The 500 Home Run Club (MLB)

Only 28 players in Major League Baseball history have hit 500 career home runs. Barry Bonds leads them all with 762, and the club is one of the sport’s clearest dividing lines between a very good power hitter and a great one.

Reaching 500 takes both peak power and staying healthy long enough to bank it, usually 15 seasons or more. That combination is rare, which is why the club has grown by only a handful of names this century. Here is the full membership, the leaders at the top, and why the milestone carries the weight it does.

The 500 home run club: full list

Every member, ranked by career home runs, through the 2025 season.

Rank	Player	Home runs
1	Barry Bonds	762
2	Hank Aaron	755
3	Babe Ruth	714
4	Albert Pujols	703
5	Alex Rodriguez	696
6	Willie Mays	660
7	Ken Griffey Jr.	630
8	Jim Thome	612
9	Sammy Sosa	609
10	Frank Robinson	586
11	Mark McGwire	583
12	Harmon Killebrew	573
13	Rafael Palmeiro	569
14	Reggie Jackson	563
15	Manny Ramirez	555
16	Mike Schmidt	548
17	David Ortiz	541
18	Mickey Mantle	536
19	Jimmie Foxx	534
20	Willie McCovey	521
20	Ted Williams	521
20	Frank Thomas	521
23	Ernie Banks	512
23	Eddie Mathews	512
25	Mel Ott	511
25	Miguel Cabrera	511
27	Gary Sheffield	509
28	Eddie Murray	504

Twenty-eight names, spread across a century of baseball. The top of the list is crowded with modern hitters, but the presence of Ruth, Foxx, Ott and Mantle shows the milestone predates the recent power era.

Bonds, Aaron and the top of the list

Barry Bonds hit his 762nd and final home run in 2007, passing Hank Aaron’s 755 that same season. Aaron had held the record since 1974, when he moved past Babe Ruth’s 714, a mark that stood from 1921. Only those three, plus Albert Pujols at 703, have cleared 700.

The gaps at the top are small in raw terms but took whole careers to build. Bonds leads Aaron by seven, and Pujols, the only 700-homer hitter of the modern era to reach it without a steroid-era shadow, finished on 703 across 22 seasons. Alex Rodriguez sits fifth at 696, closer to the top four than to the rest of the club. For the full leaderboard beyond the 500 mark, see our guide to the most home runs of all time.

Why 500 home runs matters

For most of baseball history, 500 home runs was a guaranteed ticket to the Hall of Fame. Every eligible member was elected, and the number became shorthand for an all-time great slugger. A player who reached it had, by definition, produced power over a long career at the highest level.

That automatic link has weakened. Several members with the totals to walk in, including Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Manny Ramirez, have been kept out or delayed by voters over links to performance-enhancing drugs. The milestone still signals greatness, but it no longer decides a Hall of Fame case on its own.

Recent members and who is next

The club grows slowly. Albert Pujols reached 500 in 2014 and finished on 703 in 2022; Miguel Cabrera got there in 2021 and retired in 2023 on 511. They are the two most recent members, and no one has joined since.

As of the 2025 season no active player is within striking distance. Giancarlo Stanton is the nearest of the current sluggers but sits well short of 500, and any new member is likely years away. That slow pace is part of what keeps the milestone meaningful: it is not handed out often.

The milestone and the eras behind it

The 28 members span dead-ball survivors, the post-war greats, and the high-scoring turn of the century, so their totals were built under very different conditions. Ruth and Foxx hit theirs before integration and in shorter seasons; the modern names benefited from more games, better travel and, in some cases, the steroid era’s inflated offense.

None of that erases a name from the list, but it is why comparing a 500-homer hitter from the 1930s with one from the 2000s is not a clean match. The count is equal; the context is not.

If you like baseball’s milestone clubs, see our companion guides to the 3,000 hit club and the 40-40 club, or the story of the longest home run ever. Five hundred is the line, only 28 players have crossed it, and no active hitter is close.