Writing for "Rolling Stone" in 2002, David Fricke included "Within You Without You" on his list of the "25 Essential Harrison Performances". He described it as, variously, the Beatles' "purest excursion ... into raga", and "at once beautiful and severe, a magnetic sermon about materialism and communal responsibility in the middle of a record devoted to gentle Technicolor anarchy". In his review of the 50th anniversary edition of "Sgt. Pepper" for the same publication, Mikal Gilmore said that only "Within You Without You" and Lennon's "A Day in the Life" transcend the album's legacy as "a gestalt: a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts". In 2017, "Within You Without You" was ranked at number 50 on a list of the best Beatles songs, as compiled by the music staff of "Time Out London".