Premier League All-Time Top Scorers

The premier league all time top scorers list is topped by a record that has stood for two decades. Alan Shearer scored 260 Premier League goals between 1992 and 2006, and every great striker since has been measured against that number. Harry Kane reached 213 before leaving England, Wayne Rooney 208, and Mohamed Salah, still playing, sits fourth on 193. This page sets out the full top twenty, the stories behind the biggest totals, and an honest look at whether anyone now playing can reach 260.

Premier League All Time Top Scorers: The Top 20

Figures below are Premier League goals only — league matches in the competition since its first season in 1992-93. Appearances are shown for the top ten.

Raheem Sterling is level with Yorke on 123, just outside the twenty on that tie, with Romelu Lukaku on 121 and then a notable pair on 120: Steven Gerrard, the second midfielder in the list’s upper reaches, and Erling Haaland, whose position so low in the table is purely a matter of how recently he arrived. In total, 35 players have scored 100 or more Premier League goals, with Matthew Le Tissier’s 100 rounding out the century club. The current season’s standings and results, which are slowly adding to the active players’ totals, are kept on our Premier League hub.

Alan Shearer: The Record That Sets the Standard

Shearer’s 260 is really two records stacked together. He scored 112 league goals for Blackburn Rovers, powering the club to the 1994-95 title, then moved home to Newcastle United in 1996 and scored 148 more. He remains the only player to reach 100 Premier League goals for two different clubs, and he did it while losing peak seasons to two serious injuries that would have ended many careers outright.

The consistency is the part that challengers keep underrating. Shearer won three consecutive Golden Boots in the mid-1990s, scored at a rate of better than a goal every two games across 441 appearances, and was still a first-choice Premier League striker at 35. He was not a poacher who padded his total in one great team: his Newcastle sides finished as low as 13th in some of those seasons, and the goals kept coming anyway. Any serious attempt on 260 has to survive bad teams, injuries and managerial changes for well over a decade. That, more than the raw number, is what protects the record.

The Chase That Ended: Kane and Rooney

For a few years, Harry Kane looked like the man who would do it. His 213 goals came in only 320 appearances — the best strike rate in the top five — and when he passed Rooney during the 2022-23 season he was still short of his 30th birthday, 47 goals behind Shearer with time apparently on his side. Then he left for Bayern Munich in the summer of 2023, and the chase stopped where it stood. Kane’s total is a reminder that the record is not only about scoring: it is about staying in this league, at the top of it, for an entire career.

Rooney’s 208 took the opposite route. He scored his first Premier League goal at 16, his last at 32, and spread the total across 491 appearances for Everton and Manchester United, where most of the goals and all five of his league titles arrived. He was the second player to pass 200, and he did it while spending his later seasons dropping into midfield roles that cost him goals but extended his career. Between them, Kane and Rooney show the two ways to get near Shearer — score at a relentless rate, or score for a very long time — and why doing both at once has so far proved impossible.

Premier League All Time Top Scorers Still Playing

Two names on the list are still adding to their totals. Mohamed Salah, fourth with 193, is the closest active player to the top and the only one within reach of Rooney and Kane in the next couple of seasons. His record is built on remarkable availability and a scoring rate from the right wing that no wide player in the competition’s history has matched. Even so, at 34, he would need close to 70 more goals to trouble Shearer; the realistic targets in front of him are Cole, then Kane and Rooney.

Erling Haaland is the different case. He has 120 goals, good only for a place in the low twenties for now, but the pace is unlike anyone above him: he reached 100 Premier League goals in 111 games, faster than Shearer himself, who needed 124, and his 36 goals in 2022-23 remain the record for a single Premier League season. If Haaland stays in England and stays fit, the arithmetic starts to look serious in a way it never did for anyone else — he could plausibly pass 200 while still in his twenties. The obstacles are the same ones that stopped Kane: contracts end, clubs in other leagues call, and one bad knee injury rewrites everything.

