Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z

ドラゴンボールＺ
1989 -1996 Toei Animation Fuji TV 291 episodes Completed
Action Adventure Martial Arts
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Details & Synopsis
Before Naruto. Before Bleach. Before the Big Three had a name. There was Dragon Ball Z, and for an entire generation of Western kids in the 1990s, Dragon Ball Z was simply anime. The category and the example were the same thing.

Produced by Toei Animation and directed by Daisuke Nishio, Dragon Ball Z aired on Fuji TV from 1989 to 1996, 291 episodes following the adult Goku and his allies across four escalating sagas: the Saiyan invasion, Frieza on Namek, the androids and Cell, and the decade-spanning weight of Majin Buu. Akira Toriyama's power scaling, once a comedy mechanic in the original Dragon Ball, became mythology here. Transformations as revelation. The Super Saiyan moment. Gohan vs. Cell in a fight still being argued about. The power level debate started here, and it has never actually ended.

In the West the story gets more complicated, and more interesting. Ocean Productions dubbed it first, a version truncated, edited, scored by Bruce Faulconer's electric guitar-driven replacement soundtrack that an entire generation now considers inseparable from the show itself. Cartoon Network ran it in syndication. Toonami ran it in the afternoon slot that trained a demographic to expect anime at 4pm. Kids who had never heard the word fansub knew every Kamehameha, every Spirit Bomb, every moment of dead air in a Frieza fight that took four episodes to cover forty five seconds.

Funimation eventually acquired full rights and started over: the uncut version, the original Kikuchi score, the complete run. Then came Dragon Ball Z Kai, the remaster that trimmed the series to its canonical bones, cutting the extended powering up sequences that had always been the show's most honest flaw.

The Seed of Might project sits apart from all of it. 291 episodes, fully color and audio graded, built as a preservation effort rather than a rebroadcast or a resale. It exists because the complete series deserved that kind of treatment while the actual licensing rights were still tangled up in dispute, not because it was ever meant to compete with an official release. This site documents that project's history as part of the record, the same way it documents every other chapter of how this show reached the West.

The power level arguments are still happening. The show is still here.
Alt Title ドラゴンボールＺ
Studio Toei Animation
Network Fuji TV
Aired 1989 - 1996
Episodes 291
Genre Action, Adventure, Martial Arts
Status Completed
← All lore

Power Levels

About This Page

Power Levels Are a Snapshot, Not a Universal Physics Engine

note · estimate

DBZ gives explicit battle powers most heavily during the Saiyan and Namek material. Later in the series, exact numbers largely disappear and the anime communicates gaps through transformations, reactions and fight outcomes instead.

Treat stated numbers as stated numbers. Estimates and derived comparisons should stay clearly labeled as estimates rather than being promoted into canon.

The Mechanics of the Math

The Mechanics of the Math

Canon numbers · Guide numbers · Maths · Vibes

Every Dragon Ball site used to have a power-level page. Half the fun was reading the numbers. The other half was deciding the guy who made the page had absolutely lost his mind.

We are keeping that tradition.

Early DBZ gives us real scouter readings and published numbers, so those get treated seriously. Then Frieza breaks the meter, the Androids stop playing along, Cell never hands anybody a spreadsheet, and by Buu the idea of assigning one clean number to anybody is basically comedy.

So this page uses four levels of confidence:

CANON: The story actually gives us the number.
GUIDE: A published Dragon Ball guide gives us the number.
MATHS: We have a known multiplier, comparison, or on-screen gap and we are extrapolating.
VIBES: Nobody knows. We picked a number that makes the surrounding fights make sense and are prepared to defend it like it is 2001 and this is a message board.
Why it matters
The numbers eventually stop being canon. The ways Dragon Ball makes those numbers go up do not. That progression is the interesting part.

Zenkai Boost

Recovery mechanic · Saiyan biology

Saiyan biology rewards surviving catastrophic damage with greater fighting power after recovery. There is no neat canon formula for how much stronger you get, which naturally did not stop any of us from inventing one.

