Top 10 DJs Worldwide: A 727-Vote Photo Finish Decides the Podium

The numbers at the top of this fan-voted Top 10 barely move. Armin van Buuren takes #1 with 86,057 votes and a 996 credit score, but only 727 votes separate him from third place — the kind of margin that could flip on a single festival weekend.

David Guetta sits second on 85,688 votes (credit 995), a mere 369 behind Armin. Charlotte de Witte completes the podium at 85,330 (credit 990), the only woman in this Top 10 and the highest-ranked techno artist on the board. With 202 festivals logged to her name, she arrives here on the back of relentless touring rather than any one platform, and the vote count reflects it.

What makes that top three worth pausing on is how different these three careers look. A Dutch trance institution, a French dance-pop hitmaker, and a Belgian techno headliner finishing within 727 votes of one another tells you this is a popularity contest in the truest sense — a fan vote, not a streaming leaderboard. That distinction matters as you read down the list.

The second tier. After the podium, the field drops sharply: there's a gap of more than 32,000 votes to fourth. From there, three names cluster tight. Tiësto (53,203), Martin Garrix (53,013), and Anyma (52,796) land within 407 votes of each other — two more Netherlands flags for Tiësto and Garrix, and a United States entry in Anyma, whose melodic house and techno profile pushes him right into that pack on 52,796 votes and a 981 credit score.

The chasing pack. A second cliff — roughly 19,000 votes — separates that trio from the bottom four, who then bunch almost as tightly as the leaders. John Summit (33,600), Carl Cox (32,756), Fred again.. (32,662), and Black Coffee (32,523) are spread across just 1,077 votes. That's a striking mix: Summit's and the rest span melodic house and techno, techno, house, and Afro House. Carl Cox, the lone techno veteran here alongside de Witte, holds #8 on 32,756. Black Coffee rounds out the Top 10 at 32,523 and brings the highest festival tally on the board, 371, a reminder that the Afro House entry on this list is also one of its most road-tested.

Reading the map. Geographically, this is a European-anchored Top 10 with three Dutch names (Armin, Tiësto, Garrix), one each from France, Belgium, and South Africa, two from the United States (Anyma, John Summit), and two from the United Kingdom (Carl Cox, Fred again..). Genre-wise it's broad: trance at the very top, techno and commercial dance well represented, and melodic house and techno, house, and Afro House all landing inside the ten.

Because this is fan-vote-driven, the ranking rewards devotion over raw reach. That's why a trance mainstay and a club-circuit techno artist can share the podium, and why the tiers cluster so tightly within themselves. The headline, though, writes itself: with 727 votes deciding the top three, the race for #1 is far from settled.