Warframe is and always has been a game about robot ninjas tearing through missions in the Origin System. The game has evolved over its ten-year lifespan, and now more and more Warframes are less and less ninja-like. Now, there are frames like the war priest Harrow and the ever-hungering Grendel.
At the end of the day, though, Warframe's DNA is rooted in that ninja playstyle, with many missions throughout the game requiring utmost mastery of stealth mechanics. Different frames are built to excel at different tasks. These are the stealth Warframes that will get players in and out of a mission without the enemy even knowing they were there.
10 Limbo
While the master magician might not be the best stealth frame, he still has some use cases, especially in Spy and Infested Rescue missions. While Limbo traverses the rift, enemies and cameras are still able to detect him, but he is still free from interactions on the physical plane.
This means that the Limbo Warframe is able to walk through most lasers - he can waltz through security doors and trip every trap without worrying about data deletion or hostage execution timers starting up.
9 Equinox
Between Day and Night time forms, Equinox is a sort of "jack of all trades" Warframe. While the Night form is typically focused on defensive abilities, there's one tool in its kit that may help players take a more stealthy approach.
Equinox Night's 2nd ability, Rest, allows the Warframe to put enemies around it to sleep. This allows players to quickly dispatch foes, or leave them behind altogether as they move on their objective. If the plan goes awry and alarms are tripped, Equinox Day has powerful offensive abilities to continue the fight.
8 Baruuk
It makes sense for the Warframe themed around finding inner peace and tranquility to have non-lethal ways to take down enemies, and that makes Baruuk a viable choice for stealthy missions. His 2nd ability, Lull, puts enemies to sleep until they take damage - and when they wake up, they're disoriented, forgetting their alert status from before their slumber.
Baruuk is also great at making it out of sticky situations if things go sideways, as he doesn't take any damage from incoming projectiles when his 1st ability is active. Baruuk may not have a way to minimize his presence on the battlefield, but he can control the enemy's presence, allowing him to make swift infiltrations when it's necessary to do so.
7 Titania
While Titania may be a very offense-focused frame, she's also a flexible pick for stealth content. Enemies in Warframe can be quite witless, and staying out of sight and out of mind is usually enough to remain hidden.
Luckily, Titania's Razorwing is great for that, minimizing her profile and allowing her to stay high up in the air. She can squeeze into tight spaces that other frames might have trouble with and extract data from vaults without enemies even knowing she was there.
6 Wukong
The Sun God is one of the strongest frames in the game, possessing the ability to double his power with his celestial twin and convert enemy firepower into even more effective health points. He's also one of the better stealth picks in Warframe.
Wukong's strength in stealth content lies in his 2nd ability, Cloud Walker. For the duration of this ability, Wukong is able to speedily float in any direction, undetectable by enemies, cameras, and lasers. A Wukong player can simply walk into a Spy vault and cloud-walk to the terminal to hack the data, making Wukong a nearly unrivaled pick for Spy missions.
5 Banshee
Banshee is uniquely suited to enable almost any weapon to be brought along on a covert operation, making her one of the most important stealth frames in the game. Banshee's passive ability essentially suppresses the gunfire of her weapons, allowing any primary or secondary weapon a player brings into a mission to be capable of stealth takedowns.
Her abilities allow her to extend these benefits to her squadmates: her 2nd ability, Sonar, highlights enemies and their critical weak points, and her 3rd ability, Silence, renders them deaf to Tenno noises in their immediate vicinity. Banshee isn't just a great stealth frame for solo play; her kit makes her a great team player.
4 Ash
The Orokin master of assassination, this Warframe is meant for a quick and aggressive stealth playstyle. Players can drop Ash's 2nd ability, Smoke Screen, to render him invisible to nearby enemies, and use his 3rd ability, Teleport, to either engage an unaware enemy or disengage a hectic fight.
This frame also has high damage potential, throwing out seeking shurikens with his 1st ability and marking enemies for assassination from shadow clones with his 4th ability. Ash is a great stealth Warframe that can do just about all the game's content.
3 Ivara
A huntress in her own right, Ivara is great at lying low when a mission requires a delicate touch. Her kit is extremely versatile, enabling her to either sneak past enemies or silently take them out from afar. The Quiver ability lets Ivara set up ziplines or put enemies to sleep, and the Prowl ability lets her pickpocket enemies for resources as she sneaks past them.
For a more aggressive approach, Ivara still has her Artemis Bow, a powerful silent killer she can summon on the go, allowing her to take out any enemy she can't sneak around.
2 Loki
The original stealth frame, Loki still holds up as one of the best at what he does. His 2nd ability, Invisibility, lets him cloak himself from enemy sight lines, while his passive lets him cling to walls 10x longer than other frames, enabling him to stay away from prying eyes.
If Loki trips the alarms anyway, he can still release decoys to draw enemy attention, switch places with them via teleportation, or disarm groups of hostiles in one fell swoop, allowing him to fall back and reset the engagement.
1 Octavia
This symphonist of destruction may seem counterintuitive for silent endeavors, but Octavia is the best frame in the game for stealthy missions. Timing crouches to the beat of Octavia's Mandachord song allows her and her team to cloak themselves in invisibility, and this effect will stay applied as long as players keep moving to the rhythm.
With no energy drain and no limit to how long the invisibility can be kept up, Octavia is by far the best frame for stealth missions, even if she's blasting music at her enemies the whole way through.
Warframe is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.