List of horse breeds

Light or saddle horse breeds

Heavy or draft horse breeds

The following list of horse and pony breeds includes standardized breeds, some strains within breeds that are considered distinct populations, types of horses with common characteristics that are not necessarily standardized breeds but are sometimes described as such, and terms that describe groupings of several breeds with similar characteristics.

While there is no scientifically accepted definition of the term "breed",^[1] a breed is generally defined as having distinct true-breeding characteristics over a number of generations. Its members may be called purebred. In most cases, bloodlines of horse breeds are recorded with a breed registry. The concept is somewhat flexible in horses, as open stud books are created for recording pedigrees of horse breeds that are not yet fully true-breeding.

Registries are considered the authority as to whether a given breed is listed as a "horse" or a "pony". There are also a number of "color breed", sport horse, and gaited horse registries for horses with various phenotypes or other traits, which admit any animal fitting a given set of physical characteristics, even if there the trait is not a true-breeding characteristic. Other recording entities or specialty organizations may recognize horses from multiple breeds, thus, for the purposes of this article, such animals are classified as a "breed" rather than a "type”.