What does a good reaction time look like on a browser test?
Under 250 ms is good. Under 210 ms is the band the result screen calls skilled, and under 180 ms is close to the human limit. The table below is the exact scale this site uses for the badge on your result screen, so the number you see and the label you get always agree.
| Your on-screen median | What it means | Badge on the result screen |
|---|---|---|
| Under 150 | Faster than a visual reaction can physically be. Suspect a lucky click or hardware that flatters you. | Superhuman |
| 150 to 179 | Near the human limit. Rare on any browser test. | Pro tier |
| 180 to 209 | Genuinely quick. People have probably told you your reflexes are good. | Skilled |
| 210 to 289 | An ordinary, healthy adult. Most people land here. | Standard |
| 290 to 359 | Slower than typical. Sleep, a slow device or wandering attention usually explains it. | Warming up |
| 360 and up | Something is off: fatigue, a laggy setup, or a tab that was not in front. | Needs practice |
Read the lower bands as a nudge, not a diagnosis. A 300 ms median on an old laptop is a normal person on slow hardware. The badge cannot see your hardware, so it labels the number, and you supply the context.
All values are milliseconds as displayed, with nothing subtracted. This site does not apply a hardware correction, because the correction differs by setup and one flat figure would invent precision nobody has. The accuracy guide takes that decision apart.
Why do lab studies say 213 ms when the screen says 280?
Because the lab number has the machinery taken out and the screen number has it left in. The most cited modern figure comes from Woods and colleagues (2015), who measured 1,469 adults aged 18 to 65. Their raw average was 231 ms. After subtracting the 17.8 ms their own apparatus added, the corrected average is 213 ms with a standard deviation of 26.8 ms.
A browser adds far more than 17.8 ms. Published measurements of online experiment platforms put the total delay from screen, input device, operating system and browser at roughly 71 to 87 ms (Anwyl-Irvine and colleagues, 2021). Add that to 213 and you get the 280 to 300 ms an average adult should expect to see on screen.
The other figure you will meet is 273 ms, often quoted as "the average human reaction time". It is not from a paper. It is the median of tens of millions of clicks recorded by one reaction-test website, published in that site's own statistics page. It is a useful number, and it sits where you would expect an on-screen median to sit, but it describes people who chose to take a reaction test on whatever device they had. Treat it as an on-screen figure, not a laboratory one.
| Scale | Typical adult | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Laboratory, corrected | 213 ms (SD 26.8) | Woods et al. 2015, dedicated apparatus, delay subtracted |
| Laboratory, raw | 231 ms | Same study before the 17.8 ms correction |
| Browser, as displayed | about 270 to 300 ms | Lab figure plus 71 to 87 ms of device delay; consistent with the 273 ms site median |
So when a forum post says "average is 250, you are slow", ask which scale. On the lab scale 250 is a little slow. On the screen scale 250 is quick.
Is 200 ms, 250 ms or 300 ms a good reaction time?
200 ms on screen is very good. It lands in the skilled band, and it means your true reaction is probably around 120 to 130 ms once the device delay comes off, which is close to the fastest a visual reaction gets. Few people see this number honestly. If you do, check that you were not anticipating the change, and enjoy it.
250 ms on screen is good. Your true reaction is roughly 170 ms, more than a full standard deviation quicker than the corrected lab average. On the result screen it sits in the standard band, because that band is wide on purpose: it has to hold the whole middle of the population, and 250 is the quick end of it.
300 ms on screen is ordinary. Subtract the device delay and you are near 220 ms, within one standard deviation of the corrected lab average. The badge says warming up because 300 is past the 290 edge of the standard band, and the edge has to go somewhere. Nothing about your nervous system is wrong at 300.
Two things matter more than which of these you hit. First, whether it was a median of several rounds or a single lucky one. Second, whether you can repeat it tomorrow on the same device.
How fast can a human reaction possibly be?
Not under 100 ms, and rarely under 150 on screen. Light has to reach the eye, the signal has to travel to the visual cortex, a decision has to form, and a command has to travel down the arm to the finger. That chain alone takes more than a tenth of a second. Athletics uses the same floor: a sprinter who leaves the blocks within 100 ms of the gun is charged with a false start under World Athletics technical rules, on the reasoning that nobody can have heard the gun yet.
This test applies the same rule. Any round under 100 ms after the green signal is voided, because it cannot be a response to the signal. Everything above that line counts. We do not try to guess whether a fast round was a reaction or a lucky press, because no machine can tell those apart, and an honest reaction just above the line should never be thrown away by a filter.
The fastest people do not break the floor. They sit just above it, and what marks them out is consistency rather than the occasional quick round. Consistency is also what separates a real 180 from a fluke 180.
Does age change what counts as good?
Yes, but less than most people assume, and the size of the effect depends on where the data came from. In the Woods laboratory sample, reaction time slowed by about 0.55 ms per year of age, so the average 60-year-old was only about 22 ms behind the average 20-year-old. That is smaller than the round-to-round noise in your own results.
Large browser datasets show a much steeper slope, closer to several milliseconds per year. Part of that gap is the device: older users are more likely to be on older, slower hardware, which the browser cannot separate from the person. The two figures are measuring different things, and a page that quotes one without saying which scale it is on will mislead you. The age guide puts both slopes side by side.
How should I read my own number?
Take the median of five rounds, on one device, with the tab in front, and compare it with your own earlier medians. That comparison is real. The comparison with a laboratory study is approximate, and the comparison with a stranger on a different device is mostly noise.
- Woods and colleagues found that one person's trials swing about 40 ms around their own average. One round tells you almost nothing. Five rounds and a median tell you something.
- Hold the conditions still. Same device, same input method, same browser, similar time of day. A 144 Hz monitor and a wired gaming mouse can take close to 10 ms off the displayed number without changing you at all.
- Phones read slower than mice. In the runs recorded on this site so far, touchscreen medians sit clearly behind mouse medians, which matches the published touch latency figures. The sample is still small, so take it as a direction rather than a number.
- Keep the tab in the foreground. Browsers slow their timers in background tabs on purpose, and a measurement taken that way is not slow, it is broken.
If you want to test the scale yourself, the reaction time test runs five rounds with a random 1.5 to 7 second wait, times the press rather than the release, and reports the median. Your history stays on your device, so the comparison with yourself is always available.
Frequently asked questions
Is 186 ms a good reaction time?
Yes. On screen, 186 ms is in the skilled band and quicker than the large majority of browser scores. On the laboratory scale, 186 ms is the fast edge of the typical range in the Woods study, where most people fell between about 186 and 240 ms. Either way it is a good number.
Is 213 ms a good reaction time?
It depends on the scale. As a laboratory figure, 213 ms is exactly the corrected average for adults, so it is normal. As an on-screen median it is quicker than most, because it means your true reaction is near 130 to 140 ms once device delay is removed. On this test a 213 ms median earns the standard badge, at the fast end of that band.
Is a reaction time under 150 milliseconds possible?
On screen, almost never for real. The physical floor for a visual reaction is about 100 ms, and a browser adds 70 to 90 ms on top, so a genuine on-screen score should not drop much below 170. A displayed score under 150 usually means the click was anticipated or the hardware is unusually fast. This test still counts it, because nothing above 100 ms can be proven to be a guess.
Does a 144 Hz monitor give me a better reaction time?
It gives you a better displayed number, by about 5 ms on average, because at 60 Hz the green waits up to 16.7 ms for the next frame and at 144 Hz it waits under 7 ms. Your nervous system is unchanged. The same applies to a 1000 Hz mouse, which saves a few more milliseconds. If you compare scores across devices, these differences are large enough to move you between badges.