The important part is the loop: get nearly killed, recover completely, come back stronger. On Namek, Vegeta realizes this is not just biology. It is exploitable biology.

And this is where Senzu Beans become accidentally terrifying. A Senzu does not grant power by itself. It restores injuries, stamina and energy. Put instant recovery next to a Saiyan body that gets stronger after severe damage and you have the closest thing DBZ ever gets to a legal performance-enhancing drug.

Super Saiyan Multiplier Stack

x50 → x100 → x400

This is where old power-level pages became dangerous.

Super Saiyan is commonly treated as base x50. Super Saiyan 2 is roughly twice Super Saiyan, putting it around base x100. Super Saiyan 3 is roughly four times Super Saiyan 2, giving the famous base x400.

Once you accept those multipliers, one made-up base number can generate three more made-up numbers instantly. This is how a perfectly respectable 3,000,000 becomes 150,000,000 and, a couple sagas later, your calculator is displaying scientific notation.

Potara Fusion

The point where the calculator gives up · estimate

Old fan lists loved treating Potara like multiplication. It is a wonderful piece of power-scaling folklore and an absolutely terrible thing to present as a canon equation.

The actual useful fact is simpler: Vegito is so far beyond Buuhan that the fight becomes humiliation instead of competition.

MATHS:
Our later Vegito number is intentionally a fan estimate. We are not claiming the Supreme Kai handed Goku a multiplication table with the earrings.

Saga 1 - The Mortal Baseline (Saiyan Saga)

Saiyan Saga

When the scouter still meant something

The Farmer

5
The Rosetta Stone of Dragon Ball power scaling.

Raditz lands on Earth, points a scouter at a terrified farmer with a shotgun and gets 5. That means every god, tyrant, fusion and screaming golden man on the rest of this page can technically be measured in Farmers.

Vegito is worth a lot of Farmers.

Raditz

1,500
GUIDE: 1,500.

The first villain of DBZ is roughly three-and-a-half times Goku and Piccolo's normal Raditz-era readings, and it feels impossible. That is worth remembering after a page full of billions.

Raditz is not scary because 1,500 is a large number. He is scary because 416 used to be Goku.
Raditz

Yajirobe

~970 (guide-era figure)
A power-level page desperately wants Yajirobe to matter numerically. Yajirobe refuses.

He spends most of the Saiyan fight hiding, waits until Great Ape Vegeta is focused on everybody else, then slices the tail off a monster sitting around 180,000 with a sword.
The Breakdown
Power level: irrelevant. Timing: perfect. If the chart says you cannot help, become a stealth mechanic.
Yajirobe

Piccolo

408 → ~3,500
CANON: 408 against Raditz. GUIDE-ERA FIGURE: roughly 3,500 after the year preparing for the Saiyans.

One correction old lists constantly muddle: 3,500 is not the Raditz-era Special Beam Cannon reading. The Makankosappo spikes Piccolo's output dramatically, but the famous Raditz-fight charge is in the low-thousands range.

The fun part is still the same. Piccolo is one of the first characters to prove that your resting number and the number attached to one horrifying technique do not have to be the same thing.
Piccolo

Goku

416 → 8,000+ → 16,000 → 24,000 → 32,000
CANON/GUIDE TERRITORY: Goku is 416 against Raditz and comes back from King Kai's training at over 8,000.

Then Kaio-ken turns one number into a live spreadsheet.

8,000 x2 = 16,000.
8,000 x3 = 24,000.
8,000 x4 = 32,000.

The maths are almost suspiciously clean, which is why power-level fandom became incurable.
Why it matters
Kaio-ken introduces the idea that usable combat power can be temporarily multiplied past what the body can safely support. Every higher step buys power by charging interest directly to Goku's muscles.
Son Goku

Gohan

1 → 1,307 → ~2,800
Gohan begins the Raditz encounter reading as basically nothing, then spikes to 1,307 when panic and rage finally override being four years old.

By the Saiyan invasion, guide-era figures put his full-power output much higher again.

