Five to ten people, split into a secret good team and a secret evil team, arguing about who’s lying. That’s both of these games in one sentence, and it’s also why people keep typing “Avalon vs Secret Hitler” into Google trying to figure out if they’re the same thing wearing different boxes.
They’re not. We’ve spent a lot of nights with both. Avalon shot to the top of my favourites list and stayed there through a run where it came out every games night for weeks. Secret Hitler earned its spot on our original social deduction roundup back in 2017 and never left it. The two games feel different at the table for one specific reason, and once you understand it, the buying decision gets easy.
If you want the short version: Avalon is the safer pick for almost every group. It’s cheaper, nobody sits out, the theme won’t cause a fight before the game even starts, and the Merlin twist at the end is the best finish in the genre. Secret Hitler is the pick if your table would rather argue in circles than solve a puzzle. The evidence in that game never quite adds up to proof, and that’s the whole point. Read on for why, especially the theme section below before you buy for a mixed group.
Related reading: The Resistance: Avalon Review · Best Games Like Secret Hitler · Best Social Deduction Board Games
Quick Comparison
| The Resistance: Avalon | Secret Hitler |
|---|---|
 |  |
| Avalon | Secret Hitler | |
|---|---|---|
| Players | 5 – 10 | 5 – 10 |
| Play Time | 30 – 60 min | About 45 min |
| Ages | 13+ | 13+ |
| Teams | Loyal Servants of Arthur vs Minions of Mordred | Liberals vs Fascists (plus Hitler) |
| What the good team knows | Merlin knows who’s evil | Nothing, at the start |
| How you win | Pass or fail 3 of 5 quests | Enact 5 or 6 policies, or the Hitler kill/election |
| The twist | Evil can steal a loss by assassinating Merlin | Electing Hitler Chancellor late ends the game instantly |
| Player elimination | None | Yes, through executions |
| Theme risk | Very low | High for some groups |
| Price | Around $25 | Around $45 (or free to print) |
Why They Feel So Different: Proof vs an Alibi
Most comparisons skip this part entirely, and it’s the whole reason to read past the table above.
In Avalon, a failed quest is proof. Each player on a mission secretly plays a Success or Fail card, and good players physically cannot play Fail. It’s not in their hand. So a Fail card on the table means someone on that team is evil, guaranteed. No excuses, no bad luck, no deck to blame.
That turns the whole game into a logic exercise wrapped in a social one. Who was on the failed team? Who voted them onto it? You start narrowing suspects the moment the first mission goes wrong, and the evil players know it. That’s why the sharp move for them is often not failing a quest, just to stay off everyone’s list.
Secret Hitler works the opposite way. The policy deck holds 11 Fascist tiles against only 6 Liberal ones, and the President draws three at a time. A completely honest, completely Liberal President can easily draw nothing but Fascist tiles and have zero real choice about what gets passed along. So when a bad policy lands, there are three possible culprits: the President, the Chancellor, or plain bad luck in the deck. Nobody at the table can be sure which. The rulebook says as much in its own strategy notes. “I had no choice” gets said constantly in this game, and it’s often true.
That’s the whole difference in a sentence: Avalon punishes you with hard evidence, Secret Hitler never quite gives you enough to convict anyone. Careful note-takers do well at Avalon. Good storytellers do well at Secret Hitler. Our old write-up on it put it best: there is SO MUCH ARGUING, because there’s always room to keep arguing.
What the Good Team Gets to Know
Merlin is Avalon’s whole trick. One player on the good team can see every evil player at the table (Mordred is the one exception, if your group plays with him), but Merlin can’t just announce it. Say too much and the Assassin figures out who’s feeding the good team information, and the evil team gets one shot at killing Merlin even after losing three quests. So Merlin spends the entire game trying to steer the table without ever looking like he’s steering it. Layer in Percival, who has to guess which of two candidates is the real Merlin, and Morgana, who’s pretending to be him, and you’ve got a second bluffing game running on top of the first one. Our Avalon characters and roles guide walks through every role if you want the details.
Secret Hitler starts everyone on the good team completely in the dark. No one begins with special knowledge. Whatever the Liberals learn, they learn through play, mostly from presidential powers that unlock as Fascist policies stack up: investigating a party card, peeking at the deck, forcing a special election, executing someone. And even those come with an asterisk, because the President is free to lie about what a power actually revealed.
There’s an asymmetry on the evil side worth knowing too. At five or six players, Hitler and the lone other Fascist know each other from the start. At seven or more, it flips: the Fascists all know Hitler, but Hitler doesn’t know them. That means Hitler is often playing the most cautious game at the table, trying to look Liberal and trusting teammates by instinct rather than certainty.
Put the two games side by side and you get this: in Avalon, one player is sitting on the truth and desperately trying to leak it safely. In Secret Hitler, nobody’s sitting on much of anything early. The truth surfaces slowly, one vote and one policy claim at a time.
The Endgame
Each game saves its sharpest moment for last, and they cut in opposite directions.
Avalon can let the good team win the quests and still lose the game. Pass three missions and the evil team still gets one final swing. The Assassin has to name Merlin, and if they guess right, evil wins anyway. That closing scene, where the evil players compare notes out loud trying to work out who seemed a little too well-informed all game, might be the single best moment social deduction has to offer. Good can only sit and hope their Merlin was careful enough.
