A leaderboard is a display that ranks people or teams by their performance in a competition, game, or challenge. The leader is at the top of the board, with everyone else listed below in order of their scores or achievements.

You've probably seen leaderboards in video games, where they show which players have the highest scores. Many classroom reading programs use leaderboards to show how many books students have finished. Sports tournaments often display leaderboards showing who's winning and by how much.

Leaderboards work by constantly updating rankings as scores change. In a golf tournament, you might start the day in tenth place on the leaderboard, then climb to third after a great round. In an online game, you might watch yourself move up or down the leaderboard as you and other players complete challenges.

The word can also describe online rankings for almost anything that can be measured: the fastest times solving a puzzle, the most points earned in a learning app, or the top contributors to a community project.