This is the first recurring Gohan rule: whatever number you write beside his name is probably correct until somebody he loves gets hurt.
Son Gohan

Tien

~250 → 1,830
GUIDE: 1,830 by the Saiyan invasion.

Tien is a useful reminder that a power level measures the fighter, not the price of the technique. His best attacks routinely cost more of him than the opponent expects.

That becomes his entire career in one sentence.
Tien Shinhan

Krillin

~206 → 1,770
GUIDE: 1,770 at full power around the Saiyan invasion.

Krillin is never going to win this page, which is part of why he is so useful on it. He keeps surviving rooms full of people whose numbers say he should not be there.

Power scaling needs a control group. Krillin is the control group with a Destructo Disc.
Krillin

Yamcha

~177 → 1,480
GUIDE: roughly 1,480 by the Saiyan invasion.

And before the joke eats the scene forever: Yamcha beats the Saibaman in the actual fight. He relaxes because he thinks it is over, the thing grabs him, and then the crater meme is born.

His power level was fine. His post-fight awareness was not.
Yamcha

Chiaotzu

~145 → ~610
Small number, enormous decision.

Chiaotzu latches onto Nappa and detonates himself at point-blank range. It does essentially nothing.

There is no bit of maths that makes this exchange favorable. That is why the scene works.
Chiaotzu

Nappa

4,000
One of the cleanest numbers in the series and one of the nastiest demonstrations of what a gap actually means.

Nappa arrives at 4,000 and spends the afternoon turning trained martial artists into casualties. Then Goku arrives at over 8,000 and Nappa suddenly looks slow.

Two scenes. Same Nappa. The number did not change. The context did.
Nappa

Vegeta

18,000 → 180,000
CANON/GUIDE MATHS: Vegeta sits around 18,000 in normal form. Great Ape is the famous x10 Saiyan multiplier, so the artificial-moon version lands around 180,000.

This is what makes Yajirobe cutting off the tail so funny in power-level terms. A guy whose number does not belong in the same paragraph deletes roughly 162,000 points of Vegeta by attacking the mechanic instead of the fighter.

Numbers matter. Weak points matter more.
Vegeta

Saga 1 close-out

This is the last era where the chart behaves itself.

Scouters work. The numbers are spoken out loud. Kaio-ken gives us multiplication you can do on paper. Great Ape gives us another clean x10.

Then everyone goes to Namek and discovers several extremely irresponsible ways to accelerate the process.

Saga 2 - The Zenkai Explosion (Namek / Frieza Saga)

Namek / Frieza Saga

Zenkai abuse, gravity training and the death of reasonable numbers

Vegeta

24,000 → ~30,000+ → ???
CANON: Vegeta arrives on Namek around 24,000. After that, the clean numbers start disappearing faster than Frieza Force soldiers.

This is the saga where Vegeta realizes Saiyan recovery is not merely something that happens to him. It is something he can abuse. Zarbon nearly kills him, he heals stronger, the Ginyu Force nearly kills him, he heals stronger, and eventually he asks Krillin to deliberately blast him so Dende can heal him again.

MATHS:
We are not pretending there is a canon formula that turns those recoveries into 460,000, then 1,000,000, then 2,500,000. The reliable part is the direction: every recovery pushes him dramatically upward until he briefly convinces himself he has become the Super Saiyan.

He has not.
Vegeta

Gohan

~1,500 → Guru unlock → 200,000+? (fan range) · estimate
Gohan gets two completely different growth engines on Namek.

Guru unlocks dormant potential without Gohan having to nearly die for it. Then actual battlefield trauma and recovery keep pushing him upward anyway.

VIBES:
Once Gohan starts staggering Frieza forms that should erase him, exact numbers become an argument rather than a reading. We keep 200,000+ as a deliberately loose fan estimate because pretending we know the last digit would be ridiculous.
Son Gohan

Krillin

~1,500 → ~75,000 (guide/fan tradition)
Krillin gets Guru's potential unlock and suddenly the strongest ordinary human on Earth has a number that would have made Saiyan Saga Vegeta pay attention.

