The most liked comments on YouTube — and the sort that finds them.

“Most liked” sounds like the obvious way to sort a comment section. It is not one of the ways YouTube offers — and the view people read as “most liked” is doing something more complicated.

What Top comments actually ranks

The default order is called Top comments, and it is a relevance ranking rather than a like counter. Likes are part of it — but so are replies, creator engagement and how fresh the activity is. A comment that started a long argument can outrank a quiet one with more likes, and a comment hearted by the creator jumps ahead of both.

One exception overrides everything: a pinned comment sits above the whole list in both orders, whatever its like count. Pinning and hearts are creator signals, not viewer votes — worth knowing before reading the top of a section as “what viewers chose.”

The sort that isn’t there

YouTube’s comment section offers two orders: Top comments and Newest first. There is no sort by likes, and no sort by oldest — the first of those is what this page is about; the second belongs to the first-comment page. Both orders exist for reading, not for measuring: neither gives you “the comment with the most likes” as a fact you can act on.

Three ways to the like-count order

All three give you the plain order; they differ in what you need the answer for. Reading goes fastest in a tool, measuring goes best through a file.

1. Switch the thread to a like-count sort in a toolA reader that loads the whole public thread can add the two orders YouTube does not offer: Most liked and Oldest. Most liked puts the highest like counts in front of you directly, with full numbers instead of abbreviations.What to do: Open the video in the viewer, choose Most liked in the sort control, and read from the top — that order is the plain like count.
2. Export the thread and sort the file yourselfAn export carries the raw like count for every comment, so the sort is exact and stays under your control. This is the way to go when you need a list, a threshold, or a comparison across several videos.What to do: Export as CSV, open it in a spreadsheet, and sort the like_count column descending. The downloader page lists the export's exact fields.
3. Read Top comments first — pins and hearts live thereYouTube's own view is not useless: creator-pinned comments always sit first, hearted comments get lifted, and high-engagement comments float up. Read those first, then use a like-count sort to check what the ranking left further down.What to do: Take the pinned comment and the first few Top comments as read, then cross-check the same thread in a like-count sort.

One more check before trusting a like count: manufactured comments can carry manufactured likes. If the top of a thread looks oddly uniform, the patterns on fake and bot comments are the ones to compare against.

Why the counts look wrong at a glance

The watch page rounds. Above a thousand, like counts collapse into shorthand — 1.2K, 4.8M — and the rounding hides a spread of counts inside each label. Two comments showing 1.2K are not necessarily close to each other in the real order.

• Abbreviated on the page, exact in an export. The file carries the full integer where the page shows a rounded label.
• A reply’s likes are its own. A comment’s count does not include the likes on anything nested underneath it.
• Counts keep moving. An old thread’s order is a snapshot; the ranking can shift as engagement trickles in.

Reading the top of the pile

If what you need is the genuinely most-liked comments — a list, a number, a comparison — stop reading the ranked view and take the like-count order instead. It takes one switch in a tool, or one sort in a spreadsheet.

• Open the thread with the Most liked sort — The full public thread in the raw like-count order, with complete numbers instead of 1.2K.
• Export the raw like counts — CSV or JSON where like_count is the exact integer — ready to sort, threshold or chart.
• Check whether those likes are real — Like counts can be manufactured too — the signals worth checking are on the fake comments page.