15 Best Stand-Up Comedy Specials On Netflix, Ranked

Stand-up comedy has been engrained in American television since practically the very beginning. Comics would emerge from the clubs, step out on late night TV, and deliver their best material in front of an attentive national audience.

But as TV evolved, stand-up was along for the ride. HBO became the destination for the best comedy specials after George Carlin’s infamous “Seven Words You Cannot Say on Television” aired on the the cable network in 1978. Then, as a new era of comedy emerged in the 1990s, Comedy Central presented the best shows featuring up and coming comedians. And in more modern times, Netflix emerged as a major player in stand-up comedy. Starting with their first original production “The Comedians of Comedy” in 2005, the streamer built their platform with stand-up comedy as one of their pillars.

Now with over 350 hours of material available for audiences around the world, the streamer has become a top destination for comedy fans. But with so many options, it might be hard to pick a place to start. So in an effort to send you in the right direction, here are 15 of Netflix’s best stand-up specials.

Owning a home, starting a family, and making a living wage to support all of that seems like such a pipe dream for 30-somethings these days. But people are still trying to figure it out. As she explores in her third Netflix special “Have It All,” Taylor Tomlinson falls into that latter group (despite dropping $7,000 on a signed, stage-worn glove from Hugh Jackman).

When her 2023 hour dropped, Tomlinson was riding quite a high in her career. After finding an uptick in success from previous specials and tours, she started hosting “After Midnight” on CBS, filling James Corden’s time slot after he left “The Late Late Show.” But amidst all the wins, the comedian still has to contend with her struggles with anxiety, unpacking religious trauma, and finding the perfect partner after recently coming out as bisexual.

Tomlinson’s work is an easy, breezy watch thanks to her quippy wordplay, confident cadence, and jolts of physical comedy to punctuate her incredibly relatable bits. But this one marks the beginning of a new chapter where she ascends to the next level of her career, where she might be closer to having it all than ever before.

By 2016, Hannibal Buress was already on the rise thanks to his appearances on “The Eric Andre Show,” “Broad City,” and “30 Rock.” He was even tapped to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe as part of the the spectacular “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” But with stand-up comedy being his first gateway into the pop culture zeitgeist, “Comedy Camisado” was a return to form for him.

After addressing the loss of his trademark glasses due to a LASIK eye procedure, the comedian touched on a wide variety of topics, such as how his life has changed since publicly speaking about Bill Cosby’s sexual assault allegations and the absurdity of being unable to check into a two and a half star hotel with every other form of identification except his actual ID. From Hulk Hogan to Kevin Hart to the NBA’s Utah Jazz, everyone catches strays in this special. 

But no matter who or what he was targeting with his material, he still delivered punchlines with his trademark laid-back, stream-of-consciousness demeanor that would make him the perfect addition to any puff, puff, pass session.

Utilizing his signature information-fueled aggression that his fans have come to know and love on “The Daily Show” where he serves as a rotating host, Ronny Chieng harpoons racists, irrational skeptics, and armchair critics in “Speakeasy.” But in his hour filmed at the intimate Chinese Tuxedo restaurant in NYC’s Chinatown, he shows a more vulnerable side that we usually don’t see in his day job. 

After he challenges people to cancel him, he says that he’ll finally get to see his mom in Singapore after two years. Once he revisits an old joke of his, he acknowledges his younger self’s toxic masculinity. And while critiquing stand-up comedy critics, he suggests that those who excessively complain should also do as much to help the people of the world.

Despite saying that he’s only “here to talk s**t, make money, and bounce” in his second special for the streamer, it’s nice to see Ronny Chieng care a little bit, even if he does it as defiantly as possible.

Reminiscent of John Leguizamo’s “Sexaholix,” Hasan Minhaj (who left “The Daily Show” to host his own political satire series at Netflix) draws from his own personal history when assembling 2017’s “Homecoming King.” He explores his upbringing as a second-generation Indian-American, the rollercoaster of emotions he experienced as a person of color in a largely white area, and how the trauma that accompanied these life experiences eventually led him to his breakout role in the acclaimed Comedy Central series led by John Stewart.

Minhaj’s first stand-up special doesn’t just focus on the sunshine and rainbows of going through the US school system with immigrant parents or learning to accept one’s siblings. His material gets quite dark so as to not sugarcoat the effects of racism and Islamophobia in post-9/11 America. In fact, there’s an extended period that goes without the respite of a laugh. But despite his material coming under fire for being embellished, the comedian expertly and entertainingly delivers an emotionally resonant story that connects with the very real feelings that many people still experience to this day.

James Acaster dazzled Edinburgh Fringe audiences from 2014 to 2016 with “The Trelogy.” But when he brought his act to Netflix in 2018, he was inspired by the “Star Wars” prequel “Rogue One” to add a new chapter to bring everything together in the four-part special titled “Repertoire.”

