Aftershocks may be triggered by the stresses generated by preceding mainshocks. The temporal frequency and maximum size of aftershocks are well described by the empirical Omori and Bath laws, but spatial patterns are more difficult to forecast. Coulomb failure stress is perhaps the most common criterion invoked to explain spatial distributions of aftershocks. Here we consider the spatial relationship between patterns of aftershocks and a comprehensive list of 38 static elastic scalar metrics of stress (including stress tensor invariants, maximum shear stress, and Coulomb failure stress) from 213 coseismic slip distributions worldwide. The rates of true‐positive and false‐positive classification of regions with and without aftershocks are assessed with receiver operating characteristic analysis. We infer that the stress metrics that are most consistent with observed aftershock locations are maximum shear stress and the magnitude of the second and third invariants of the stress tensor. These metrics are significantly better than random assignment at a significance level of 0.005 in over 80% of the slip distributions. In contrast, the widely used Coulomb failure stress criterion is distinguishable from random assignment in only 51–64% of the slip distributions. These results suggest that a number of alternative scalar metrics are better predictors of aftershock locations than classic Coulomb failure stress change.