That jump is what makes Namek fun to chart. Nobody changed hair color. Nobody fused. An elderly Namekian put a hand on Krillin's head and ruined three years of old power-level tables.
Krillin

Piccolo

3,500 → 1,000,000+
This is less maths and more on-screen proof.

Piccolo trains with King Kai, fuses with Nail, arrives on Namek, drops the weighted clothing and can suddenly fight Frieza's second form straight up.

Frieza has already said that second form exceeds one million.

So Piccolo's exact number is negotiable. The tier is not.
Why it matters
Namekian Fusion is the first growth mechanic on this page that simply combines lives. No multiplier chart required. One Namekian becomes part of another and the scale jumps.
Piccolo

Captain Ginyu

120,000
CANON: 120,000.

Captain Ginyu is exactly what an official number should be: useful right up until his actual gimmick makes it irrelevant.

His trump card is not becoming stronger. It is changing bodies.

The funniest possible power-level answer for Ginyu is therefore: check again in thirty seconds.
Captain Ginyu

Goku

90,000 → 3,000,000 → 150,000,000
This is the cleanest giant jump in DBZ and the reason fan calculators never recovered.

Goku arrives on Namek around 90,000 after brutal gravity training. The Ginyu body-swap disaster leaves his body wrecked, and after healing he emerges around 3,000,000 in guide material. Then Super Saiyan applies the famous x50.

3,000,000 x 50 = 150,000,000.

That is an absurd number produced by extremely ordinary multiplication.
The Breakdown
Gravity training raises the base. Recovery raises the base again. Super Saiyan multiplies the finished base. Three different mechanics, stacked in exactly the order a fan site wants them.
Son Goku

Frieza

530,000 → 1,000,000+ → ??? → 120,000,000
CANON: First Form Frieza is 530,000. He says it because he is Frieza and of course he does.

CANON: His second form exceeds one million.

After that, welcome to the argument.

Final-form percentages and guide figures eventually give us the familiar 120,000,000 at 100% power, but the exact road between forms is where old power-level pages became creative writing with arithmetic.

VIBES:
We refuse to assign a fake precise third-form number just because a stat block looks prettier with one.

By 100%, Namek is exploding and no functioning scouter matters anymore. The show has made its point.
Frieza

Saga 2 close-out

Namek is the power-boosting mechanics laboratory.

Gravity training raises the base.
Guru unlocks hidden potential.
Saiyan recovery turns medical care into escalation.
Namekian Fusion combines bodies.
Super Saiyan multiplies everything underneath it.

And Senzu / healing does not create the power. It lets the fighters get back to the part where their biology, training or transformations can.

This is also where official battle-power bookkeeping basically walks off a cliff. Everything from here gets more fun if we admit that.

Saga 3 - The Chamber Era (Android / Cell Saga)

Android / Cell Saga

The numbers are estimates now. The mechanics get more interesting.

The Mechanic Shift: From Recovery to Mastery

The Cell era is where power-level speculation becomes pure fandom and the growth mechanics become more interesting than the numbers.

Zenkai stops driving the plot. The new machine is the Room of Spirit and Time: compress a year of training into a day.

But even that is not the real lesson.

Vegeta and Trunks initially chase more output. Goku eventually decides the better answer is mastering Super Saiyan so completely that staying transformed stops wasting energy. Cell is the saga where Dragon Ball learns that a bigger number can make you a worse fighter.

Future Trunks

~170,000,000 → ~600,000,000 → ~1,200,000,000 (AH estimate)
VIBES WITH EVIDENCE.

Trunks arrives, turns Super Saiyan and deletes Mecha Frieza so quickly that 120 million stops feeling like an endgame number immediately.

Then the Time Chamber happens.

Grade 2: more power, still usable.
Grade 3: OH MY GOD LOOK AT THOSE SHOULDERS.

