Every MoonBoard 2016 hold, ranked S to F

The hardest hold on the MoonBoard 2016 is A15. The friendliest is F5, which starts almost a third of everything on the board. In between, the 140 holds sort themselves into a clean hierarchy: the yellow Original School Holds score a full grade harder than Hold Set A and B, and the board's left and right edges are where the hard problems live.

How a hold earns its tier

For every listed problem at 40° we took the setter's grade and the hold list. A hold's score is the mean grade of the problems that use it, weighting each problem by how often it has been repeated, so a hold on one popular 6B+ counts more than a hold on a forgotten 7C. Then the holds are ranked and cut into tiers by rank: the top 8% are S, the next 17% A, then B and C either side of the middle, D, and the bottom 8% F.

A hold's tier is therefore about company, not shape. An S-tier hold is one that setters reach for when the problem is hard. Sometimes that is because the hold is bad; sometimes it is because it sits where only a hard problem would go. The table says which.

92,296 problems, 140 holds, all with 150 or more problems to their name. The MoonBoard 2016 has nothing below 6B+ in any real number, so even F-tier holds have a typical grade of 6B+ to 6C: on this board, "easy" is relative.

S tier: the holds that only show up when it gets hard

Ten of the eleven are Original School Holds, the yellow set that came with the first MoonBoard. A15 is the standout: a hold that appears on only 326 problems, with a typical grade of 7B+. H15, J11 and A11 sit a shade below it. G7 is the one S-tier hold that gets used a lot, because the lower-middle of the board is where hard problems have to start.

A tier

B and C: the middle of the board

D tier

F tier: the holds every warm-up uses

Every F-tier hold is from Hold Set A or B, and between them they carry the famous 6B+ circuit. F5 is the start of An easy problem, Wuthering Heights and 29,000 other problems. E8, H10, E15 and G13 are the rungs of the ladder that most 6B+ problems climb. If you know these eleven holds you know the start and the middle of most 6B+ problems on the board.

The hold sets

The Original School Holds average nearly a full grade harder than Hold Set A. That is partly shape, they are smaller, and partly placement: Moon put them along the board's edges and top rows where the hard problems finish.

Most used and least used

No hold on the 2016 is unused. The rarest, A15, still has 326 problems.

What a climber does with this

• Working on 7A and above: climb problems built on S- and A-tier holds and you are training the holds that will meet you there. Boardlordz can filter the catalogue by hold, so pick two S-tier holds and see what the setters did with them.
• Plateaued at 6B+: look at the F-tier list. Those are your current holds. Problems that swap one of them for a B-tier hold are the natural next step, and the "similar climbs" list on any problem will find them.
• Setting: a problem built only from F-tier holds will land at 6B+ or 6C with the community whatever you call it, unless the moves between them are unusual.

Caveats

• 40° only. The 25° setting is a different board for grading purposes.
• The score uses the setter's grade. On the MoonBoard the community grade almost always matches the setter's, so this is not a big effect, but a sandbagged problem drags its holds up.
• Tiers are relative to this board. A 2016 F-tier hold would be a C on a Masters 2017, which has a friendlier hold set.
• We measure where a hold appears, not how it feels in the hand. Hold size, texture and the body of the climber are invisible to this method.

Catalogue as of October 2026, as listed by Boardlordz from the MoonBoard app's public problems. Thank you to Moon Climbing for the board, and to every setter whose problems are counted here.

Boardlordz is a free app for MoonBoard, Kilter and Tension boards. Browse by hold, light up any climb, log it in one tap. boardlordz.com