About the test
Big Five personality test
Our main personality test describes you on the five broad Big Five traits and the 30 facets beneath them. It uses John A. Johnson’s IPIP-NEO-120, a well-studied Big Five questionnaire in the public domain. The result is free, and you can compare it with other people’s answers and with friends.
Questionnaire / instrument: IPIP-NEO-120
The test at a glance
- Price
- Free, including your results
- Registration
- No account required
- Length
- 120 statements
- Time
- About 10 minutes
- Format
- Self-report · five response options
- Your report
- Five traits · 30 facets · percentiles
The five traits and 30 facets
Each trait is measured with 24 statements, four for each of its six facets. These are the names used in your report:
Openness to experience
Curiosity about ideas, art, feelings and new experiences. Facets: imagination, artistic interests, emotionality, adventurousness, intellect and liberalism.
Conscientiousness
Self-discipline, order and working towards goals. Facets: self-efficacy, orderliness, dutifulness, achievement-striving, self-discipline and cautiousness.
Extraversion
Energy and positive emotions in the company of others. Facets: friendliness, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity level, excitement-seeking and cheerfulness.
Agreeableness
Concern for getting along with others. Facets: trust, morality, altruism, cooperation, modesty and sympathy.
Neuroticism
How easily you experience negative emotions. Facets: anxiety, anger, depression, self-consciousness, immoderation and vulnerability. A high score is not a diagnosis of a mental disorder.
What your results show
Your report is ready as soon as you have answered the last statement. You can preview an example report before taking the test.
- An overview of the five traits, each with a 0–100 score, a low, average or high label and a percentile.
- A percentile comparison with people who answered the same 120 statements online. You can choose everyone, women or men, and an age group.
- Your strongest, lowest and most balanced trait, an approximate five-letter SLOAN code and up to three facets that clearly break with their trait.
- A section for each trait with a description, a chart of its six facets and a short text for each facet score. Each of the 30 facets has its own in-depth article.
- A link you can share or download as a PDF, and the option to compare your profile side by side with a friend or partner.
What does it measure?
A detailed profile of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Each trait is divided into six facets, giving 30 more specific descriptions of your typical thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
Where does it come from?
John A. Johnson developed IPIP-NEO-120, published in 2014, by selecting items from the longer IPIP-NEO inventory. The questions belong to the International Personality Item Pool, initiated by Lewis R. Goldberg.
How is the result calculated?
Each facet uses four items and each broad trait uses 24. Reverse-worded items are scored in the opposite direction. Trait and facet scores are shown on a 0–100 scale, where 0 means every answer at the bottom of the response scale and 100 every answer at the top; an average below 2.5 counts as low and above 3.5 as high. Percentiles compare your answers with about 410,000 people in Johnson’s online sample, for everyone or by sex and age group.
What can the result tell you?
This is a self-report personality profile, not a clinical diagnosis or a division into fixed personality types. A position on the response scale and a percentile are different: the latter depends on the reference sample, which is not representative of every population.
Languages and adaptations
Question wording comes from published IPIP translations where available, volunteer translations and our own translations. Coverage and wording vary by language. Our public research pages document the IPIP-NEO translations and their change history.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Big Five test free, including the results?
Yes. You can answer all the statements and read the full report, with facets and percentiles, without paying or creating an account.
How is it different from the 300-item long version?
Both measure the same five traits and 30 facets with IPIP-NEO statements, and the long version contains all 120 statements in this test. This version uses four statements per facet; the long version uses ten. The long version takes about three times as long and describes each facet more precisely, while this version is accurate enough for most people. Percentiles in both versions are based on the same 120 statements.
How is it different from the quick test, the aspects test and the HEXACO test?
The quick personality test has four statements per trait, adds honesty-humility and shows no facets. The Big Five Aspects test splits each trait into two aspects instead of six facets. The HEXACO test uses a different model with six traits, where emotionality and agreeableness are defined differently from neuroticism and agreeableness here. Choose this test if you want the classic Big Five with facets and percentiles.
Who am I compared with?
The percentiles come from about 410,000 people who answered the IPIP-NEO-120 online, most of them in English, collected by John A. Johnson. You can compare with everyone or with women or men in an age group. These are not official norms or a representative sample of any country, so treat the percentile as a guide. The 0–100 score itself shows your position on the answer scale and does not depend on the comparison group.
Does it give me a personality type, like MBTI or 16 types?
No. The Big Five are continuous dimensions, and most people score somewhere in the middle on several of them. The report shows an approximate SLOAN code as a summary, but it is a shorthand for your scores, not a type. Two people with the same code can still differ a lot on the facets.
How accurate is the test?
IPIP-NEO-120 was developed from a large online sample, and broad trait scores based on 24 statements each are reasonably reliable. Facet scores rest on four statements each, so they are less precise, and a small difference between two facets may not mean much. Like all self-report tests, the result depends on how honestly and carefully you answer.
How should I answer, and can my result change?
Describe how you usually are now, not how you wish to be. There are no right or wrong answers, and you can go back and change an answer as you go. Personality is fairly stable, but scores can shift over years and with mood on the day, so taking the test again later may give a somewhat different profile.
License and reuse
Public domainIPIP places its items and scales in the public domain. They may be used, copied, adapted and translated for commercial and non-commercial purposes without a fee or separate permission.
The terms below apply to the test materials. Articles, translations, software and our result descriptions may have separate terms.
Sources and further reading
Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89.