We study the maximal estimates for the bilinear spherical average and the bilinear Bochner-Riesz operator. First, we obtain L p × L q → L r estimates for the bilinear spherical maximal function on the optimal range. Thus, we settle the problem which was previously considered by Geba, Greenleaf, Iosevich, Palsson and Sawyer, later Barrionevo, Grafakos, D. He, Honzík and Oliveira, and recently Heo, Hong and Yang. Secondly, we consider L p × L q → L r estimates for the maximal bilinear Bochner-Riesz operators and improve the previous known results. For the purpose we draw a connection between the maximal estimates and the square function estimates for the classical Bochner-Riesz operators.