Discover your true IQ
A scientifically-backed 25-question IQ test. Get your detailed cognitive report in minutes.
What this site is for
What Is My True IQ has two halves. The first is a free 25-question non-verbal reasoning test that estimates fluid intelligence — your ability to solve problems you have never seen before — using visual matrices rather than vocabulary or arithmetic. The second is a growing library of sourced, plain-English articles about how intelligence is measured, what the numbers mean, and where the science is genuinely uncertain.
We publish our full methodology because a score without a method is decoration. That page explains how items are written, how they are calibrated on live response data, which population your percentile is compared against, and the five limitations we know our test has.
Our result is for curiosity and self-understanding. It is not a clinical assessment, and no online test — ours included — can diagnose anything or replace an evaluation by a licensed psychologist.
What the test actually measures
All 25 items are visual matrices built on one of a small number of underlying rules. Here is what each family is probing.
Pattern progression
Items where an attribute grows or shrinks step by step — count, size, shading or the number of sides. These probe how quickly you extract a rule from a short sequence.
Rotation and reflection
Figures that turn by a constant angle or flip across an axis. They tap mental rotation, one of the most reliably measured visuospatial abilities.
Combination rules
Cells that merge or cancel elements from their neighbours. Solving them requires holding two partial results in mind at once, so they load heavily on working memory.
Distribution and substitution
Rows containing the same set of elements rearranged, or a consistent mapping between shapes. These reward systematic inventory over intuition.
Want to get better at them? Read our walkthrough of the five matrix rule families.
How to read an IQ score
IQ scores are constructed so that the average is 100 and the standard deviation is 15. About 68% of people fall between 85 and 115, roughly 95% between 70 and 130, and fewer than one in forty score above 130. A score is a position on that distribution, not a quantity stored in your head.
| Score | Percentile | Share of people |
|---|---|---|
| 85 | 16th | ~16% score below |
| 100 | 50th | the midpoint by definition |
| 115 | 84th | ~16% score above |
| 130 | 98th | ~2% score above |
Every score carries measurement error — several points on a clinical battery, more on a short unsupervised test. Our full score interpretation guide explains the bands, the error bars, and why the old labels were retired.
Latest from the blog
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Ageing does not drain a single reservoir of intelligence. Different abilities follow different curves, and several of the strongest risk factors are modifiable.
Test anxiety: why you underperform, and what reliably helps
Anxiety does not make you less capable. It occupies the mental workspace your reasoning needs. Here is the mechanism and the interventions with evidence behind them.
Working memory: the bottleneck behind almost every hard problem
Working memory is the small, noisy workspace where thinking happens. Understanding its limits explains why complex problems feel hard and how to design around it.
Frequently asked questions
Who writes this
Articles are produced by a small team with backgrounds in cognitive psychology and psychometrics, each piece bylined, reviewed by a second author and updated when the evidence changes. Read our editorial policy or get in touch.