Dragon Ball Character Heights

How Dragon Ball heights are measured and published

Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball began in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1984 and ran until 1995, filling 519 chapters across 42 volumes from Shueisha, according to Wikipedia's overview of the franchise. Toriyama drew his cast in a stylized way: big heads, compact bodies and very elastic proportions. That makes it hard to judge heights by eye, so fans rely on the numbers in the official guidebooks.

Two databooks supply almost every figure on this page:

• Dragon Ball: Super Exciting Guide (2009). Shueisha released it as a pair, the "Story Volume" on March 4, 2009 and the "Character Volume" on April 3, 2009. The Dragon Ball Wiki notes that the guides were built on the kanzenban (deluxe) edition of the manga, and that each volume includes an interview with Toriyama. Most of the adult heights and weights below come from the Character Volume.
• Daizenshuu 7: Dragon Ball Encyclopedia (February 25, 1996). The last of the seven "Great Complete Collection" books, published just after the manga ended, is a 313-page reference with a full character guide. Where Super Exciting Guide and Daizenshuu 7 both list a character (Master Roshi, Chi-Chi, Yamcha, Chiaotzu), the figures match.

A third, older source shows up for characters who appear as teenagers: a profile in Weekly Shōnen Jump issue 37 of 1986, which gave heights for the early-series versions of Bulma, Yamcha and Chi-Chi. Those numbers explain why some characters have two official heights.

Dragon Ball character heights at a glance

The table below lists every Dragon Ball character in the site's database, tallest first, together with the official weight where one exists. Heights are the values the site uses; weights are from the same databook entries.

Two things stand out. First, the numbers run across an unusually wide range for a cast that is mostly human: 88 cm separates Piccolo from Chiaotzu. Second, the weights are light. Goku at 175 cm and 62 kg, or Vegeta at 164 cm and 56 kg, describe slim people even though Toriyama draws them with heavy, sculpted muscle.

You can stand any of these characters next to each other, or next to yourself, in the 3D height comparison tool.

The Saiyans: Goku, Vegeta and Gohan

The rivalry at the heart of Dragon Ball Z comes with a clear height difference. Goku is 175 cm and Vegeta is 164 cm. The Dragon Ball Wiki's article on Vegeta describes him as a well-built man of below-average stature and illustrates the point with a Toriyama design sheet that shows the two Saiyans together. The same article notes that Vegeta first looked very short and lean next to his huge partner Nappa, and later seems a little taller and noticeably more muscular as the art style changed.

Goku is also one of the rare shōnen heroes who visibly grows up over the course of his series. The wiki's summary of his appearance traces it step by step: at 12 he is small enough that people take him for a child under 10; around 15 he starts to gain height; at about 18 he has a big growth spurt and is taller than some of his friends; and by about 24 another spurt puts him level with his taller human allies. The 175 cm figure is labeled "adult."

Gohan follows a similar arc in compressed form. After his year in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, the wiki says he grows noticeably, to roughly Krillin's height, and as a young adult he ends up about as tall as his father. Super Exciting Guide makes it official: adult Gohan is 176 cm, a single centimeter taller than Goku, and at 61 kg he is 1 kg lighter.

Future Trunks is the outlier among the Saiyans. His 170 cm figure is explicitly labeled as his teen height, and the wiki describes him as below average in height at first. After his own Time Chamber training he grows taller and more muscular but, by the wiki's account, remains somewhat shorter and thinner than Goku. No separate adult figure appears in the guide.

That last row surprises many fans: by the official numbers, Vegeta's son is taller than Vegeta.

Earth's fighters: from Krillin to Tien

Goku's human friends spread out on both sides of his height. Krillin, at 153 cm (5′0″) and 45 kg, is the shortest of the core fighters. The wiki notes that his small size and bald head often make him the comic relief in tense scenes, even though he remains one of the strongest Earthlings.

Tien Shinhan is the tallest of the Earthling martial artists who train with Goku, at 187 cm and 75 kg, and the wiki describes him simply as a tall, very muscular bald man. His constant companion Chiaotzu is the smallest named fighter on the list at 138 cm (4′6″) and 33 kg. Standing together, the two differ by 49 cm.

