Guide
How to Choose a Personality Test
You open three personality tests. One promises five trait scores, another gives you four letters, and a third offers a detailed report after you pay. Which one should you take?
If you want to understand your personality, a well-studied Big Five test is a good choice. It can give you a useful description of how you tend to think, feel, and behave. Choosing a website takes a little more care. Two sites can both advertise a Big Five test while asking different questions, charging for different parts of the report, and handling your answers differently.
This guide compares 14 online personality tests to help you make that choice. It explains what each test can tell you, which results are free, and what happens to the answers you submit. The comparison is based on the sites’ public information, checked on . It is for people who want to learn about themselves, rather than diagnose a condition or assess someone for a job.
What do you want to learn about yourself?
Perhaps you want to know how outgoing you are, how organized you tend to be, or how easily you become upset. A Big Five questionnaire gives you a score for each of five broad traits. That leaves room for a mixed picture: you can enjoy meeting people and still be disorganized, or be cooperative while also worrying a great deal. A single personality label tells you less about those differences.
Why a well-studied test? Because researchers have checked more than whether its descriptions sound convincing. When Christopher Soto and Oliver John developed the Big Five Inventory–2, or BFI-2, they checked how well the questions about each trait worked together and compared the scores with other established questionnaires. The questionnaires agreed strongly. People who rated themselves higher on a trait also tended to get higher ratings from people who knew them. So the BFI-2 picks up tendencies that other questionnaires and other people also recognize. That is a reason to trust it as a description of personality.
But there is no single questionnaire called “the Big Five test.” Take two sites in this guide: Outofservice uses the BFI-2, while OpenPsychometrics uses a 50-question test drawn from IPIP, the International Personality Item Pool. IPIP is a public collection of personality questions and ready-made sets of questions for measuring different traits. Both sites offer Big Five scores, but they get there using different questionnaires.
That is why the questionnaire’s name matters. It lets you connect the test you are about to take with the research behind it. Once you know which test a site uses, look at a sample report, if one is available. Does it explain what your scores mean and who you are being compared with? A good questionnaire does not guarantee good advice in the report built on it.
If you are trying to understand a four-letter result you already have, check which service gave it to you. 16Personalities, TypeFinder, and Humanmetrics use different tests, even though their letters look similar. None is the official Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI. The percentage beside a letter can also mean something quite different from your rank among other people. The guide to the MBTI explains how to read a type result without losing sight of what the label leaves out.
For a conversation with friends, you might be happy with a quiz that simply gives you something to discuss. There is nothing wrong with enjoying it. But a description that feels familiar is not enough to show that a test is good: the same paragraph might seem true of several very different people. If you want to know whether a test can actually tell those people apart, see How to Evaluate Personality Tests.
Compare 14 personality tests
Use the table to find tests that suit what you want, then read their descriptions below. The completion times come from the sites. “Free” refers to the results they advertise; it does not mean your answers go unrecorded. This comparison covers the English pages, so check the details separately if you plan to take a test in another language.
Disclosure: Jason Hreha owns Twofold, a personality-assessment product. He is also co-founder and CEO of Persona, which recruits, employs, and supports remote team members for businesses. Neither Twofold nor Persona is among the 14 tests compared here. How this site evaluates tests explains how the site handles those interests.
