25 Best Stand-Up Comedy Specials On Netflix (January 2023)

Going out on a limb here: you could probably use a good laugh. Fortunately, a lot of modern stand-up is more than just silly stuff. Comedians today have expanded their vision to become more like camp counselors and philosophers who can also tell a mean fart joke. Fortunately, it’s fairly obvious where to turn for The Funny these days because no streamer has invested in stand-up quite like Netflix. Forget the world and stream some acerbic humor because we’re listing the Top 25.

Last updated on January 6, 2023.

1. Chris Rock, Tamborine

Year: 2018
Length: 64 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

After making us wait ten years, Rock commanded the stage for a soul-bearing set that proved he’d gained an elder statesman’s wisdom without losing any of his youthful rebellion. The topical political riffs may hit differently now that we’re not in the dead center of the Trump presidency, but his barbs are sharp as ever, and the real meal is his personal journey of fatherhood (and personhood). With Bo Burnham in the director’s seat, the special feels like we’re right there in the room, witnessing the funniest therapy session in history. For those that want even more, Rock directed his own version with another half hour of material. Chris Rock Total Blackout: The Tamborine Extended Cut 2021 has a slightly less intimate vibe, but comes with a huge extra serving of jokes.

Watch it on Netflix

2. Richard Pryor, Live in Concert

Year: 1979
Length: 78 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Rock’s spiritual predecessor is also on Netflix — a legendary standup where, 40 years earlier, Pryor broke down his experiences as a Black father, the absurdity of American policing, and a host of other raw topics. It’s no wonder Eddie Murphy considered it the single greatest stand-up routine captured on film, and why it influenced hundreds of comedians who followed. Pryor was bold enough to do what had never been done before: release a movie in theaters that consisted solely of his stand-up. The result is an uproarious hour delivered with his unmatched manic expertise. It’s a must-watch (and must-rewatch) for comedy fans.

Watch it on Netflix

3. Jim Jefferies, Bare

Year: 2014
Length: 76 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

There are few comics who get away with saying anything they want quite like Jefferies. The bombastic Australian went for everyone’s jugular in this special with an impish “telling it like it is” glee. Beyond offering excruciating detail about his dating life and his appreciation of certain uncomfortable sex acts, he went long on the absurdity of how America deals with its epidemic of gun violence. That’s why you see clips of this special crop up in regular rotation. Jefferies expounds on Australia’s gun ban and skewers gun culture in the United States in an extended bit that remains sadly relevant.

Watch it on Netflix

4. Mark Maron, End Times Fun

Year: 2020
Length: 71 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Who better to laugh through the depression than Marc Maron? The impending end of the world has offered exactly one silver lining: the culmination of Maron’s specific brand of happy sadness applied to a global existential threat. Sure, the sky is on fire, but at least we all brought our own bags to the grocery store. Despite reducing his job to “thinking of things that are funny,” Maron is at the top of his game here as one of the most humane critics of our current state of being. As he faces down the end of everything (and questions his own existence with philosophy-killing cat Monkey), he goes after the bullsh*t artists making our time on earth worse.

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5. Sarah Silverman, A Speck Of Dust

Year: 2017
Length: 71 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

In typical Sarah Silverman fashion, this is simultaneously her filthiest and most heartfelt. Not only does it feature her coolly telling jokes that bring about profound shame and belly laughs, it also offers an origin story for her comedic superpowers which involve serial bedwetting, sleepaway camp, and her dad gifting her two raunchy joke books the year she learned to read. The next time someone tells you that comedians just can’t say anything taboo anymore because of the PC Police, sit them down with a giant tub of popcorn and press play on the story Silverman tells about her sister’s freshman year at college. Then, watch the rest after they’ve recovered.

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6. Dave Chappelle, The Age of Spin

Year: 2017
Length: 67 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Some will want to fast-forward through certain portions of The Age of Spin. The full experience is evidence of a genius comic mind who is shaking his fist at the clouds at the ripe old age of 42. What makes it work is that Chapelle is direct and honest about his confusion at the modern world he’s somehow aged out of. To that end, a lot of the subject matter is weirdly dated, even for 2017, but Chapelle makes it all work with astonishing insight and clarity. It’s raw, and while Chapelle is bracing and biting, he’s also introspective and attempting to feel what younger generations are all about: namely the relation of his watching the Challenger explosion as a child and wondering how the new generations can stand seeing tragedy like that unfold every single day of their lives.

