Why is the sun the brightest but least luminous?

Nearly every star that you see with the unaided eye is larger and more luminous than our sun. The vast majority of stars that we see at night with the eye alone are millions – even hundreds of millions – of times farther away than the sun. Regardless, these distant suns can be seen from Earth because they are hundreds or thousands of times more luminous than our local star. Because the sun is closer it looks brighter but is actually just because of how close we are to it.