The 30 Best Reality Shows of All Time (2025)

The Kardashian family has been on our screens since 2007, and it’s hard to imagine life any other way. Hulu’s The Kardashians gives fans an inside look at the latest exploits of Kim, Kourtney, Khloé, Kendall, Kylie, and Kris. Keeping Up With the Kardashians remains a guilty pleasure for old-school fans of the family.

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The iconic modeling competition was once a mainstay of reality TV, and it’s easy to see why. Created by Tyra Banks, who also served as a judge, each season followed a new cohort of aspiring models. Every week, contestants would fight to keep their place on the show, vying for a chance to win a lucrative modeling contract in the finale.

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Netflix’s Bling Empire has been a huge success for the streamer and has already inspired the spin-off Bling Empire: New York. The original version follows a group of wealthy Asians and Asian Americans who all live lavish lifestyles in Los Angeles.

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Netflix’s Indian Matchmaking follows Mumbai-based matchmaker Sima Taparia as she helps to find love matches for clients in both India and the United States. The show ran for three seasons on Netflix, from 2020–2023.

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Love Is Blind burst onto our screens in 2020, and life has never been the same since. Men and women date one another in custom-made pods, without ever seeing what the other person looks like. Contestants must then decide whether or not to get engaged, sight unseen. Only some of the couples make it to the altar, and there’s always way too much drama along the way.

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VH1’s Love & Hip Hop: New York is the show that helped establish Cardi B as a future superstar. The series follows a group of artists working in hip-hop and R&B as they develop their careers in the music industry. The successful show spawned spin-offs set in Miami, Hollywood, and Atlanta.

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Love Island follows a group of contestants as they live together in a villa in an idyllic location. In order to stay in the competition and have a shot at winning the prize money, contestants must couple up. As the series progresses, some contestants switch partners, causing an inordinate amount of drama, while others choose to stay together.

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Netflix’s My Unorthodox Life follows former Orthodox Jew Julia Haart as she navigates life with her family in Manhattan after leaving the religion behind. The show’s second season premiered in December 2022, and fans are hoping that a third season will eventually be on the way.

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MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 was a reality TV show none of us could peel our eyes away from. Following the ridiculously over-the-top exploits of wealthy teens as they turned 16, the series included ludicrous parties, stupidly expensive gifts, and tantrums galore.

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The success of reality shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Selling Sunset lies in the simple fact that ordinary audiences like to watch rich people do rich-people things. But what about rich people doing (or, at the very least, attempting to do) normal-people things? That’s the premise of The Simple Life, a reality series following best friends Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie as they swap their socialite lifestyles for working-class jobs as housecleaners, farmers, fast-food cashiers, and more.

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More than 20 years after The Simple Life debuted, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie have finally returned to our screens via Paris and Nicole: The Encore. The three-part special is a wild trip down nostalgia lane, with Hilton and Richie re-creating some of their most iconic moments from their early-aughts reality series. “Being back on the road with my best friend and seeing the joy on people’s faces while we were filming in Altus and L.A. [was the most formative memory]. It was truly an unforgettable experience,” Hilton said of the reality special in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar last year.

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This South Korean reality TV show follows the journey of 100 contestants as they face off in challenges that stretch the limit of what’s physically possible—all for the chance to claim 300 million won. The production on the challenges is insanely creative, with players tasked with pushing a 1.5-ton ship or racing through a massive maze while carrying weighted sand bags. But the ultimate draw of the show is the sweet camaraderie that develops between the athletes.

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Project Runway remains a powerhouse of a reality television show, and its long-awaited 20th season came to our screens in 2023. The series follows a group of designers as they complete challenges and showcase their creations to judges on a weekly basis.

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Netflix’s Selling Sunset has changed the game when it comes to real estate reality shows. The series follows a group of impossibly attractive agents at the Oppenheim Group as they list high-end real estate and wear ridiculously expensive clothing. We’re eight seasons into the series and we’re still not bored yet.

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The Bachelor and its arguably more interesting spin-offs have remained a stalwart of reality TV for years. In both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, a group of people compete for the affections of the same person, hopefully leading to an engagement. Bachelor in Paradise puts a group of single people on a beach and waits for the romance and drama to unfold.

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The Circle is a reality show for the digital age. Contestants play a social-media-based game in which they can either be themselves or play as a catfish. To win the game, contestants must gain the trust of the other players, eliminating other people in the process. A huge cash prize awaits, but it takes true savvy to take advantage of social media with the cameras rolling.

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Following Laguna Beach, MTV gave us The Hills, the perfect ’00s reality show following a group of young adults in Los Angeles. We all watched in awe as Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag, and Audrina Patridge followed their dreams and dated all the wrong men. A short-lived reboot tried to re-create the magic but was sadly canceled in 2022.

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The premise of Netflix’s Too Hot to Handle is not for the faint of heart. A group of singletons live in a villa together, but they’re not allowed to engage in any sexual activity whatsoever. Anyone who breaks the rules causes a cash sum to be deducted from the prize fund. And, obviously, people break the rules again and again.

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If you want to watch a Project Runway–esque show without all the petty intercontestant drama, then Next in Fashion is perfect for you. With Tan France and Gigi Hadid helming the show as hosts, the series follows a group of up-and-coming fashion designers from around the world as they compete in various design challenges, all in an attempt to win $250,000 and the opportunity to debut a collection through Net-a-Porter.

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It’s hard to believe that there have already been 11 U.S. iterations of the Real Housewives franchise, and there are bound to be more to come. The series follows a group of women, all of whom live lavish lifestyles, in various cities. International versions and spin-offs have also proven popular, and it’s likely that the franchise will still be running long after we’re all dead.

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