Watch it on Netflix

7. Aziz Ansari, Right Now

Year: 2019
Length: 65 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Directed by Spike Jonze, Ansari’s special features crew watching from offstage as the Parks and Rec alum riffs on social media, the race relations of white people watching Crazy Rich Asians, and more. It’s a phenomenal routine that features perhaps the finest possible example of a comedian heckling his own audience. Riding the wave of stand-up expanding its horizons, Ansari weaves thought-provoking concepts, personal tragedy, and toweringly hilarious jokes together to form a unique storytelling experience. With his goofy smile firmly in place, its a massive step forward for him as a comedian, and we get to reap the silly benefits.

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8. Eric Andre, Legalize Everything

Year: 2020
Length: 51 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

With some comedians, you get jokes and maybe a little light introspection. With Andre, you get to see a man doing a full Crossfit cardio set while screaming and making you fall out of your chair laughing. The natural heir to Sam Kinison, it sometimes feels like Andre doesn’t even need an audience for this special, content to rant and rave like no one’s watching. Yes, he’s intense. He also lets us live vicariously through his outrageous life, whether that’s finding a new erogenous zone while on an unadvisable amount of MDMA or trying to see the Tupac Hologram at Coachella while insanely high. Or doing some other stuff while sober, possibly. After watching this special, you’ll have lost 400 calories and want to legalize ranch.

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9. Bo Burnham, Inside

Year: 2021
Length: 87 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Is he making fun of people or empathizing with them? Hard to say! Although diving into the claustrophobic special made during Covid may feel a bit like running back into the haunted house you just escaped from, the flourish of Burnham’s songs beautifully captures that funny feeling of living in a hurricane of loose context provided by a constant internet connection. Each is meticulously crafted and performed in flashy sequences despite the limitation of being stuck inside a small guest house. The layers of artifice alone are worthy of a TED Talk, but it’s a stellar achievement to craft songs that are viral, hilarious, and worthy of being covered by Phoebe Bridgers.

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10. Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh

Year: 2018
Length: 73 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Adam Sandler is an enigma. The same guy who can skewer his own schlocky movie work in Funny People has no problem going right back making schlocky movies (and then sprinting headlong into Uncut Gems). He completely lacks pretension, and this special highlights what a lowbrow knucklehead he’s remained since we first met him on SNL in the ’90s. Yet he’s matured. A little. Most of the special involves a patchwork of Sandler bits at different venues where he sings entire songs about taking his phone, wallet, and keys with him wherever he goes, but he delves deeper in a clear search for human connection. It’s hilarious, sometimes sweet, and it ends with a powerhouse musical tribute to Chris Farley that won’t leave a single eye dry.

Watch it on Netflix

11. John Mulaney, Kid Gorgeous at Radio City

Year: 2018
Length: 64 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

If you’re wondering why all your friends spent the latter years of his Presidency referring to Trump as a horse in a hospital, this special will finally solve that mystery for you. Mulaney is at the top of his game here, annoyance laced in every golden riff and the wisdom to offer some of the funniest lines of modern stand-up as throwaway gags. He has the audacity to mine his entire life for outrageous nuggets, targeting himself as the butt of the joke more often than not. With the voice of a 1930s horse racing announcer about to order an illegal gimlet, Mulaney chronicles his psychologically damaging childhood, his unwise college choices, and a whole lot of Catholicism (and Mick Jagger). From there, a thousand memes were born.

Watch it on Netflix

12. Taylor Tomlinson: Quarter-Life Crisis

Year: 2020
Length: 61 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Breezing toward 30, Tomlinson is already an old lady of comedy having been performing since she was 16. After making the top ten on Last Comic Standing in 2015, 2020 really felt like a breakout year for her as she utilized a squeaky clean upbringing to set herself apart stylistically and as fodder for some stellar bits. She’s deep in the diary here, building an outstandingly funny set from the surreal limbo of being a little too old to be partying so hard but a little too young to stop having fun. The result is fresh and fantastic, leaving no doubt as to why her star continues to rise. Already a seasoned stand-up, Tomlinson is also proof that Netflix’s experiment with giving new comics a 15-minute spotlight on The Comedy Lineup has paid dividends.

