What Is the Largest Eagle in the World? Top Contenders

Why “largest” has no simple answer

Eagles can be compared by weight, body length, wingspan, wing area, bill size or talon size, and no species wins all of them. Weight is the most common measure of overall size, but it changes with season, food and age. Wingspan favors birds of open country that soar, while forest eagles have shorter, broader wings for maneuvering between trees.

In all big eagles, females are larger than males, sometimes by 50 percent or more in weight, so averages for “the species” depend on how many of each sex were measured. Most comparisons below give ranges for wild adults.

Comparison table of the largest eagles

Steller’s sea eagle: the heaviest

Steller’s sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus) is a dark brown sea eagle with white shoulders, a white wedge-shaped tail and the largest bill of any living eagle. It breeds along the coasts and rivers of the Russian Far East, especially Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk, and many spend the winter in northern Japan and Korea.

Females typically weigh 6.2–9.5 kg (14–21 lb) and males 4.9–6.8 kg (11–15 lb). On average it is probably slightly heavier than the harpy and clearly heavier than the Philippine eagle, which is why it is most often named the world’s heaviest eagle. It feeds mainly on salmon and other large fish, plus waterbirds and carrion. The IUCN lists it as Vulnerable, with a total population of a few thousand pairs.

Harpy eagle: the most powerful

The harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) of the American tropics rivals Steller’s in weight: females average roughly 7–8 kg (15–18 lb) and can reach about 9 kg (20 lb) in the wild. Its wings are short and broad for a forest life, so its wingspan is smaller than that of the big sea eagles.

What sets the harpy apart is its weapons. Its rear talons can reach about 12.5–13 cm (5 in) around the curve in large females, usually rated the biggest of any living eagle, and its legs are thick and short. It hunts sloths and monkeys in the rainforest canopy, and females can carry prey close to their own weight. Many people call it the most powerful eagle in the world for this reason.

Philippine eagle: the longest

The Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi), also known as the monkey-eating eagle, lives only in the forests of a few Philippine islands, mainly Mindanao, Luzon, Samar and Leyte. It has a shaggy crest, a pale face and a tall, narrow bill.

By total length it is usually the longest eagle, with museum specimens averaging about 95 cm (37 in) for males and 105 cm (41 in) for females. It is lighter than the harpy and Steller’s, at about 4.7–8 kg (10–18 lb). It is also one of the rarest: the IUCN lists it as Critically Endangered, with only a few hundred pairs left. It is the national bird of the Philippines.

The biggest eagles in North America and Europe

In the United States and Canada, the bald eagle and the golden eagle are the largest eagles. They are very similar in weight, and the largest individuals of each, mostly females in Alaska and the far north, can exceed 6 kg (13 lb). Neither comes close to the harpy or Steller’s sea eagle in bulk, though both have impressive wingspans of up to about 2.3 m (7 ft 7 in). See our bald eagle vs golden eagle comparison for how to tell them apart.

In Europe the largest is the white-tailed eagle, a relative of the bald eagle. It has one of the widest average wingspans of any eagle, up to about 2.45 m (8 ft), and has been successfully reintroduced to Scotland, Ireland and southern England.

Wingspan records

The longest wingspan reliably measured for an eagle belonged to a female wedge-tailed eagle shot in Tasmania in 1931, which spanned 2.84 m (9 ft 4 in). Claims of Steller’s sea eagles with similar or larger wingspans exist but are less well documented. Typical wingspans of the largest species are about 2–2.3 m (6 ft 7 in–7 ft 7 in).

For comparison, the Andean condor and some vultures and albatrosses have longer wings than any eagle. Our list of the largest birds in the world covers them.

The largest eagle ever: Haast’s eagle

The extinct Haast’s eagle (Hieraaetus moorei) of New Zealand’s South Island dwarfed every living eagle. Most estimates put females at about 10–18 kg (22–40 lb), roughly 40 percent heavier than today’s largest eagles. It hunted moa, giant flightless birds that could weigh up to about 200 kg (440 lb). Haast’s eagle disappeared around 600 years ago, soon after people arrived and the moa were hunted to extinction.