Acaster’s attention to detail is unparalleled as he dives into elaborate stories and characters that play off of different elements of the criminal justice system like witness protection, jury duty, and undercover police work. He makes callbacks throughout the four episodes that the audience could easily miss if they weren’t paying attention. But everything from his love of loopholes (like how starting a stand-up set on his knees doesn’t cut into his time) to the different levels of being tipsy to a comically large shirt pocket all come back in some way, shape, or form by the end.

“Repertoire” is not only brilliant for playing with structure so masterfully, but it also manages to let some serious, almost heart-breaking truths shine through silly bits about the opposite of masks and bread. It’s quite the experiment, so make sure your eyes and ears are locked in every step of the way. 

Many Adam Sandler fans know him for his vast filmography, but before he landed his spot at “Saturday Night Live” in the early 1990s, he was making his way around the club circuit as a stand-up comedian. And after being preoccupied for about two decades, The Sandman returned to his roots in 2018 with a brand new special for Netflix titled “100% Fresh.”

Filled with goofy songs and silly stories that span musical genres and various venues across the country, Sandler’s second-ever comedy special delivers such earnest fun. You can clearly see that the performer is having as much fun as his audience. But when he gets into his final two songs, viewers are left crying through their tears. First, it’s out of sadness because the world is a much bleaker place without Chris Farley. But then, he switches to happy, love-fueled tears with a reprise of “I’ll Grow Old With You” from “The Wedding Singer,” this time singing about his real-life wife, as a grand finale.

Patton Oswalt has been performing stand-up comedy since 1996, so he’s grown as a person and a performer before our very eyes. While he’s always maintained his image as a professional nerd who wears roles like the voice of the titular Marvel supervillain in the Hulu series “M.O.D.O.K.” or a Vulcan named Doug on “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” like badges of honor, his work has sometimes drifted into some darker, angrier territory.

However, in his 2020 Netflix special “I Love Everything,” he takes a lighter approach with his material as he embraces his 50s, becomes a homeowner, and finds love again after his first wife tragically passed away in 2016. Even when he’s talking about Donald Trump, the typically outspoken comedian doesn’t see the point (at that particular moment) since everything the president does is already ” diarrhea-covered monkeys on PCP.” Instead, he chooses to focus on essentially one thesis statement: “Run at love if you see it!” Whether it’s his relationship with his second wife, his daughter, or his favorite breakfast food, Oswalt is all about love and, despite his other work being good too, “I Love Everything” is a really nice change of pace.

Don’t forget, Patton Oswalt was part of one of the earliest Netflix originals: “The Comedians of Comedy.”

From his hilarious podcast “Bad Dates” to being part of the cast of the global phenomenon “K-Pop Demon Hunters,” Joel Kim Booster frequently finds himself surrounded by extremely entertaining people. But in his Netflix special “Psychosexual,” he stands alone and shines on his own merits. In fact, he has such a commanding presence that his audience is onboard from the start, even when they’re being specifically being singled out for being a straight white man who has never heard of the performer.

Booster starts by saying that comedians can be hot now and ends with whether or not he’s a good role model. In between, he commands the room as he goes through jokes that appeal to his specific audiences, jokes that land with more broad audiences, and some that are just for him. But no matter which category his material falls under, his charismatic delivery and engaging demeanor welcomes his viewers into his world. Whether it’s his preference between cats and dogs or accidentally ordering the wrong adult sex toy, the crowd is all in because there’s something for everyone.

No one does deadpan like Tig Notaro. Even after a few tough years that included a breast cancer diagnosis, a double mastectomy, and her mother’s death, all of which were chronicled in the acclaimed Netflix documentary “Tig,” the comedian’s observational humor held onto that delivery style.

But in the 2018 special “Happy to Be Here,” Notaro proved to be more silly and playful than ever despite her cadence and demeanor. The reason it works is her happy marriage and her beloved young sons. She delights in the accidentally hilarious questions that her wife asks or the strange things that her kids say and she just can’t hide it anymore. 

This joy culminates in a final bit that is taken much further than most comedians would take it. The audience can’t help but smile right along with Notaro as she smile through her viewers going back and forth on whether or not they’re stuck in a bit or something special is actually happening. Truthfully, with or without the extended Indigo Girls talk, this performance is very special.  

Plenty of comics get angry with their audience. But when Hannah Gadsby created “Nanette,” they were not going for the same kind of anger as Lewis Black or Sam Kinison. This is a much more visceral, painful, and heart-wrenching anger that the performer unloads like an arsenal of weapons upon their audience. While this special does have jokes, it’s more like a long-form art piece ignited by fiery social commentary.

