The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is ranked, just as previous years, in the top 150 of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). This ranking of the 500 best universities in the world is published annually by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and is therefore sometimes called the Shanghai ranking.

The ranking is compiled based on the number of Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals among staff and alumni, the number of citations and the number of articles published in the scientific journals Nature and Science. Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford respectively (all from the United States) top the rankings. The highest ranked Dutch university is Utrecht University in 53rd place.

In the rankings by broad subject fields, the UvA appears in the top 100 twice, with Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy (44th place) and Social Sciences (51-75). In the rankings by subject fields, the UvA is ranked in the top 100 in three fields: Computer Science (51-75), Economics/Business (51-75) and Physics (76-100).

In the overall rankings, universities outside the top 100 are not ranked individually, but in larger groups. Only the top 50 are ranked individually in the subject fields rankings.