The final figure is intentionally huge because raw output really does go through the roof. The problem is that Trunks has traded away so much speed that Cell can simply avoid him.
The Breakdown
The scouter would love Grade 3. The actual fight hates it. Trunks eventually realizes Vegeta understood the same flaw and chose not to push the form that far.
Future Trunks

Vegeta

~400,000,000 → ~1,500,000,000 (AH estimate)
This is where Vegeta gets smarter about power and dumber about everything else.

Super Vegeta is the bulkier Grade 2 route: a major increase in strength without taking the muscle inflation all the way to Trunks' Grade 3 disaster. He is fast enough and strong enough to humiliate Semi-Perfect Cell.

Then Cell says, essentially, 'I would be way stronger if you let me absorb Android 18,' and Vegeta decides this sounds fantastic.

MATHS:
1.5 billion is our estimate, not canon. The defensible part is the relationship: comfortably above Semi-Perfect Cell, nowhere near enough once Perfect Cell actually exists.

The number peaks at almost exactly the same moment Vegeta's judgment hits bottom.
Vegeta

Piccolo

~350,000,000+ (AH estimate)
Piccolo fuses with Kami and becomes one Namekian again.

There is no official scouter number here, which is liberating. We only need the fights.

He can hang with Android 17.
Android 17 can hang with him.
Imperfect Cell eventually grows past both of them.

So 350 million-ish is our placeholder for 'comfortably beyond Namek, roughly Android tier.'

VIBES:
If your spreadsheet says 330 million or 420 million, congratulations, you are now participating correctly.
Piccolo

Android 16

n/a
No useful ki power level.

Android 16 is a machine with an internal energy system, not a fighter whose ki politely behaves like the Saiyan Saga scouters expected.

This is where the page gets to admit that 'n/a' is sometimes more accurate than adding another zero.
Android 16

Androids 17 & 18

~360,000,000 / ~380,000,000 (AH estimate)
Entirely fan-estimate territory.

17 and 18 have effectively inexhaustible internal energy in battle, which means the interesting advantage is not merely their peak output. They do not gas out the way a Super Saiyan does.

Important cleanup: Android 18 breaks Vegeta's arm before the Time Chamber and before Super Vegeta / Grade 2 exists. That humiliation is what helps send him toward the Chamber in the first place.

MATHS:
We put them in the high-hundreds-of-millions because they clearly sit above ordinary early-Android-arc Super Saiyans. Pick different exact numbers if you enjoy arguments.
Android 17 Android 18

Goku

~2,000,000,000 peak (AH estimate)
Goku's Cell-era breakthrough is not 'make Super Saiyan more enormous.'

It is the opposite.

He and Gohan stay transformed until Super Saiyan stops feeling like an emergency state. Less strain. Less wasted energy. Better control. The same transformation becomes a better fighting platform because they master it instead of forcing it.

VIBES:
Two billion is our number for mastered Cell Games Goku. The exact figure is invented. The important bit is why we place him there: clearly above the earlier Grade experiments as a complete fighter, still below the level Gohan reaches when SSJ2 finally breaks open.

Efficiency, not just escalation.
Son Goku

Cell

~250M → ~900M → ~3B (AH estimate)
Cell is a nightmare for a power-level list because his whole body is a collection of other people's mechanics.

Imperfect Cell grows through absorption.
Semi-Perfect Cell adds Android 17.
Perfect Cell adds Android 18.
Then after self-destruction and regeneration, he returns stronger still.

Whether you call that last jump a Saiyan-style Zenkai or simply Cell benefiting from the Saiyan traits in his design, the visual result is obvious: he comes back in the Super Saiyan 2 neighborhood with the lightning to advertise it.

VIBES:
Three billion-ish for Super Perfect Cell keeps him below our SSJ2 Gohan while making the final beam struggle believable. That is the level of precision we are claiming. No more.
Cell

Gohan

~3,600,000,000 SSJ2 peak (AH estimate)
This is where mastery meets the emotional trigger.

Gohan does the same Chamber work Goku does. He learns to live comfortably as a Super Saiyan. He already has the ridiculous hidden potential the series has been teasing since Raditz.

