An IQ test for adults

Twelve minutes, 25 visual reasoning puzzles and no account to start: a benchmark for yourself, a proper challenge, and a sense of where adult scores usually land.

What's your IQ?

Take the IQ test

25 questions · about 12 minutes

What would you score? Try question 1.

Which option completes the grid? One tap, no sign-up.

Want the average rather than a test? The average IQ for adults by age is 100, at every age.

The test at a glance

Questions: 25 visual puzzles
Question types: 5 sets, each easy to hard
Time: 12-minute timer
Scoring: Same for every age, not age-adjusted
Cost: No sign-up to start. When you finish, you choose a report to see your result.

Scores are not age-normed, and this is not a clinical or diagnostic test.

Most adults who take an IQ test want one of three things: a benchmark for themselves, a proper challenge, or a sense of how they compare with other people.

This test is built for all three, with a few honest caveats below.

How this test works for adults

The test is aimed at people 16 and over. It uses non-verbal questions only, so first language and schooling matter less than on tests heavy in vocabulary or maths.

It is short. A clinical test like the WAIS-IV has ten core subtests and takes more than an hour with a psychologist. Twenty-five questions give a useful snapshot of visual reasoning, not the full profile a clinical test gives.

How adult IQ scores are spread

Adult IQ scales are set so that 100 is the average and 15 points is one standard deviation. That fixes the percentages below for any properly normed test.

IQ	Higher than	How rare
IQ 70	2.3% of people	Common
IQ 85	15.9% of people	Common
IQ 100	50.0% of people	Common
IQ 110	74.8% of people	about 1 in 4 this high
IQ 115	84.1% of people	about 1 in 6 this high
IQ 130	97.7% of people	about 1 in 44 this high
IQ 145	99.87% of people	about 1 in 741 this high

Computed from the normal curve (mean 100, standard deviation 15). Applies to properly normed tests.

Adult ability is not one thing

Different skills peak at different ages. Using data from tens of thousands of online testers, Joshua Hartshorne and Laura Germine found processing speed peaked around 18 or 19, working memory in the mid 20s to mid 30s, and vocabulary not until the late 60s or early 70s.

Test norms drift too. Average raw scores rose by around 3 points per decade through much of the 20th century, the Flynn effect, which is why clinical tests are renormed every so often.

What 25 questions cover, and what they leave out

The WAIS-IV reports four index scores: verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory and processing speed. This test sits mostly in the perceptual reasoning family, puzzles you solve by looking, with some pressure on speed from the timer.

It does not test vocabulary, general knowledge, mental arithmetic or how many digits you can hold in mind. Two adults with the same result here can have quite different full-scale scores on a clinical test for that reason.