Online Hearing Test
Find the highest frequency you can still hear. It takes about a minute, works best with headphones, and nothing you do here is sent anywhere.
Before you start
- Use headphones if you can. Phone and laptop speakers often cannot produce anything above 15 kHz, which would end the test early and tell you nothing about your ears.
- Sit somewhere quiet. Background noise masks the quietest tones first.
- Set your volume with the reference tone. Play the 1 kHz tone below and set it to a comfortable talking level. Then do not change it — the test only works if the level stays put.
Tone 1 of 10
Playing…
You heard up to
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This is a rough screen, not a hearing exam. It measures your speakers and your surroundings as much as your ears. If you are worried about your hearing, see an audiologist — they measure a threshold at each frequency with calibrated equipment, which no web page can do.
Test with more control
Frequency Generator sweeps the whole range continuously, plays a different frequency in each ear, and lets you sit on one tone for as long as you like — useful when you are chasing the exact point your hearing stops.
What this test actually measures
Human hearing covers roughly 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz when you are young. The bottom of that range barely changes over a lifetime. The top falls steadily from your early twenties onward — the hair cells that detect the highest frequencies sit at the entrance of the cochlea, take the most punishment, and do not grow back.
So the number this test gives you is a proxy for age and for how much loud noise you have been exposed to. It is the same principle behind the “mosquito” devices installed outside shops: a 17 kHz tone that irritates teenagers and is completely inaudible to the adults standing next to them.
Why headphones matter so much
This is the single biggest source of wrong results. A phone speaker is a few millimetres across and simply stops producing sound above about 15 kHz. If you take the test on one, it will end there no matter how good your hearing is, and you will conclude something about your ears that is really a fact about the speaker. Any wired or wireless headphones are better; even cheap ones reach further than a laptop.
What a low result does and does not mean
Losing the top of the range is normal and mostly harmless. Speech sits between about 250 Hz and 6,000 Hz, which is why someone who cannot hear 14 kHz can still follow a conversation perfectly. The results worth acting on are different: trouble following speech in a noisy room, a persistent ring, or one ear clearly worse than the other. None of those are things a web page can assess — that is an appointment, not a browser tab.
Questions
How accurate is an online hearing test?
As a rough screen, useful. As a diagnosis, not at all. A real audiogram plays each frequency at many different volumes to find the quietest level you can detect, using calibrated headphones in a soundproof booth. This plays each frequency at one fixed level through whatever hardware you happen to have. It can tell you your upper limit is unusually low; it cannot tell you why.
Why can't I hear anything above 15 kHz on my laptop?
Most likely the speakers, not your ears. Small drivers in phones and laptops roll off steeply near 15–16 kHz, so the tone is never produced in the first place. Headphones are the only way to get a meaningful result at the top of the range.
What is a normal result for my age?
Roughly: under 20 usually reaches 17–19 kHz, thirties 15–16 kHz, forties 14–15 kHz, fifties 12–14 kHz, and over sixty often 8–12 kHz. Losing the top octave is a normal part of ageing — it is called presbycusis, it starts in your twenties, and it almost never affects understanding speech, which happens far lower down.
Does this test each ear separately?
Not yet — it plays both channels together, so a difference between your ears will not show up. If one ear sounds noticeably worse than the other, that asymmetry is worth having checked properly rather than measured with a web page.
Can the test damage my hearing?
Not at a sensible volume, and the reference tone step exists to set one. Do not turn the volume up trying to hear a tone that is not there — that is how people hurt themselves with these tests. If you hear nothing at 18 kHz, the honest answer is usually that nothing is being produced.