| Website | Test and time | What you get for free | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenPsychometrics | IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers; 50 questions; 3–8 minutes | Public result page; no account or payment requested | Raw scores and comparison with other test takers; research use of answers |
| bigfive-test.com | Based on IPIP-NEO; 120 questions; about 10 minutes | Advertises a completely free test without registration | Answers are saved even without an account; retention time is not stated |
| Truity Big Five | Truity’s Big Five test; 60 questions; 5–10 minutes | Free overview without registration; fuller report costs extra | Research document and sample paid report available to read |
| Outofservice | BFI-2 plus research questions; completion time depends on which optional questions you answer | Immediate free results; no sign-up stated | Taking it also contributes answers to a research project |
| bigfivepersonality.me | Describes its measure as IPIP-50; 50 questions; about 7 minutes | Advertises all results free without registration | The privacy policy contradicts the homepage and score guide about whether results are stored |
| Rivia Mind | Embedded Big Five form; 50 personality statements plus email | Anyone can open the form; email is a required field | Does not say how results arrive or which questionnaire version it uses |
| 16Personalities | NERIS Type Explorer; 60 questions; about 10 minutes | Free test without registration; other products cost extra | Five pairs of tendencies and a type label; not the official MBTI |
| Truity TypeFinder | TypeFinder; 130 questions; 10–15 minutes | Free overview without registration; fuller report costs extra | Four dimensions and 23 more specific tendencies; not the official MBTI |
| SeeMyPersonality | Statements adapted from the BFI-2; 60 statements; about 5 minutes | Advertises full free report without email | Sample report compares you with the site’s test takers; no published study of how well its reworded version works |
| 123test | 123test Big Five test; 120 statements; about 15 minutes | Free report with optional paid extension; the privacy statement says email is not required | Five broad trait scores; the extended report is available separately |
| Humanmetrics | Jung Typology Test; 64 statements; no time estimate given | Free type result; no registration or email stated | Percentages describe preference strength, not how you rank among other people |
| Science of People mini quiz | 10 questions; a few minutes; exact short form unclear | First name and email required; results sent by email | The opening page does not name the specific short questionnaire |
| Clearer Thinking | Its own questions, covering four personality frameworks; about 12 minutes | Advertises free instant results; landing page does not mention an email or account | Its study compares questionnaires it developed itself |
| Psych Central | Entertainment quiz; questions and length shown only after you start | Advertised as free; result describes how others see you | Publisher describes it as entertainment, without scientific validation |
A closer look at each test
OpenPsychometrics: a free Big Five test that contributes to research
OpenPsychometrics’ Big Five test makes it easy to see what you are taking. It names its questionnaire, the 50-question IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers, and links to the questions and their source. That is useful if you want to follow the research behind a test instead of taking “scientifically based” on trust. The site describes its test as intended for education or entertainment.
Its public results page shows two ways of looking at a result. A raw score summarizes your answers. A percentile compares that score with other people who took the test, helping you judge whether it is relatively high or low. The people who visit a personality-test website may differ from the wider population, though, so this is a comparison with the site’s test takers, not necessarily with all adults. The page does not say when its comparison data were collected or show a range for the uncertainty around your score.
The other thing to weigh is research participation. The opening notice says answers are recorded anonymously and may be used for research or distributed. Its privacy policy also describes third-party advertising and comment tools. The test and results pages ask for no account or payment. Consider this test if you want a clearly identified questionnaire and are comfortable with that use of your answers.
bigfive-test.com: no account needed, but your answers are saved
bigfive-test.com advertises a free 120-question test without registration, with ways to retrieve and compare results afterward. Its project documentation says it builds on an open-source version of John Johnson’s IPIP-NEO, a family of questionnaires built from IPIP questions, and takes its questions and scoring from IPIP. Because the software is open source, someone with the relevant skills can check how closely it follows the published questionnaire.
You do not need an account for the site to keep your answers. Its privacy page says it stores responses, language, and submission time, creates aggregate statistics, and uses analytics. The text does not say how long answers are kept. If you mainly want to avoid registering, the site advertises exactly that. If you want your answers to disappear when you close the page, this policy does not promise that.
The site does not explain how it calculates scores or who you are compared with. Before comparing its results with a score from another website, check how each report defines the numbers. Two scores labeled “extraversion” can describe the same broad trait without using the same numerical scale.
Truity Big Five: read the sample report before paying
Truity’s Big Five test offers a free overview from 60 questions. The site says you can see that overview without registering or paying; an account lets you return to your results, and a fuller report costs extra. Its sample report is useful here: you can see what the extra explanation looks like before deciding whether it is worth buying. If the free overview answers your question, there is no need to buy more just because a longer report is available.
The sample charts put percentage scores beside averages for test takers. Read those labels carefully. A percentage score is not necessarily a percentile, which would tell you what percentage of people scored below you. Truity says it compares you with “a large, international sample,” but the test page does not describe who is in it.
Truity also publishes a technical document. It examines whether questions about the same trait tend to produce related answers, and whether scores are associated with things participants report about their lives. That gives you more to go on than a marketing claim. It does not establish that every conclusion in the paid report is accurate.
The privacy policy covers analysis of responses, technical and usage data, and third-party services. Those terms matter whether you stop at the free overview or buy the full report.
Outofservice: take the BFI-2 and contribute to research
The Big Five Project at Outofservice is an option if you want to take the BFI-2 discussed above. It offers free feedback without a login and an optional opportunity to rate someone you know. Its information page separates the BFI-2 from extra questions the researchers have added. Older reviews may describe the original BFI, so look for the version the site offers now.
