IQ 190
An IQ of 190 is higher than almost everyone: about 1 in 1 billion.
Is your IQ above 190?
25 questions · about 12 minutes
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- 99.999th
- Percentile, at least
- 1 in 1 billion
- Score 190 or higher
- Profoundly Gifted
- Classification
On the standard scale that is 6.00 standard deviations above average. No test has been checked against enough people to confirm a score this high.
An IQ of 190 falls in the profoundly gifted IQ range, which starts at 160. Find 190 on the IQ chart, or check how rare any score is with the IQ rarity calculator.
IQ 190: beyond what most tests can measure
Taken literally, the bell curve puts 190 at 1 in 1 billion: not even one person in the UK and about 8 people worldwide. Treat that as an illustration of the model rather than a head count.
Real populations may not follow the bell curve perfectly in the far tails, so rarity figures this extreme are illustrations, not head counts.
None of this means nobody is this able. It means a single number is not a reliable way to describe them.
How claims like "190 IQ" arise
A 190 almost never comes from a modern, supervised adult test. It usually comes from somewhere like this:
- Ratio IQ. Early childhood tests divided mental age by real age. A 6-year-old solving puzzles like a typical 11.4-year-old got a ratio IQ of 190. Modern deviation IQs do not work this way.
- Unnormed online quizzes. A test with no norm data can print any number. Very high outputs usually say more about the scoring than the person.
- Repetition without a source. Numbers attached to celebrities are often copied from site to site with no test report behind them.
Famous estimates: Newton, da Vinci and the 160+ club
Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci are usually given estimates of 160 or more, and they are among 42 such profiles here. Only 2 go as high as 190. All are judgements from biographies, not test results.
As far as anyone knows, Albert Einstein never took an IQ test. The 160 figure repeated online is an estimate. See the Einstein profile for what it rests on.
How many people have an IQ of 190 or higher?
On a bell curve with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, about 0.000000099% of people score 190 or higher. Applied to whole populations:
| Where | Population | IQ 190+ |
|---|---|---|
| UK | 68 million | fewer than one (0.07 expected) |
| US | 335 million | fewer than one (0.33 expected) |
| World | 8.1 billion | 8 |
You would need the whole world to expect about 8 people at 190 or higher.
The share scoring exactly 190, between 189.5 and 190.5, is about 1 in 2.4 billion. Across the world that would be about 3 people.
The figures are bell curve estimates for whole populations, children included, and rounded. Real tests are normed separately and will differ a little.
How rare is an IQ of 190?
Going from 185 to 190 makes a score 7.4 times rarer, and going on to 195 multiplies the rarity by another 8.2. Near 190, each single point adds about 51% to the rarity.
What your 190 could really be. At this height the margin of error is wide. Just 5 points either way, 185 or 195, changes the model rarity from 1 in 140 million to 1 in 8.3 billion, which shows how fragile such numbers are.
Which scale was it on? Most modern tests use a standard deviation of 15, which is what this page assumes. If your 190 came from a test using an SD of 16, it is about 184 on the SD 15 scale. From an SD 24 scale, used by some Cattell-style reports, it is about 156.
Famous people with an estimated IQ near 190
Estimates this high are reserved for a small group of scientists, artists and thinkers. These sit near 190. None of these are test scores. They are estimates from biographical evidence, and each profile explains its basis.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's IQ (estimated 190+): Poet, Novelist & Scientist, 18th-19th Century.
See all historical IQ estimates or all fictional character IQs.
190 compared with nearby scores
The scores one and five points either side of 190, plus the round numbers from 100 to 150, side by side. Tap any score for its full page.
| IQ | Classification | Percentile | Score higher |
|---|---|---|---|
| IQ 100 | Average | 50th | 50% |
| IQ 110 | High Average | 74.8th | 25% |
| IQ 120 | Superior | 90.9th | 9.1% |
| IQ 130 | Gifted | 97.7th | 2.3% |
| IQ 140 | Gifted | 99.62nd | 0.38% |
| IQ 150 | Genius | 99.96th | 0.043% |
| IQ 185 | Profoundly Gifted | >99.999th | 0.00000073% |
| IQ 189 | Profoundly Gifted | >99.999th | 0.00000015% |
| IQ 190 | Profoundly Gifted | >99.999th | 0.000000099% |
| IQ 191 | Profoundly Gifted | >99.999th | 0.000000066% |
| IQ 195 | Profoundly Gifted | >99.999th | 0.000000012% |
Questions about an IQ of 190
Is 190 a good IQ?
What percentile is an IQ of 190?
Is 190 genius level?
What does an IQ of 190 mean?
How rare is an IQ of 190?
What is the mental age for an IQ of 190?
Next in IQ scores
More in IQ scores
- IQ 115 percentileOne step above average
- IQ 120 percentileSuperior range, top 10%
- IQ 125 percentileAbout 1 in 20 people
Related tools
- IQ chartEvery band and what it means
- IQ bell curvePlot a score on the distribution
- IQ rarity calculatorHow rare a score is, as 1 in N
Is your IQ above 190?
See where you land next to 190 with 25 visual reasoning questions.
25 questions · about 12 minutes
Percentiles and counts use a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. Real tests have their own norms, confidence intervals and ceilings, so treat every figure here as an approximation, not a diagnosis. Two tests often give different numbers for the same person: here is why.
By the LifeScore Editorial Team. Reviewed October 2026. Editorial policy