Initially using tools of stand-up comedy such as tension and self-deprecation in familiar ways, Gadsby deconstructs the established conventions and uses them as vessels for trauma. They renounce self-deprecation because its actually humiliation. They turn up the tension to emphasize the uneasiness and fear that they felt during their experiences as an LGBTQ+ person growing up in a conservative and prejudiced Tasmania. If comedy holds up a mirror to society, this comedian shoves the mirror into society’s face.

The storytelling in this piece is so raw and powerful. Call it an anti-comedy special, post-comedy, or whatever: “Nanette” is an incredibly important piece of art that deserves to be seen, especially as Gadsby continues to fight against a notoriously transphobic industry by carving out a place on Netflix for more diverse and genderqueer performers.

Transitional periods are ripe with material for stand-up comics, but it’s not very often that the comedian actually walks onstage while they are seven and a half months pregnant. Then again, there’s only one Ali Wong.

Hot off her day job as a writer for the “Fresh Off The Boat” cast at the time, Wong’s 2016 special “Baby Cobra” literally shows her on her journey to motherhood. She talks about her sexual escapades in her youth that often involved deciphering between unhoused men and hipsters, the way she trapped her husband, and feminism taking away her ability to have no job as her job. But she does so with such realness and fearlessness that she also has no problem tackling the double standard of having kids as a comedian and the commonality miscarriages.

From the second she takes the stage, Wong gets honest about vulgar, gross, intimate, and taboo topics. While this approach may be off-putting coming from some people, the audience hangs on her every word since she refuses to let any of that stuff slow her down.

Comedians use irony all the time. But when the world shut down due to the lockdown portion of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Marc Maron had to laugh a little extra hard when his special “End Times Fun” debuted on Netflix in March 2020. After all, he did predict that “something bad and big” would “get everyone to snap out of this…trance.” It just wasn’t the natural disaster that he had in mind.

The special isn’t all doom and gloom though. Maron sets his sights on passive liberals, his mother, and Donald Trump (in a purely observational and not political way). He also touches on how some men continue to put sex on a pedestal and how theology and the Marvel Cinematic Universe both function as belief systems. Whether or not he chose to target the House of Ideas because he was a part of the DC Extended Universe in “The Joker” alongside Robert De Niro remains a mystery, but the bit did manage to produce a hilarious end of days scenario to close out the special featuring Jesus and Iron Man (who were both prophesied by their respective followers to return).

While bits of his old curmudgeon personality still linger in some of his material, “End Fun Times” shows that Maron is having a blast on stage again.

Though his fans would see a different side to him a few years later, John Mulaney in 2015’s “The Comeback Kid” showcased his boyish charm and sly wit. He kept things light with his takes on the old saying about buying the cow and changes to the Catholic mass script. The Chicago native also dissected the nature of Doc Brown and Marty McFly’s relationship in “Back to the Future,” an origin that was also explored in the pages of IDW Comics that same year.

Some might point to this special as the beginning of Mulaney’s more adult phase of his career. In addition to playing a bigger room, he started talking about marriage, owning a home, and babies. Obviously, these are all frequently covered topics by stand-ups, but his approach to spinning an elaborate yarn about daily life is second to none. Little details like President Jonathan Taylor Thomas or a Cheeto-fingered, rat-mustached altar boy will always come back around and make you laugh later because of how silly they are. No one does that like John Mulaney.

Like Mulaney and Minhaj, Mike Birbiglia also employs intricate, over-arching stories to deliver his humor. But for his fourth Netflix special, the streamer presented his hit 2022 Broadway show titled “The Old Man and the Pool.”

The show has been described as a “coming of middle age tale,” where the comedian is faced with his own mortality when he sees a cardiologist and realizes that his father and grandfather both suffered from heart attacks at age 56. At 45, Birbiglia hopes to do something to fight off his family history, so he starts swimming.

But as the show goes on, he starts looking back on the various brushes he’s had with death over the years. He also briefly touches on his own near-death experience of falling out a second-story window (which is fully chronicled in “Sleepwalk With Me,” the film that Birbiglia co-wrote, stars in, and directs). Ultimately, while death comes for us all, the comic realizes that we must remember to tell our loved ones how we feel about them while we can.

To put it simply, Bo Burnham’s “Inside” is a masterpiece. The comedian filmed this 2021 special by himself in his guest house and over the course of the previous year that saw the world shut down during the lockdown portion of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s filled with silly songs and sketches about isolation, aimlessness, and the passage of time. But moreover, it gives words and catchy tunes to the feelings that many people were experiencing at the time.

Even outside of the pandemic context, songs like “30,” “That Funny Feeling,” and “White Woman’s Instagram” are bangers that still hold up because they cover extremely relatable themes. While it was a virus keeping us apart at the time of release, the superficial nature of the modern world, depression, or consumerism could just as easily fill that slot. Despite saying it facetiously, Bo Burnham really was saving the world with comedy through this one-of-a-kind special.