Haaland vs Mbappé Penalty Conversion Rate: Who Is Safer From the Spot?
Haaland vs Mbappé penalty conversion rate: every league penalty compared, success percentage, streaks, how each misses, current club and career, live data.
A penalty is the one moment in football where the striker is supposed to score, which is why conversion rate is such an unforgiving number. Miss two in a season and it shows for years. Both Haaland and Mbappé are their teams' first-choice takers, both are good, and the gap between them is small but real, and it points the same way in every cut of the data. This article compares their success rate from the spot: every league penalty exactly, careers approximately, streaks, misses and form. League figures are shot-by-shot from Understat, as of 2026-10-02; the full kick-by-kick list lives on the penalties page.
The headline rate
In domestic league football, Haaland has converted 28 of 33 penalties, an 84.8% success rate. Mbappé has converted 36 of 44, or 81.8%.
| League penalties | Haaland | Mbappé |
|---|---|---|
| Taken | 33 | 44 |
| Scored | 28 | 36 |
| Missed | 5 | 8 |
| Conversion rate | 84.8% | 81.8% |
| Saved by the goalkeeper | 3 | 8 |
| Hit the woodwork | 2 | 0 |
| Off target | 0 | 0 |
| Longest scoring streak | 13 | 10 |
Both are above the long-run average for top-flight penalties, which sits around 76 to 78%. The difference between them is three percentage points, roughly one extra miss in every thirty penalties. Small, but it has been stable for years, and it survives every way of slicing the sample below.
How they miss
The misses are more revealing than the makes. Every one of Mbappé's 8 league misses was a save. No post, nothing off target: goalkeepers have simply read him, most often diving to his natural side. His most recent league miss was against Real Betis (2026-09-04). Haaland's 5 misses split differently: 3 saved and 2 against the woodwork, the most recent against Liverpool (2025-11-09). Neither man has ever put a league penalty off target, which tells you both strike it true; the difference is that Mbappé's misses are a goalkeeper problem and Haaland's are split between keepers and the frame of the goal.
The streaks make the same point from the other side. Haaland once scored 13 league penalties in a row, a run covering his second Dortmund season and the whole of the 2022/23 title year. Mbappé's best run is 10. As of the last data update Haaland has scored his last 3, Mbappé his last 1.
Season by season
| Season | Haaland | Mbappé |
|---|---|---|
| 2018/19 | – | 1/2 |
| 2020/21 | 2/4 | 6/6 |
| 2021/22 | 6/6 | 4/4 |
| 2022/23 | 7/7 | 3/4 |
| 2023/24 | 7/8 | 6/8 |
| 2024/25 | 3/4 | 7/9 |
| 2025/26 | 3/4 | 8/9 |
| 2026/27 so far | – | 1/2 |
Two careers, two shapes. Haaland became a taker almost immediately at Dortmund, wobbled in his first season with two misses, then ran off years of near perfection. Mbappé's history explains his smaller early numbers: at PSG the penalties belonged to Edinson Cavani and then Neymar, so he took only 2 league penalties before 2020/21 despite being the team's star. He became the undisputed taker late, and since joining Real Madrid he has averaged roughly nine league penalties a season, the heaviest spot-kick workload of either career.
Current club and current form
At Manchester City, Haaland has scored 20 of 23 league penalties, 87.0%. At Real Madrid, Mbappé has scored 16 of 20, 80.0%. Narrow the window to the last three seasons (2023/24 onwards) and the rates dip for both, as the misses have clustered recently: Haaland 13 of 16 (81.3%), Mbappé 22 of 28 (78.6%). The ordering does not change: every window, club and era has Haaland a few points ahead.
Career-wide, all competitions
League penalties are the only ones that can be counted kick by kick for both players, but published summaries cover cups, Europe and internationals approximately.
| Career, club + country (approx.) | Haaland | Mbappé |
|---|---|---|
| Penalties taken | 62 | 82 |
| Scored | 52 | 66 |
| Missed | 10 | 16 |
| Conversion rate | 83.9% | 80.5% |
Same story, wider canvas: roughly 83.9% against 80.5%. Worth repeating is what these figures leave out. Shoot-out kicks are not goals and are not counted anywhere on this site, which spares Mbappé his most famous miss, the decisive kick of the Euro 2020 shoot-out against Switzerland, and also excludes his converted kicks in shoot-outs France went on to win. His other high-profile miss, in the 2026 World Cup quarter-final against Morocco, was an in-match penalty and is in the career totals; France won anyway. Haaland's misses have been quieter: none has yet come in a knockout tie or a final.
Does the extra reliability matter?
Over a league season the difference between 84.8% and 81.8% is worth a fraction of a goal, so as a scoreboard matter it is nearly nothing. It matters in two quieter ways. First, workload: Mbappé now takes far more penalties than Haaland, so his slightly lower rate is applied to a bigger base, and penalties make up a growing share of his goal output, which the non-penalty rate article covers in full. Second, memory: goalkeepers study takers, and the fact that all 8 of Mbappé's league misses were saves suggests his pattern is the more readable one. Haaland's longer streaks and his habit of waiting out the goalkeeper have so far aged better.
Verdict
Haaland is the safer penalty taker, by about three percentage points everywhere you look: 84.8% to 81.8% in the league, 87.0% to 80.0% at their current clubs, and roughly 83.9% to 80.5% across their careers. Both are above-average takers, and Mbappé's rate on a much heavier recent workload is nothing like a weakness. But the question this page asks has a one-word answer, and the data has given the same one since 2020.
Every kick behind these numbers, including a full list of the misses, is on the penalties page. For what the goals look like without penalties, see non-penalty goals and the career stats hub.
