Your IQ percentile tells you the share of people you scored higher than: an IQ of 100 is the 50th percentile, 115 is about the 84th, 120 is roughly the top 10%, and 130 is roughly the top 2%. The table below maps every major IQ band to its classification, percentile, and share of the population.
An IQ percentile is the percentage of people who score at or below your IQ. So if your IQ is at the 84th percentile, you scored higher than about 84% of the population. Percentiles are often more intuitive than raw scores because they describe your standing directly, rather than relying on the abstract 100-point scale.
An IQ score is a standardized number on a fixed scale (mean 100, SD 15), while a percentile is your rank relative to everyone else. The score and the percentile describe the same result two different ways: an IQ of 115 and 'the 84th percentile' mean exactly the same thing. The score stays constant across the population, but it converts to a percentile through the normal distribution.
Use the standard conversion: IQ 100 is the 50th percentile, 110 is about the 75th, 115 is about the 84th, 120 is about the 91st (top ~10%), 130 is about the 98th (top 2%), and 145 is about the 99.9th (top 0.1%). Below the mean, the curve mirrors: 85 is about the 16th percentile and 70 is about the 2nd. The full mapping is shown in the classification table on this page.
IQ percentiles come from the normal (bell-curve) distribution, where scores are converted into standard deviations from the mean. Because IQ is set to a mean of 100 and an SD of 15, a score of 130 is exactly two standard deviations above average, which the normal curve places at roughly the 98th percentile. This is why the same percentile always corresponds to the same score, no matter who takes the test.
A top-2% IQ is 130 or higher, which corresponds to about the 98th percentile and is the usual Mensa cutoff. The top 0.1% begins around an IQ of 145 (about the 99.9th percentile), a level reached by roughly 1 in 1,000 people. Because the bell curve thins out sharply at the edges, each additional point near the top represents far fewer people than a point near the middle.
| IQ range | Classification | Percentile | % of population |
|---|---|---|---|
| 130+ | Very Superior / Gifted | 98–99.9 | ~2% |
| 120–129 | Superior | 91–97 | ~8% |
| 110–119 | High Average | 75–90 | ~16% |
| 90–109 | Average | 25–73 | ~50% |
| 80–89 | Low Average | 9–24 | ~16% |
| 70–79 | Borderline | 2–8 | ~7% |
| <70 | Extremely Low | <2 | ~2% |