Free IQ Test (10-item pattern recognition)

Free, no-signup IQ test — what you are about to take

This is a 10-item pattern-recognition screener you can finish in 3 to 5 minutes. The questions test fluid reasoning — spotting the rule in a sequence of numbers or letters and choosing what comes next. The format is inspired by Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven 1936) and Cattell’s Culture Fair Intelligence Test (Cattell 1949), the two best-validated psychometric instruments for measuring fluid intelligence without depending on vocabulary or schooling.

Ten items. About 3 to 5 minutes. No signup, no email, no ads. Your answers stay in your browser.

✓ Pattern recognition only (no language or vocabulary required) ✓ Result mapped to the Wechsler-scale IQ band (M = 100, SD = 15) ✓ Honest framing — a 10-item screener cannot replace a full clinical test ✓ Private — results never leave your device

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How this IQ test is calculated

Your raw score is simply the number of items you answered correctly (0 to 10). The raw score then maps to one of five bands on the Wechsler scale (WAIS-IV technical manual, Wechsler 2008):

The band is more reliable than the exact number. A 10-item screener has a wide confidence interval — your “true” IQ on a 60-90-minute WAIS-IV could plausibly land anywhere within ±10-15 points of the band mid-point. That is normal for brief instruments. The Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices, even at 36 items, runs a confidence interval of about ±5 points.

The reason this format works at all is the general factor of intelligence (Spearman’s g, supported by meta-analytic data since Jensen & Weiss 2002): a person’s performance on one cognitive task correlates moderately with performance on most other cognitive tasks. Pattern-recognition on number and letter sequences is one of the cleanest entry points to measure g, which is why the WAIS-IV Matrix Reasoning subtest looks remarkably similar to the items here.

What your score actually tells you (and what it doesn’t)

What this screener measures: fluid reasoning — your speed and accuracy at spotting an unfamiliar rule and projecting it forward. This is one of the four index scores in WAIS-IV (perceptual reasoning).

What it doesn’t measure:

• Verbal comprehension — vocabulary, definitions, language reasoning
• Working memory — how many items you can manipulate at once
• Processing speed — how fast you can perform simple cognitive routines
• Social cognition, creativity, practical intelligence — these are real abilities the Wechsler scale doesn’t fully capture either

Two people with the same band here can score very differently on a full clinical test if one is strong in verbal and weak in fluid, or vice versa. The band is one slice of cognitive ability, not the whole cake.

When this test is useful — and when it isn’t

Useful for:

• Quick self-curiosity (“roughly what band am I in?”)
• Comparing your fluid reasoning before and after sleep / stress / illness changes
• A starting point before deciding whether a full assessment is worth the cost

Not useful for:

• Job applications, court documents, or anything where a specific IQ number matters legally
• Diagnosing intellectual disability, giftedness, or a cognitive disorder (only a licensed psychometrician can do this, using a full clinical test)
• Comparing yourself with a child — paediatric IQ uses age-specific norms and a different test (WISC-V for ages 6-16)

IQ test scores vs the population — common reference points

A few numbers people search for and what they mean on the Wechsler scale:

These percentiles are population-relative. By construction the average shifts over time — the Flynn effect (Flynn 1987) showed industrialised countries gained ~3 IQ points per decade across the 20th century, attributed to nutrition, schooling, and abstract-thinking environments.

Related calculators

• PHQ-9 depression screener — 9-question depression screener, often co-administered with cognitive complaints
• GAD-7 anxiety screener — 7-question anxiety screener; high anxiety can lower test-day cognitive performance
• ADHD ASRS-5 — adult ADHD screener; ADHD often presents with a gap between IQ and academic/work output

Sources verified 2026-05-13

The instruments behind this screener and the IQ-scale framework it maps to are all peer-reviewed:

• Raven JC. Mental tests used in genetic studies: The performances of related individuals in tests mainly educative and mainly reproductive. MSc Thesis, University of London (1936). Original Raven Progressive Matrices.
• Cattell RB, Cattell AKS. Handbook for the Culture Fair Intelligence Test, Scale 2 & 3. Institute for Personality and Ability Testing (1949 with later editions).
• Wechsler D. Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale — Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) Technical and Interpretive Manual. Pearson (2008). Source of all band classifications used here.
• Flynn JR. Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: What IQ tests really measure. Psychological Bulletin 1987 (PMID 3322503).
• Jensen AR, Weiss V. The general factor of intelligence — Meta-analytic evidence. Intelligence 30 (2002), pp. 273-289 (PMID 12126457).
• Roberts BW, Kuncel NR, Shiner R, Caspi A, Goldberg LR. The power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science 2 (2007).

Privacy

The test runs entirely in your browser. Inputs, answers, and the result band are computed locally; nothing is sent to our servers. We send one anonymous event to a privacy-respecting analytics service — your locale code and the band string (e.g. average_upper), nothing else. No raw answers, no per-item data, no identifiers.