Below them, the next active climbers — players such as Ollie Watkins, Danny Welbeck and Bukayo Saka — are in the nineties and eighties, productive Premier League forwards whose totals underline the scale of the top twenty rather than threaten it. A place in the century club is a career achievement. A place in the top ten requires something closer to an obsession.

Premier League All Time Top Scorers: The Nearly Men

Between the podium and the rest sit three forwards whose totals would headline almost any other era. Andrew Cole scored 187 goals across six Premier League clubs, most of them for Newcastle United and Manchester United, and he did it without taking penalties as a designated duty for much of his career — a detail his defenders return to whenever his name is ranked too low. Cole was the first of the modern movers, a striker whose total was assembled in two great sides and finished off in shorter spells elsewhere, and his place in the top five is secure for years yet.

Sergio Agüero’s 184 came in only 275 appearances for one club, Manchester City, the fewest games played by anyone in the top six. His rate was the equal of anyone’s; what he lacked was Shearer’s fifteen seasons, his City career spanning ten. Thierry Henry needed fewer appearances still — 175 goals in 258 games for Arsenal, the leanest appearance count in the entire top ten. Henry and Agüero are the strongest evidence that the record is a durability contest as much as a talent contest: on goals per game, both men lived at Shearer’s level. Neither stayed long enough, and that is precisely the point the record keeps making. What unites the premier league all time top scorers in the top ten is not a single great season or even five of them. It is a decade or more of turning up, fit and picked, in the hardest scoring league in the world.

The Midfielders on the List

Frank Lampard’s 177 goals, seventh on the list, might be its most improbable entry. Lampard was a midfielder who arrived late in the box rather than living in it, and he outscored every striker of his generation except the very best — more than Owen, more than Van Persie, more than every forward Chelsea themselves employed during his years there. His 609 appearances are also the most in the top ten, a longevity record in its own right.

Steven Gerrard’s 120 completes the midfield picture. Where Lampard’s goals came in a title-winning machine, Gerrard carried a Liverpool side that never won the league, and a share of his total came from penalties and long-range strikes in matches his team had no right to win. Between them, Lampard and Gerrard are the proof that this list is not reserved for number nines — but also the exception that underlines the rule, since no other midfielder is close.

What It Would Take to Break 260

The maths is simple to state and brutal to perform. Scoring 20 league goals a season — a total that usually wins or nearly wins the Golden Boot — for thirteen straight seasons gets you to 260. Shearer himself did it the other way, with seasons of 34, 31 and 30-plus in his prime and a long tail of double-figure years afterwards. A challenger needs an early start, a decade without a major injury, a club that stays competitive, and no move abroad in his prime. Kane had the rate and left. Haaland has the rate and the early start; whether he has the decade is a question only the coming seasons can answer. Our Premier League season guide looks at where this season’s race, and its scorers, stand right now.

Figures on this page are Premier League goals and appearances only, cross-checked in October 2026 against the published all-time lists of NBC Sports and ESPN. Totals for active players move as the season is played.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the Premier League’s all-time top scorer?

Alan Shearer, with 260 goals scored for Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United between 1992 and 2006. He is the only player to score 100 or more Premier League goals for two different clubs.

How many players have scored 100 Premier League goals?

Thirty-five players have reached 100 Premier League goals, from Shearer’s 260 down to Matthew Le Tissier’s 100. The full century list includes midfielders Frank Lampard (177) and Steven Gerrard (120) alongside the strikers.

Who is the highest-scoring midfielder in Premier League history?

Frank Lampard, with 177 goals for West Ham, Chelsea and Manchester City — seventh on the all-time list and ahead of strikers such as Michael Owen and Robin van Persie.

Could Erling Haaland break Shearer’s record?

Haaland has the pace: he reached 100 goals in 111 games, faster than Shearer, and holds the single-season record with 36. He would still need roughly another 140 goals, which means most of a decade in England without a major injury or a move abroad — possible, but far from certain.