Then Android 16 dies and the final restraint snaps.

MATHS:
If mastered Super Saiyan Gohan is already in the Cell Games top tier, SSJ2's roughly x2-over-SSJ jump gives us permission to put him around 3.6 billion in our fan model.

The number is ours. The hierarchy is the show's: once SSJ2 appears, the Cell Juniors stop mattering and Cell finally looks scared.
Son Gohan

Saga 3 close-out

The Cell Saga quietly changes the question.

Saiyan Saga: What is your number?
Namek: How fast can you increase your number?
Cell: Can you actually use the power you have?

Trunks proves raw output can sabotage the fighter. Goku chooses efficiency. Gohan combines mastery with the emotional trigger for the next transformation.

The chart is now made up. The character logic is better than ever.

Saga 4 - The God-Tier Ceiling (Majin Buu Saga)

Majin Buu Saga

Magic, fusion and numbers with too many zeroes

The Mechanic Shift, Part Two: Fine, Just Cheat

By Buu, conventional training is only one item in a completely irresponsible toolbox.

Goku trains for years in the afterlife.
Vegeta trains because Vegeta.
Babidi amplifies existing evil and power.
Old Kai unlocks dormant potential.
Fusion creates temporary people who are stronger than either component.
Buu absorbs fighters and literally wears their strength.

This is no longer a power-level system. It is power-level jazz.

All numbers below are AnimeHistory estimates unless a known multiplier gives us something firmer. Please enjoy them irresponsibly.

Babidi

n/a
Babidi does not need a useful battle power. His entire contribution to the chart is making other people's lines worse.

Magic, possession, amplification and manipulation are the mechanic.

Assigning Babidi 800 million because the table looks empty would be exactly the sort of thing an old fan site did.

We are showing restraint. Barely.
Babidi

Vegeta

~6,000,000,000 Majin SSJ2 peak (AH estimate)
Seven years of training gets Vegeta to Super Saiyan 2 territory before Babidi enters the equation. That matters.

Babidi does not simply hand Vegeta SSJ2 out of nowhere. The Majin spell amplifies a fighter who has already spent seven years obsessively closing the gap, letting him stand evenly with SSJ2 Goku.

VIBES:
Six billion is our peak Majin Vegeta number because old power-level pages require a number and Final Explosion deserves a stupid one.

The interesting growth mechanic is psychological: Vegeta accepts magical corruption because he thinks becoming his old self again might restore the edge he believes family life took from him.

It does not.
Vegeta

Dabura

~2,500,000,000 (AH estimate)
Dabura is one of the easier Buu-era estimates because the story itself gives us the comparison: he is discussed in the neighborhood of Cell-era strength.

So we put him around the old Perfect Cell tier and move on before somebody asks whether spit should have its own multiplier.

VIBES:
2.5 billion. Defend or replace at your leisure.
Dabura

Old Kai's Ritual

Potential unlock · No blonde hair required

This is one of the best power boosts in the series because it openly rejects the visual grammar Dragon Ball spent years teaching us.

No new Super Saiyan level.
No bulk.
No lightning requirement.
No near-death recovery.

Old Kai draws out Gohan's dormant potential and tells him to access it basically the way he would transform, except the result leaves him looking like Gohan.
Why it matters
After three sagas of 'new hair = new ceiling,' the strongest unfused hero in the Buu arc gets there by not transforming at all.

Goku

~60,000,000 base → ~24,000,000,000 SSJ3 (AH maths)
Here we finally get to use the x400 toy.

If we peg late-Z Goku's base around 60 million in our fan model, Super Saiyan 3 lands around 24 billion.

60,000,000 x 400 = 24,000,000,000.

Is the 60 million canon? Absolutely not.
Is multiplying it by 400 extremely satisfying? Absolutely yes.

The form also demonstrates why output is not everything. SSJ3 burns energy so aggressively in a living body that the timer becomes part of the fight.

