How to improve your VRChat avatar's performance rank

Updated Nov 12, 2026

VRChat rates every avatar from Excellent to Very Poor. The rank doesn’t stop you from wearing it on PC, but other people can hide avatars below a rank they choose, and on Quest and phones avatars ranked Poor and Very Poor are hidden by default. A better rank means more people actually see you.

Find out which stat is the problem

Your rank is set by your worst stat. In the VRChat SDK’s Builder tab, open the performance details: each stat has its own rank, and only the lowest one matters.

PC limits for Poor (anything above is Very Poor):

Quest and phone limits are much lower (20,000 triangles for Poor). VRChat’s ranking docs have every rank.

Many popular Japanese bases are over 70,000 triangles on their own, so they start as Very Poor on PC before you add anything. That’s normal; the steps below still help.

1. Add Avatar Optimizer

Avatar Optimizer (AAO) by anatawa12 is free and works like Modular Avatar: it optimizes a copy of your avatar at upload time and leaves your project alone.

1. Add it to your project through ALCOM or the Creator Companion (its page has an add-repo link).
2. Select your avatar’s root object and add the AAO Trace And Optimize component.

That alone removes unused bones, shape keys and objects that nothing uses, often lifting one or more stats a rank.

2. Merge meshes

Every outfit, hair and accessory adds a skinned mesh. AAO’s Merge Skinned Mesh combines them into one, which helps the skinned-mesh stat a lot.

3. Delete the body under the clothes

Skin covered by clothes is still drawn and still counts. Modular Avatar’s Shape Changer in Delete mode removes it, lowering triangles and stopping clipping at the same time.

4. Shrink textures

Texture memory is often the worst stat. A 4096×4096 texture uses four times the memory of a 2048×2048 one, and on an avatar the difference is hard to see. Select a texture in the Project window and lower Max Size, or use AAO’s Max Texture Size.

5. Remove what you don’t use

Extra outfits you never wear, spare hair, props: set their tag to EditorOnly so they’re not uploaded, or put them behind toggles you actually use.

6. Upload and check again

The SDK shows the new rank before you upload. Don’t chase Excellent on PC with a modern Japanese base; going from Very Poor to Poor already helps. On Quest it matters a lot more: see making a Quest version.