Cheetah vs Leopard: Spots, Size, Speed and Strength

Key differences at a glance

The two spotted cats share parts of the African savanna, and people mix them up so often that early naturalists did too; for centuries, cheetahs were even called “hunting leopards.” Yet they belong to different branches of the cat family. The leopard (Panthera pardus) is a big cat in the same genus as the lion, tiger and jaguar. The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is the only living member of its genus and is more closely related to the puma.

Their bodies reflect two very different ways of life. The cheetah is built like a greyhound, for speed in open country. The leopard is built like a compact wrestler, for stealth, power and climbing.

Spots vs rosettes: how to tell them apart

Look closely at a single spot. A cheetah’s spots are solid black dots, evenly scattered over a tawny or pale buff coat. A leopard’s markings on the body are rosettes: rough rings or clusters of black marks around a center that is often darker gold than the background. On the legs and face, a leopard’s spots are smaller and solid, but its face never has the cheetah’s tear marks.

Other clues help at a distance:

• Face. The cheetah’s black tear marks run from the inner corner of each eye to the corners of the mouth. A leopard’s face is spotted, with no stripes.
• Head. A cheetah’s head is small and rounded for its body; a leopard’s is broad and heavy, with powerful jaws.
• Tail. A cheetah’s tail ends in dark rings and a white tuft. A leopard’s tail is spotted, with broken bands near the end, and is white underneath and at the tip.
• Color forms. Black (melanistic) leopards, often called black panthers, occur in parts of Asia and Africa. Cheetahs have a rare blotchy “king cheetah” pattern instead.

Size and build: which is bigger?

A cheetah is usually the taller cat, standing 67–94 cm (26–37 in) at the shoulder compared with 57–70 cm (22–28 in) for a leopard. The leopard, however, is heavier for its size, with shorter, thicker legs, a deep chest and a muscular neck.

Adult cheetahs weigh 21–65 kg (46–143 lb). Male leopards usually weigh 31–72 kg (68–159 lb), and exceptionally large males can reach about 90 kg (198 lb); females are much smaller, at 21–43 kg (45–95 lb). Leopards vary a great deal by region; males in the mountains of South Africa’s Western Cape, for example, often weigh only 20–45 kg (44–99 lb).

Speed vs strength: which is faster and which is stronger?

The cheetah wins on speed by a wide margin. Its fastest reliably timed sprint is about 104 km/h (65 mph), and wild cheetahs with GPS collars have reached 93 km/h (58 mph). A leopard’s top speed is usually estimated at about 58 km/h (36 mph), and leopards rarely chase prey far. Read more in How fast is a cheetah?

The leopard wins on strength. It can kill prey heavier than itself and drag it up a tree; one leopard was seen hauling a young giraffe of about 125 kg (276 lb) some 5.7 m (19 ft) up into the branches. Leopards can also leap more than 6 m (20 ft) horizontally and about 3 m (10 ft) straight up.

The claws tell the same story. A leopard’s claws are sharp and fully retractable, ideal for climbing and gripping prey. A cheetah’s claws are blunt and only partly retractable, giving grip when running but little help in a fight.

Hunting styles and tree climbing

Cheetahs hunt mainly by day. They watch from a termite mound or low branch, stalk to within about 30–70 m (100–230 ft), and then sprint, tripping the prey with a forepaw and killing it with a throat bite. Their usual prey are gazelles, impala and springbok, mostly under 40 kg (88 lb).

Leopards are mostly active from dusk to dawn. They creep to within a few meters of their target, often about 5 m (16 ft), before pouncing. They are extremely flexible in what they eat: more than 100 prey species have been recorded, from antelope and monkeys to rodents, birds and even fish.

Trees make the biggest practical difference. A leopard often stores large kills in a tree, out of reach of hyenas. Cheetahs can scramble onto sloping trunks and low branches but cannot carry prey up, so they eat quickly on the ground and frequently lose kills to lions and hyenas.

Social life and sounds

Leopards are solitary. Adults meet mainly to mate, and mothers raise their two to four cubs alone. Cheetah females are also solitary, but many male cheetahs live in lifelong coalitions, usually of two or three brothers.

The cats also sound different. A leopard is one of the roaring cats; its territorial call is a deep, rasping “sawing” sound. A cheetah cannot roar and instead chirps like a bird, churrs and purrs loudly.

Where do cheetahs and leopards live?

The leopard has the widest range of any wild cat: much of sub-Saharan Africa, small and scattered populations in the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and the Caucasus, and a large area of South and Southeast Asia reaching north to China and the Russian Far East. It lives in rainforest, savanna, mountains, semi-desert and even on the edges of cities.

The cheetah is far more limited. It needs open ground for its chases and lives in scattered populations across eastern, southern and parts of northern Africa, plus a few dozen animals in Iran. The two cats overlap in many African savanna reserves, such as the Serengeti, the Okavango Delta and Kruger National Park, as well as in parts of Iran.

Who would win, and can they interbreed?

Where they meet, the leopard is clearly dominant. Leopards are among the predators that kill cheetahs, especially cubs, and they steal cheetah kills. Cheetahs avoid leopards and usually retreat rather than fight, because even a small injury could stop a cheetah from sprinting and hunting.

There is no reliable record of a cheetah and a leopard producing young together, which is not surprising for two cats from different genera. The striped and blotched king cheetah was once thought to be a cheetah-leopard cross, but genetic research has shown it is simply a cheetah with a rare recessive coat pattern.

Conservation status

Both cats are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and both are declining. The cheetah is the rarer of the two, with roughly 6,500–7,100 adults left in the wild. Leopards are far more numerous, but they have lost much of their historical range, and several populations, such as the Amur leopard of the Russian Far East and the Arabian leopard, are critically endangered.

Both face habitat loss, shrinking prey and conflict with livestock farmers. Leopards are also killed for their skins and other body parts, while cheetahs suffer from illegal trade in cubs. For a wider look at speed records across the animal kingdom, see our list of the fastest animals.