The kids IQ test,
written for parents.

This IQ test for children covers ages 4 through 17, split into three bands — 4–7, 8–12 and 13–17. Each band uses different items, a different length and a different amount of reading. Below age 4, a self-administered screening of this kind is not reliable enough to be worth doing.

Psychologists can give the WPPSI-IV from 2 years 6 months — for example when there is a question about development, or a school asks for it — but scores at that age change more over the following years than older children’s do. A self-administered online screening is not reliable below about age 4, which is why this test starts there. Our guide to baby and toddler IQ tests covers what can and cannot be measured that young.

For 4–7, sit with them and read the instructions aloud; the items are pictures, so your job is the words around them, not the answers. For 8–12, being nearby is enough. Most 13–17s would rather you were in another room, and that is fine.

No. This is a screening activity, not a diagnostic instrument. Schools and programmes that require cognitive testing will name the assessments they accept, and those are administered in person by licensed professionals. Submitting an online result in their place will not help your child.

A single online session is not a reason to worry. Tiredness, an unfamiliar format, a distracting room or simply a bad afternoon all move the number, and they move it more for children than for adults. If you have a genuine, ongoing concern about your child’s development, that belongs with your paediatrician or a child psychologist, who can assess properly.

No account is needed to start, and we ask for as little as we can. Exactly what is collected and how it is handled is set out in our Security and Privacy Policy. If you have a specific question before you begin, ask us — we would rather answer it than have you guess.

There is no single good score. On the tests psychologists use with children, such as the WISC-V, the average is 100 at every age and about two in three children score between 85 and 115 — so an average result is genuinely the common result, not a disappointing one. Our screening uses the same 100-centred scale but is not yet normed against children of each age, so treat its number as a rough guide; the shape across the four areas tells you more than the headline figure. Normal IQ for a child, by age has the full breakdown, and how IQ tests work explains where the scale comes from.

A full IQ score for a child comes from a test given one to one by a licensed psychologist — most often the WISC-V for ages 6 to 16, or the WPPSI-IV for ages 2½ to 7. Your child’s school or paediatrician can tell you how to arrange one, and private assessments are also available. An online screening like this one is a first look at how your child thinks across four areas; it does not replace that assessment.

The original formula divided mental age by real age and multiplied by 100: a 10-year-old who reasons like a typical 12-year-old scores 12 ÷ 10 × 100 = 120. Modern tests use a deviation IQ instead — a child’s answers are compared with a large sample of children the same age, and the result is placed on a scale where 100 is average and 15 points is one standard deviation. Our page on IQ and mental age explains both, with worked examples.

On a professional children’s test such as the WISC-V, two things change: the items are rewritten for the age band, and the scoring compares a child only with children of the same age, so a ten-year-old is measured against ten-year-olds. Our screening does the first — shorter, more pictorial items, with vocabulary a child of that age would actually meet — but not yet the second: its score sits on the standard IQ scale rather than on separate age norms. If you want the adult version for yourself, that is the Classical IQ Test.

The commonly described signs are uneven development, unusually deep interest in one narrow topic, early abstract reasoning, a strong memory for detail, heightened sensitivity, and boredom that looks like misbehaviour. Every one of those also occurs in children who are not gifted, which is why a checklist cannot settle it. Formal identification generally means roughly the top 2% on a full assessment administered by a licensed psychologist, never an online screening. We set this out at more length in “Is my child gifted?” further up this page.

Yes, and it should be expected to. Childhood scores are the least stable scores there are — a result at six can look markedly different at twelve, because children develop unevenly and in bursts. That is ordinary development rather than a warning sign. Treat any result here as a snapshot of one afternoon. Our page on whether IQ can be improved covers what genuinely shifts and what does not.

Not separately within the kids test — it always runs all four areas, because a single area on its own tells you very little about a child. You will still get a per-area breakdown in the report, so you can see whether words or shapes are carrying the result. If you want to try a single-domain assessment yourself, the adult verbal reasoning test and spatial reasoning test each focus on one area at a time.

It depends on the age band: 20 minutes for ages 4–7, 30 minutes for 8–12 and 35 minutes for 13–17. A countdown is shown, and the limit is set well above the time the questions actually need — most children finish with plenty to spare. You can close the tab at any point and nothing is recorded as a failure.

For the words section, possibly, and it is worth naming rather than glossing over: a verbal item measures reasoning as expressed in one particular language, so a child working in their second language can be underestimated by it. The shapes and patterns sections carry no reading at all and are unaffected. If you would rather remove language from the picture entirely, the culture-fair test is built for exactly that.