The number is enormous. The battery is terrible.
Son Goku

Gotenks

~28,000,000,000 SSJ3 peak (AH estimate)
Two children perform a dance badly enough to create fat and skinny failure states, eventually get it right, then the successful fusion learns Super Saiyan 3.

Power scaling has left the building.

VIBES:
We put SSJ3 Gotenks a little above SSJ3 Goku because the story needs him to be an absurd temporary solution who can actually pressure Super Buu.

The exact number is fake.
The ghost kamikaze volleyball energy is real.
Gotenks

Ultimate Gohan

~36,000,000,000 (AH estimate)
Ultimate Gohan is our highest non-fusion hero number because that is how the fight reads.

He arrives.
He does not turn gold.
He does not unveil Super Saiyan 4-and-a-half.
He simply beats Super Buu senseless.

VIBES:
Thirty-six billion puts him above SSJ3 Gotenks and comfortably above ordinary Super Buu without pretending Old Kai supplied us with a multiplier.

This entry is intentionally an estimate built from fight hierarchy, because by Buu that is all anybody has.
Son Gohan

Fat Buu (original)

n/a / not worth pretending
Fat Buu is exactly why a single number is becoming useless.

His output is enormous. His temperament changes constantly. He can be playful, furious, asleep, hungry or murderous, and the difference matters as much as any imaginary stat.

We could assign him 15 billion.

We could also go outside.
Majin Buu

Super Buu

~18,000,000,000 → ~60,000,000,000 Buuhan (AH estimate)
Buu finally discovers the most offensive growth mechanic possible: just absorb the people who are stronger than you.

Gotenks.
Piccolo.
Gohan.

Every absorption changes his body, intelligence and effective combat tier.

VIBES:
Our Buuhan peak sits around 60 billion because he has to clear Ultimate Gohan decisively and still remain hilariously below Vegito.

This is not addition. It is not multiplication. It is 'the plot has sewn three character sheets into one villain and we need a number now.'
Majin Buu

Vegito

~120,000,000,000+ (extremely scientific fan estimate)
We multiplied things.

We should not have.

Old fan lists often treated Potara like mathematical multiplication because 'Goku plus Vegeta' did not feel remotely large enough to explain what Vegito does to Buuhan.

So 120 billion-plus stays on this page as a tribute to that tradition, not as a canon claim.
The Breakdown
Vegito fights the strongest Buu form like he is bored, gets turned into candy, and somehow becomes more disrespectful.

120 billion?
200 billion?
Send us your spreadsheet.

The only defensible conclusion is that Vegito has broken the chart and appears to be enjoying himself immensely.
Vegito

Kid Buu

~20,000,000,000 (AH estimate)
Kid Buu is the proof that strongest and most dangerous are not synonyms.

We deliberately put him below Buuhan. He has lost the absorptions that made the previous form absurdly powerful.

He is also infinitely less stable and destroys Earth almost immediately because nobody is inside his head suggesting maybe not.

VIBES:
Twenty billion puts him around the SSJ3 problem range without pretending he is the numerical peak of Buu.

Lower number. Worse person to be in a room with.
Majin Buu

The Spirit Bomb

0 → everyone
And here the list finally admits defeat.

The last major attack in Dragon Ball Z is not Goku finding Super Saiyan 4, discovering a hidden Zenkai, mastering another gravity room or receiving a magic upgrade.

He asks everybody for energy.

Vegeta buys time.
Mr. Satan gets Earth to listen.
Ordinary people raise their hands.
Goku throws the result.
Why it matters
The series ends its power-level arms race by crowd-sourcing the final number.

We used to write this as 0 → ∞.

Honestly, that was pretty good too.

Reading the Numbers

When the Numbers Stop

After Namek, exact battle powers stop being the language of the anime

DBZ does not keep publishing a clean numerical ladder forever. Once Super Saiyan, the Androids and Cell take over, the series increasingly communicates strength through transformations, reactions, dominance and specific matchups instead of scouter figures.

WHAT CHANGED:
The absence of a number is not missing data that needs to be invented. It is a change in how the anime itself tells you who is ahead.