Yamcha has two official heights. The 1986 Weekly Shōnen Jump profile gave him 181 cm and 62 kg as a teenager, and Super Exciting Guide gives 183 cm and 68 kg as an adult. The wiki adds a nice detail from the anime: during the Androids Saga, Android 19's scanner reads him at exactly 183 cm and 68 kg, matching the databook.

Master Roshi is listed at 165 cm and just 44 kg in Super Exciting Guide, Daizenshuu 7 and the 1987 Dragon Ball: Adventure Special. That makes the old turtle hermit lighter than Krillin despite being 12 cm taller.

Heights of Bulma, Chi-Chi and Videl

The three most prominent women in the main story all have heights close to the averages for women in Japan, and two of them have separate figures for their younger selves.

• Bulma is listed at 163 cm and 48 kg as a teenager in the 1986 profile, and at 165 cm and 50 kg as an adult in Super Exciting Guide.
• Chi-Chi has the biggest change. As a child she was 156 cm and 40 kg; as an adult she is 163 cm and 51 kg in both Super Exciting Guide and Daizenshuu 7. The wiki describes adult Chi-Chi as slender and of average height.
• Videl is 157 cm and 47 kg. The wiki calls her below average in height, with a slim but athletic build.

One detail fans enjoy: at 165 cm, Bulma is 1 cm taller than her husband Vegeta at 164 cm. Chi-Chi is 12 cm shorter than Goku. Videl is 19 cm shorter than Gohan.

Piccolo, Mr. Satan and the giants

Piccolo is the tallest character in the site's Dragon Ball list at 226 cm (7′5″) and 116 kg. The Dragon Ball Wiki describes him as a very tall, muscular Namekian. It also notes that he looks like his father (and earlier incarnation) King Piccolo but is noticeably shorter and thinner, and that King Piccolo's extreme size seems to have been his own choice, meant to make him more intimidating, rather than something natural to Namekians.

Mr. Satan (Hercule), the showman whose nicknames include "The World's Champion," is listed at 188 cm and 94 kg. That makes him the tallest human on the main roster, 1 cm ahead of Tien and 13 cm taller than Goku. The wiki describes him as a tall, muscular man who likes to look imposing in public.

Beyond the site's list, the databooks hint at how much bigger the franchise can get. The Ox-King, Chi-Chi's father, is listed simply as "over 4 m" in the 1986 Weekly Shōnen Jump profile. At the other extreme, Frieza's final form is given as just 158 cm, shorter than Videl. In Dragon Ball, a small body says nothing about a character's power.

Comparing Dragon Ball heights with real people

The numbers in the databooks are realistic for a human cast. The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration's study of adult height, published in eLife in 2016, estimated mean heights for people born from 1896 to 1996 in 200 countries. Its figures for Japan, which the site uses on the average height in Japan page, are 170.8 cm for men and 158.3 cm for women born in 1996.

So Goku is a little above average for a Japanese man, Vegeta and Krillin are below it, and the tall human fighters like Yamcha, Tien and Mr. Satan are tall by any standard. Bulma and Chi-Chi are somewhat taller than the average Japanese woman, and Videl is almost exactly average.

To see how big a 51 cm gap really is, such as the one between Piccolo and Goku, try the height difference calculator, which shows the gap in centimeters, feet and inches and as a percentage.

Reading the numbers: limits and caveats

A few practical points help when using official Dragon Ball heights:

1. Labels matter. Super Exciting Guide marks several figures "adult" or "teen." Goku and Gohan's numbers are adult heights; Future Trunks's is a teen height. Comparing a teen figure with an adult one can be misleading.
2. Art and numbers disagree. Toriyama's style changed over 11 years of serialization, and the anime adds its own drawings. The wiki's note that Vegeta later "seems" taller is a description of the art, not a new official height. The databook figures did not change.
3. Transformations are not separate heights. The guides give one height per character, not one per Super Saiyan level. Taller hair adds visual height, but the listed figure stays the same.
4. Later anime aren't covered. Super Exciting Guide is based on the original manga, so series such as Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball Daima (which, according to Wikipedia, ran from 2015 to 2018 and from 2024 to 2025) did not add new official adult heights for the core cast.

With those caveats in mind, the Dragon Ball numbers are some of the most consistent in manga: two databooks published 13 years apart give the same values for the characters they share.