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13. Patton Oswalt, Annihilation

Year: 2017
Length: 66 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Annihilation is really two specials in one. The first is a whip smart, ludicrous routine about politics and the bizarre wonders of everyday life. The second is a reflection on losing your soul mate. Written, polished, and performed in the year after his first wife, crime writer Michelle McNamara, died, this stand-up is a magnum opus to the early phases of profound grief. The same Patton that lovingly mocks Star Wars is still around, but he’s angrier and messier, pushing through a lot of darkness to find his own weird version of the light. The special feels like someone who’s returning to what he knows best to find some stable ground and using that foundation to build something new.

Watch it on Netflix

14. Daniel Sloss, Jigsaw

Year: 2018
Length: 60 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

When he was a little kid, Scottish comedian Daniel Sloss got a powerful lesson from his father about life, the universe, and everything. The rest of the special is a banger, but the heart of the hour is his explanation of the Jigsaw analogy for finding love — and the explanation for why he’ll probably die (happily) alone. Sloss manages to spin a self-help guru truism into something gracious and awkwardly funny, splitting the audience between those laughing and those who will probably break up within a few months or hours. In fact, Sloss openly credits his Netflix special as directly leading to hundreds of breakups and divorces. Don’t be sad, though. The point is that sometimes those splits are for the best.

Watch it on Netflix

15. Hannibal Buress, Comedy Camisado

Year: 2017
Length: 67 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Buress stands alone. No one else finds the same simple surrealness to life or delivers it with his detached, jovial irritation. His down to earth vibe comes cleanly through in this masterful special where he essentially delivers a fireside chat about weird interactions he’s lived through — from a police officer going full fanboy in a crummy airport to the nuisance of having to show ID as someone in his 30s. Buress’s comedic gift is finding a punchline on top of the punchline on top of the first punchline. He fills all the nooks and crannies with extra little gags and deadpan additions that keep the laughter flowing. Comedy Camisado is like inviting your funniest friend into your home to hang for a bit.

Watch it on Netflix

16. Hannah Gadsby, Nanette

Year: 2018
Length: 69 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Gadsby’s 2018 special blazed a huge trail, building on Tig Notaro‘s 2012 vulnerability tour de force to craft a special that defies comedy convention so thoroughly that people are still debating whether it counts as stand-up. Spoiler alert: it does. It conforms far more to the Edinburgh Fringe style than the standard Chuckle Hut rhythm. If you don’t want to think with your comedy, look elsewhere, because Gadsby doesn’t let the audience turn off their brains for a single moment. Like a huge sign in the outback warning about the last gas station for a trillion kilometers, she even warns the audience when the last joke comes… before she weaves together intense depictions of physical and psychological abuse with shocking throwaway lines to let some steam off. It’s a truly stunning comic achievement.

Watch it on Netflix

17. Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King

Year: 2017
Length: 72 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Homecoming King is very much an extension of his politically charged show Patriot Act. Yes, he sets the jokes up and knocks them down, but Minhaj shines more as a storyteller, especially here with American flags projected on big screens behind him. This is a special about growing up as a second generation Indian Muslim immigrant, mocking and celebrating the differences he noted between him and his father after 9/11. The political gets merged with the personal, and Minhaj masterfully navigates both with his gigantic eyes and freewheeling energy. Unlike other specials, the camera work here follows next to Minhaj, letting him directly address the home viewer as much as the theater audience, creating a remarkably intimate tone for an intimate series of topics.

Watch it on Netflix

18. Ali Wong: Baby Cobra

Year: 2016
Length: 60 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Wong performed this special while 7 and a half months pregnant. It provided rich territory that felt and sounded revolutionary at the time, pushing it far beyond a gimmick into something profound and appropriately angry. Wong tackled the double standards not only between male and female comics but between fathers and mothers, finding unexpected laugh lines and pushing the social hypocrisy far enough to convert it to hilarity. Fortunately, the special isn’t solely notable for the boundaries it pushed; it’s still knock down funny today. Baby Cobra is well worth a revisit for a healthy laugh at all the boundaries that haven’t been erased yet.

Watch it on Netflix

19. Trevor Noah, I Wish You Would

Year: 2022
Length: 60 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Noah absolutely explodes on the stage in this energetic special. Shifting away from The Daily Show, Noah proves again to be a powerhouse of observational comedy, narrowing his eyebrows at the abject stupidity of political figures, bigots, and life’s tiny absurdities. As with his book Born a Crime, Noah riffs on his upbringing as the child of a Xhosa woman and a Swiss man. He also unsurprisingly hammers American government and its various sex pests, trotting out a shocking amount of incredibly good impressions. It’s a Jim Carrey-esque side to Noah that hasn’t really been seen until I Wish You Would, and Noah emerges from the event as a rock star of comedy.