Secret Hitler’s ending works through pure dread instead. Once three Fascist policies are on the board, electing Hitler as Chancellor ends the game immediately. Every vote from that point forward could be the last one. Liberals have their own kill shot too: execute Hitler and it’s over in their favor right there. That combination makes the final third of Secret Hitler genuinely tense in a way Avalon doesn’t quite reach. People stop voting yes on anyone.
Does Anyone Get Knocked Out?
This alone decides it for some groups, so it’s worth being direct about.
Avalon: nobody. Everyone votes and argues from the first mission to the last, win or lose.
Secret Hitler: yes, sometimes. Depending on player count and how the game unfolds, the President can be handed an execution power, and whoever gets executed is simply out: can’t speak, can’t vote, can’t run for office again. It doesn’t happen every game, and most groups shrug it off when it does, but getting shot ten minutes into a 45-minute game and then sitting quietly for the rest of it is a real possibility. Know your table before you buy if that’s a dealbreaker for someone.
The Theme, Honestly
This is probably the actual question behind a lot of these searches, so no dancing around it.
Avalon’s theme is knights, Merlin, good versus evil. It’s about as safe as a theme gets.
Secret Hitler puts you in 1932 Germany as Liberals and Fascists, and yes, one player is playing as Hitler. The design frames it as satire, a game about how ordinary people slowly hand over power in small, deniable concessions, and a lot of groups are completely comfortable with that framing. A lot aren’t. It’s a much harder box to bring to a family gathering, a work event, or a table with people you don’t know well, and some players will simply decline to play regardless of how the mechanics work. That’s a reasonable line to draw.
If you’re not certain how your group will react, ask before you spend the money. Both games play beautifully. Neither one is fun if half the table is uneasy the whole time.
How Much Brainpower Each One Asks For
Avalon games are short, 30 minutes or so, which cuts both ways. You can run three or four in a night, but after three I’m done. Genuinely wiped. Keeping track of every quest, every vote, every inconsistency adds up fast.
Secret Hitler runs a touch longer, closer to 45 minutes, and somehow feels lighter afterward. Our old post nailed the reason: there’s a lot going on, but not so much that your head is mush after one game. The evidence is softer, so you spend more time reading people than doing math, and that trade suits plenty of players better.
Scaling by Player Count
Both games officially run five to ten, and both show up on our best board games for 8 players list for good reason.
Avalon is at its best from five to seven, where the deduction stays readable. Push it to eight through ten and it gets loud fast. More evil players means more moving pieces to track, and the first quest can turn into something close to a coin flip. If the exact numbers matter to you, our Avalon setup by player count page has every team split and quest size laid out.
Secret Hitler actually improves with more people. A bigger table means more votes and more policy claims to sift through, which gives the Liberals more to work with, not less. Down at five or six, the game moves quicker and the two Fascists know each other from the jump, which makes things a bit more transparent. It’s still a good game at that size, just a different shape.
What’s in the Box, and What It Costs
Avalon wins the value argument outright. It’s a small box of cards and a handful of tokens, runs around $25, and fits in a bag without you noticing it’s there. Setup is a couple of minutes, most of which goes to deciding which special roles you’re using that night.
Secret Hitler costs more, usually closer to $45, and the box earns some of that back. You get policy tiles instead of plain cards, Ja! and Nein ballot cards for every player, a sealed envelope holding each person’s secret role, and three separate Fascist boards depending on your player count. It has the feel of a real production, not just a card deck in a box.
One thing tips the scales back a little, though: Secret Hitler is released under a Creative Commons license, and the designers put a full print-and-play version up for free on their own site, about an hour with a printer and some scissors by their estimate. That’s a genuinely rare way to try a retail game before buying it. Print it, run it with your group once, and then decide if the real box is worth the money.
Quick Answers on The Resistance, Mafia, and Werewolf
A handful of related matchups come up constantly, so here’s the short version of each.
The Resistance vs Secret Hitler. The original Resistance runs on the same core engine as Avalon, just with a sci-fi rebellion theme and no Merlin or Assassin roles in the base game. Everything above about proof versus deniability applies here too. Between the two, we’d still point people toward Avalon, simply because the Merlin endgame is what elevates it.
Mafia or Werewolf vs Secret Hitler. Both classics need a moderator sitting out of the game, and both eliminate players early and often, sometimes within minutes. Secret Hitler needs no moderator and keeps almost everyone in through the finish. Mafia’s advantage is that it’s free with a regular deck of cards and scales to huge groups; Secret Hitler gives you far more to actually reason about. Want something closer to Werewolf but quicker? One Night Ultimate Werewolf wraps in about ten minutes and doesn’t eliminate anyone either.
So, Which One?
Get Avalon if you want a hidden-role game that works with almost any group you throw at it, you actually enjoy deducing things rather than just vibing, nobody wants to sit out, or you’re watching the budget. Cheaper, smaller, and there’s no theme conversation to have first. For most people reading this, it’s the right call. Our full Avalon review and the simplified rules are both there if you want a closer look before buying.
Get Secret Hitler if your group would rather argue than deduce, you want an ending where any single vote might end the game, and the theme isn’t going to bother anyone at your table. It rewards people who read faces and tell good stories more than people who track evidence. If you’re not sure yet, print the free version and find out before you spend on the box.
Get both if you’ve got a steady group of six or more people. These are genuinely two different games wearing similar clothes. Avalon is the one we pull out for a thinking night. Secret Hitler is the one we pull out when we just want to yell at each other for an hour.
Neither quite right? Our best games like Secret Hitler list has seven more picks in the same neighborhood, from ten-minute fillers to games built for a party of thirty.
Check Secret Hitler Price on Amazon
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