The BFI-2 measures five broad traits and 15 more specific tendencies, called facets. For example, the broad trait of conscientiousness includes organization, productiveness, and responsibility. Separating those tendencies gives a more detailed description than a single conscientiousness score. Research on the BFI-2 supports that questionnaire; it does not automatically cover the extra research questions. Outofservice says its feedback rests on analyses of personality data from more than 10,000 people, but it does not publish the calculations or describe that comparison group in detail.
Read the consent page before deciding to take it. The project says it shares anonymous responses with academic researchers and keeps them indefinitely. Once responses have been submitted without a link to your identity, the researchers cannot simply find yours and delete them on request. If you are happy to contribute to research on those terms, this may suit you. If you want results without contributing your answers to research, choose another option.
bigfivepersonality.me: free results, with a privacy question to resolve
bigfivepersonality.me describes its questionnaire as IPIP-50 and advertises free detailed results without registration. It also offers a longer 120-question test covering 30 facets; this comparison describes the 50-question test. Its score guide calls the results percentiles, which compare your scores with other people’s. It also says its comparison data are approximate. It does not say which data it used to calculate those percentiles or when they were collected. That makes it harder to know exactly who a high or low score compares you with.
The site gives different answers to a more immediate question: does it keep your results? The homepage says responses and results are not stored on its servers, and the score guide says results stay in your device’s local storage. The privacy policy says it saves a result record so you can share it. That record includes five scores, an optional nickname, and a hashed IP address, and is deleted after 90 days.
If you want results that stay only on your own device, find out from the site which statement is correct before you take the test. None of these statements shows what the website actually sends or stores. And research on a questionnaire, however good, tells you nothing about how a site handles your data.
Rivia Mind: a Big Five questionnaire that asks for your email
If you do not want to give an email address, Rivia Mind’s test is not a good fit. Its embedded Jotform questionnaire marks email as required. The introduction says “51 Questions,” but that includes 50 personality statements plus the email field. Neither the page nor the form estimates how long it takes.
The form contains five hidden score fields, each labeled from 10 to 50, without enough explanation to say what a particular score would mean compared with other people’s. Neither the page nor the form identifies the exact questionnaire or a research report for it. Spotting a few familiar statements would not settle it. You would need the complete set and the scoring instructions.
The form does not say how you will receive results or whether further offers will follow. The page links a document titled “HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices.” Its text calls itself the site’s privacy policy, and it does not mention this quiz. It says Rivia may use information to send marketing by email or text, and that Rivia may share or sell information collected on the site to third-party vendors, advertising companies, and analytics providers. Before giving the form your email and answers, ask what you will receive and what happens to that information.
16Personalities: what its letters and percentages mean
16Personalities gives you a four-letter result, but its test is not the official MBTI. It calls its own questionnaire NERIS Type Explorer. Its explanation of the test describes five pairs of tendencies and an Assertive or Turbulent suffix added to the type code. The company also distinguishes its approach from the Jungian cognitive functions used to explain some other type tests. Similar-looking letters do not mean the tests use the same theory or questions.
The test has 60 questions, is advertised as free without registration, and takes about ten minutes, according to the company. Other products are available to buy. To understand a result, pay attention to how far your answers lean toward either side of each pair. That is what the percentages describe. They are not population ranks: a percentage next to “Extraverted” does not tell you what percentage of people you are more extraverted than. If you already have a result from this site, its own score explanations will help you more than an interpretation written for a different test.
The company’s research page reports on the consistency of answers to questions about the same tendency, whether people get similar scores when they take the test again, and how its five scores relate to one another. These analyses cover the English version.
Its privacy policy describes technical-data collection, cookies, and use of answers for personalization and research. Taking the test for free does not stop the company from using your answers.
TypeFinder: a free overview, with a longer report available to buy
Truity’s TypeFinder offers a free overview and a paid full report from 130 questions. According to the site, you can see the overview without buying anything or registering; an account is optional if you want to return to your results. It measures four broad dimensions and 23 more specific tendencies. Truity explicitly says this is its own test, not the official MBTI.
The sample report shows why it is useful to look beyond the four-letter label. Its paired percentages describe how consistently your answers favor each side. Two people could receive the same letter while one leans only slightly in that direction and the other leans strongly. The percentages preserve that difference; they do not tell you either person’s rank in the population. Read the sample before paying to see whether the fuller explanation answers something you want to know.
Truity’s technical document examines consistency, relationships among the more specific tendencies, and associations with outcomes participants reported. This is research conducted by the company itself.
The Truity privacy policy also applies to TypeFinder. It covers analysis of your responses and collection of usage data, including when you take the free test.
