Score guide
What is a good IQ score?
The short answer: anything from 90 to 109 is squarely average, 110 to 119 is above average, and 130 or higher puts you in roughly the top 2% of people. But the number only makes sense once you know what the scale is doing — an IQ score is not a percentage of questions right, it is a position on a curve.
How the scale works
Modern IQ tests use what is called a deviation scale. The average is fixed at 100, and one standard deviation is 15 points. Scores are then spread along a normal distribution — the familiar bell curve — so that each number tells you how far from the middle you sit, not how many items you answered correctly.
That is why the same raw performance can produce different IQ numbers on different tests: the raw score is always translated into a position relative to everyone else. One standard deviation above the mean (115) beats about 84% of people. Two standard deviations (130) beats about 98%.
IQ score ranges and what they mean
| Score | Label | How common |
|---|---|---|
| 130 and above | Very superiorReasoning that is fast and accurate on unfamiliar problems. Short online tests cannot resolve this range reliably. | About 2 in 100 people |
| 120 – 129 | SuperiorComfortably above average; typical of people who enjoy abstract problem solving. | About 7 in 100 people |
| 110 – 119 | High averageAbove the middle of the distribution, and a very common result for people who take tests online. | About 16 in 100 people |
| 90 – 109 | AverageThe middle half of the population. A score of 100 is the exact centre by definition. | About 50 in 100 people |
| 80 – 89 | Low averageBelow the centre, still within the ordinary range of everyday reasoning ability. | About 16 in 100 people |
| 79 and below | Borderline and lowerOnly a full clinical assessment can say anything meaningful about this range. | About 9 in 100 people |
Labels follow the descriptive categories used by widely published test manuals. Different publishers use slightly different wording for the same ranges.
Percentiles are easier to read than IQ points
A percentile says how many people out of a hundred you scored higher than. An IQ of 112 sounds unremarkable next to 130, but it already means you scored above roughly 79% of people. Small IQ differences near the middle of the curve cover a lot of people, while the same gap out at the edges covers very few — that is what the shape of the bell curve is telling you.
It also means the difference between 98 and 103 is close to meaningless. Any single sitting carries a margin of error of several points, so treat a score as a range rather than a fixed value.
So what counts as good?
If you scored anywhere from 90 to 109, you reasoned like most people do — that is the definition of the range, not a consolation. From 110 upward you are doing better than the majority on abstract pattern problems, and above 130 you are in rare territory.
A single number also says nothing about curiosity, persistence, judgement or skill, all of which predict real outcomes at least as well. And no online test, including this one, replaces a professional assessment — read the methodology page for the honest limits.