Watch it on Netflix

20. Wanda Sykes: Not Normal

Year: 2019
Length: 76 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Sykes is hands down one of the smartest comedians of the past hundred years. She’s dangerously incisive, and can turn those razor sharp observations into deeply funny monologues, all of which are on full display in Not Normal. After performing for three decades, Sykes leaves it all out on the field again here, crafting an uproarious stand-up routine that sounds an awful like the last sane person shouting about all the crazy nonsense in the world. From her special relationship to Vicks VapoRub to head-shaking/knee-slapping takes on race relations, each bit is funnier than the last, proving that the GOAT stays on point. Fair warning: watching this will make you want to watch everything she’s ever done, and that might take a while.

Watch it on Netflix

21. Bill Burr: Paper Tiger

Year: 2019
Length: 67 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Burr is another legacy comic who continually proves his relevance by exploiting a unique ability to piss off an entire audience before winning them all back. It happens multiple times during Paper Tiger, none more than when he relates how happy he is that Stephen Hawking is dead. Most comics are terrified of boos, a few endure them momentarily, some build an identity on only receiving hate, but Burr luxuriates comfortably in the boos before impossibly wringing more laughs from the crowd that was just about to grab their pitchforks. He’s on fire here, pouncing on social landmines with a jester’s joyful abandon.

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22. Steve Martin and Martin Short: An Evening You Will Never Forget For the Rest of Your Life

Year: 2018
Length: 73 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Before Only Murders in the Building, Martin and Short brought their delightful chaos to the Peace Center for a variety show undergirded by their Vaudevillian style and a friendship that can handle an hour of mutual mockery. Beyond music from Martin’s Steep Canyon Rangers, the show mostly consists of Martin and Short playfully digging at each other, one-upping, and getting progressively weirder. These two amigos may be aping an antique style, but they’re still experimenting wildly, whether that’s Short performing as a Jiminy Glick puppet or Martin getting goofy with his straight man duties. It’s a wondrous show, not to be forgotten any time soon.

Watch it on Netflix

23. Tig Notaro, Happy To Be Here

Year: 2018
Length: 58 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

It must have been amazing to sit in this small crowd for this show. Notaro’s 2012 cancer set was immediately iconic, so to see her approach comedy under far happier circumstances almost feels like an act of rebellion. Some performers might have been a flash in the pan, even after such a powerhouse introduction to the national stage, but with Happy to Be Here and many other sets, Notaro continually shows that she’s a singular voice in comedy, sardonic and powerfully empathetic. Somehow, even her sharpest sarcasm sounds loving. Not only will you double over laughing, you’ll also think twice about meowing to your cat and will probably end up googling whether a bee can sting another bee.

Watch it on Netflix

24. Jenny Slate, Stage Fright

Year: 2019
Length: 66 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

Smart idea: attach a seatbelt to your sofa. Watching Slate’s special is like watching a waterskiing honey badger. It’s hilarious, and you never know what’s gonna happen next. Slate dips, ducks, dives, and dodges between morbid nihilism and familial sweetness, all while revealing her myriad psyches living inside her brain. With pure theater kid energy, she covers too many topics to list. They all tend to revolve around her life and upbringing, punctuated with home videos from her childhood (only picking her nose in one of them) and documentary style interviews with her grandmother and sisters. It’s an exhaustingly funny show that takes the standard stand-up bookend concept and makes it even more revelatory and personal.

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25. Pete Davidson, Alive From New York

Year: 2020
Length: 49 minutes
Rating: TV-MA
Trailer: Watch here

The initial pleasure of Alive From New York is Davidson’s naturalistic gift for delivering punchlines while exposing his most embarrassing moments. The secondary pleasure of Alive From New York is listening to Davidson laugh at his own jokes. It’s a classic SNL tradition, but it’s also fun to see how much fun he’s having. Sweet and astonishingly self-deprecating, the set fully embraces the tabloid nonsense that everyone is tuning in for — opening with a story about how Louis C.K. tried to get Davidson fired from SNL for smoking pot, telling tales out of school about Ariana Grande, and delighting in some jaw droppingly awkward family stories. Davidson magically owns the room while harnessing underdog energy, leaning into the high highs and low lows that Davidson has lived out in full view of the public.