Let A be a superalgebra with graded involution or superinvolution * and let c * n (A), n = 1, 2, . . . , be its sequence of * -codimensions. In case A is finite dimensional, in [6,15] it was proved that such a sequence is polynomially bounded if and only if the variety generated by A does not contain the group algebra of Z 2 and a 4-dimensional subalgebra of the 4×4 upper-triangular matrices with suitable graded involutions or superinvolutions.In this paper we study the general case of * -superalgebras satisfying a polynomial identity. As a consequence we classify the varieties of * -superalgebras of almost polynomial growth, i.e., varieties of exponential growth such that any proper subvariety has polynomial growth, and we give a full classification of their subvarieties which was started in [18].