Earth-abundant spinel oxides are promising alkaline oxygen-reduction catalysts, yet mechanistic models still invoke a vacuum-DFT associative OOH/OO route. Here we combine >80,000 fully solvated joint-DFT calculations to map oxygen-reduction energetics across 442 Al-, Co-, Cr-, Fe-, Ga-, Mn-, Ni- and Zn-containing spinels on the (100) and (111) facets. Associative intermediates are >0.5 eV less stable than *OH/H states, revealing a four-step dissociative cycle in which surface-hydrogen passivation shuttles protons. These results establish solvated high-throughput DFT as a predictive lens on the kinetic oxygen-reduction limit of spinel oxides.