How to spot a fake IQ test online

There is a whole genre of online test built to do one job: get you to a payment screen while you are curious about your own score. The questions are decoration. Here is how to tell within a couple of minutes.

1. It flatters you

If the result is a suspiciously good number, and the site never shows anyone a mediocre one, it is not measuring. A scale where the average is 100 has to produce a lot of results between 85 and 115 — that is what average means.

2. The number appears only after payment

Charging for a product is fine. Holding the result hostage is a different move: it means the test's job was to create a moment where you cannot say no, and the score itself never had to be defensible.

3. There is a countdown that resets

Reload the page. If the "offer expires in 09:58" timer starts again, the urgency is theatre, and a site willing to fake urgency will also fake a norm.

4. It gives one number and no areas

A composite with no breakdown cannot be checked against anything, including itself. A real report says which abilities were measured, how many questions each got, and how you did in each.

5. It is over in three minutes

Reliability needs items. A handful of pattern questions cannot separate five abilities, and "10 questions, instant IQ" is an entertainment quiz wearing a lab coat.

6. Nobody says what it is normed against

A score is a rank, so the group it ranks you against is the whole meaning of it. If a site never mentions its comparison population, the number has no denominator.

7. It claims to be clinical

No online test is a clinical assessment. Anything implying a diagnosis, an official certificate or a professionally recognised result is misrepresenting what it is — and the ones that hedge that clearly are usually the ones being straight with you elsewhere too.

8. The certificate is the product

A downloadable certificate with your name on it is a souvenir. It has no standing anywhere, and a site whose main deliverable is a PDF is selling the feeling, not the measurement.

For comparison: our assessment is 32 scored questions, free to take with a free account, scored in five named areas with the question count shown for each, and the result can come out lower on a retest. Take the assessment

What a fair test looks like

• It tells you what it measures before you start, and how long it takes.
• It shows the profile, not just the composite.
• It says plainly that it is not clinical.
• It lets you see your result, and charges — if it charges — for something that is not your own data.