as you go higher in spell level. If an average cantrip is added to spellbooks 100 times, by the time you get to level 9, that number drops to just 2.

So many people are adding lower level spells to their spellbooks that the data really smooths out and shows the broad trends of D&D players very reliably. I think most players would agree that there are no surprises among the most popular spells shown on the site.

But at higher levels, individuals' unique choices have more sway on the data.

It took nearly 5000 spells being added to spellbooks before the first player took Wish. Based on numbers I'm seeing, you're likely to see at least 200 different characters rocking Cure Wounds before you ever see one with Wish.

And that tracks. I've played D&D for over 6 years and I've still only had one character get powerful enough to access Level 7 spells, never mind 8 and 9. It kills me.

It will take some time to build up a large enough sample size to get a good picture of how popular higher level spells really are, and it's not there yet. For now, spells higher than level 5 do not show detailed popularity rankings on their detail pages. It would suggest more data fidelity than actually exists yet.

Class-specific popularity

I don't know what classes your characters are. So there's no way for me to guarantee how popular a spell is for a particular class.

Spell popularity is just a broad measure of how likely you are to see a character have the spell in a typical D&D game.

Because of this, spells that are available to multiple classes will naturally be more popular than spells that are only available to a single class since more characters will have access to them, and vice versa.

Take Hunter's Mark. It's a spell unique to Rangers and I'm not sure I've ever encountered a Ranger without it.

Yet it currently ranks as a relatively unpopular level 1 spell available to Rangers. That's because Rangers have access to a myriad of other level 1 spells mostly available to other classes as well. And every spell more popular than Hunter's Mark are all spells available to other classes than just Ranger.

So unfortunately there is no certain way of knowing for Ranger players, is Hunter's Mark even more popular a choice than Cure Wounds?

But there may be the possibility of clever math to tease this out. I've run a script that attempts to remove the bonus of a spell having multiple classes using weights based on an analysis that guesses how popular certain classes are.

Here's the Top 10 result of most popular spells, agnostic of class availability and level availability:

Oh and hey, there's Hunter's Mark as the 9th most demanded spell in the game. Rangers love their Hunter's Mark — just not quite as much as Wizards and Sorcerers love their Fireballs. And this makes sense. When Wizards and Sorcerers get their first Level 3 spells, they're grabbing Fireball. Hunter's Mark at Level 1 is being grabbed by pretty much all Rangers, but along with a number of other Level 1 spells because of their greater availability in the game.

So while it's a neat list, I'm not quite sure how accurate it really is yet. I want to add a sort by "most coveted" spell at some point.

Popularity helps spell discovery

So for now 5e Spellbook Builder only sorts popularity of a spell across the entire game. So while it does not tell you if Rangers specifically take Hunter's Mark more than Cure Wounds, it does tell you Cure Wounds is more frequently found in the game than Hunter's Mark. And we can also see that Hunter's Mark is more popular than Ensnaring Strike and Hail of Thorns, the other two level 1 spells only for Rangers.

This is reliable, truthful information. Do with it what you will.

The popularity data is just one more way you can use this tool to discover spells that you might not otherwise know about. I know I'm excited to build my next character around the most underrated spells in the game — spells that aren't being taken as much but still have seriously powerful effects. Jump, I'm looking at you.

I hope you enjoy and as 5e Spellbook Builder continues to be used the data will only be more useful for players.