Check Your Reaction Time
Quick, free, and runs entirely in your browser. Click to start, wait for green, click again. We'll show you your score and your percentile rank.
How to check your reaction time accurately
Checking your reaction time sounds simple — and it is — but there are a few things you can do to make sure the number you get is actually meaningful. The most common mistake people make is treating a single result as their "real" reaction time. It is not. A single click is a snapshot, and snapshots are noisy.
Reaction time varies naturally by 30–50 milliseconds even within a single sitting. One click might land at 220 ms, the next at 265 ms, and neither is wrong — they are just two samples from a distribution. The way to get a number you can trust is to take the full five-round test, which drops your fastest and slowest attempt and averages the rest. That trimmed mean is much more stable than any single click.
The second-biggest source of error is your hardware. A 60 Hz monitor adds about 16 ms of latency compared to a 144 Hz panel. A Bluetooth mouse can add 20 ms or more over a wired one. A trackpad is the worst — most trackpads add 30–50 ms of debounce latency. If you want your lowest honest score, use a wired mouse and a high-refresh-rate monitor, and sit close enough that the test panel fills your central vision.
What your number means
Once you have your result, the natural next question is: is that good? The short answer is that anything between 200 and 280 milliseconds is normal for an adult. Below 200 ms is fast — top 5% of the population. Below 180 ms is rare and usually indicates either exceptional genetics or unusually low-latency hardware.
Above 320 ms is on the slow side. Before you worry, rule out the usual suspects: are you tired? Have you been staring at a screen for hours? Are you using a trackpad? Try the test again in the morning with a wired mouse and good lighting. If you are still posting numbers above 350 ms after a few attempts, that is worth a conversation with a doctor — but in most cases it is just fatigue or hardware.
For the full breakdown of what counts as good, average, or elite, see our "what is a good reaction time" page.