SeeMyPersonality: a free report built from reworded BFI-2 statements
SeeMyPersonality advertises a full free report from 60 statements, without asking for email. You can see a public sample before taking it, and that is enough to judge whether you like the report’s presentation. The sample compares scores with the site’s test takers, and the page identifies that comparison sample. So you can read a result as your position within that group, rather than among all adults.
The page says its statements are adapted from the BFI-2, the questionnaire discussed above, and rewritten in the first person. That tells you where the questions came from, which many sites do not. It does not tell you how well the reworded version works. Changing a question’s wording can change how people answer it, so research on the published BFI-2 is not automatically evidence for this version. The site’s study of its own results says it scores the statements the way the BFI-2 is scored, but that study describes how scores are spread across its test takers, not how well the reworded questions measure the five traits. The homepage reports retest correlations of about 0.7 to 0.8 without citing a study.
The privacy page says your answers are scored in your browser, but that some test data still reaches the site’s servers. According to the same page, your results link carries a short code of your scores, which the server sees, and in about one test in ten the site also stores each answer and how long it took, under a random ID rather than your name. If you want your answers to stay entirely on your device, the privacy page does not promise that.
123test: five broad scores for free, with an optional extended report
123test’s personality test uses 120 statements and offers a free report with five broad trait scores. If those five scores are all you want, the advertised free report may be enough. The site also mentions an introduction to 30 more specific tendencies, or subscales, and an optional paid extension. If you want those detailed results, check what the free report includes before you begin. Introducing the subscales is not the same as giving you all 30 scores.
The research page links the company’s 2020 technical report for its Big Five test. The report describes the 120 statements, the 30 facets, and a comparison group of 15,107 people weighted to resemble the working population of Western countries. It is the company’s own analysis, and it does not show whether today’s reports still use that comparison group. The question count alone is no help: having 120 statements does not make it the same questionnaire as another site’s 120-question test.
According to the privacy statement, email is not required for general test use, although some products and saving results require accounts. The policy describes technical-data collection and says reports are kept for at least a few years before anonymization or destruction.
Humanmetrics: a four-letter type and preference scores
Humanmetrics’ Jung Typology Test promises a free four-letter type and descriptions. Its explanation of the numbers is useful if you already have a result: a percentage describes how strongly your answers favor one side, with zero at the dividing point. A score of 20 therefore does not mean you are at the 20th percentile of extraversion. It describes a preference, rather than your position among other people.
The terms say Humanmetrics uses its own questions and scoring, distinct from the MBTI, and that the free test requires no registration, name, or email. They also allow anonymous responses and scores to be collected for research, content, and other uses, and describe advertising. The terms set no retention period; instead, they give Humanmetrics a perpetual license to use that anonymous information.
The test itself has 64 statements, each answered on a five-point scale from strong agreement to strong disagreement, and the page gives no time estimate. Its test, explanation, and terms pages do not point to research on how well the current questionnaire measures what it claims to. Its score definitions can still help you understand an existing result. Treat any career or compatibility advice as a further claim that needs support: assigning a type does not show which job or relationship will suit you.
Science of People: a ten-question Big Five quiz
The Science of People mini quiz advertises ten questions and a few minutes. That is appealing if you want something quick. The opening page calls it a short Big Five Inventory, but does not name the specific version. That matters if you want to know how seriously to take the result: research on one ten-question Big Five test cannot establish how well another works.
Expect to give your details before you see a result. The quiz asks for your first name and requires an email address, then tells you to check your email for your results and recommendations. The quiz does not explain its scoring or who you are compared with. The company’s general privacy policy, last updated in January 2019, covers questionnaire responses, usage information, cookies, and sharing with service providers. It gives only a general retention rule (information is kept while an account is active or as needed to provide services, and for at least two years after an account closes) without saying which answers this quiz stores.
Clearer Thinking: four ways to describe your personality
If you are curious about how different personality systems describe you, Clearer Thinking’s Ultimate Personality Test offers an unusual comparison. It advertises free, immediate results for the Big Five, Enneagram, Jungian Type, and its own Personality Cluster framework, in about 12 minutes. The landing page does not give a question count or say whether you will be asked for an email address later.
The team’s comparative study used questions it developed itself. It tested how well the resulting scores predicted outcomes reported by paid U.S. participants. Its Jungian measure was not the official MBTI. So a claim that one framework performed better refers to these particular questionnaires, in this study. It does not rank all the websites in this guide or establish that every recommendation in the current report works.
The landing page says progress and choices are saved and may be used in aggregate research, and provides a way to request a copy or deletion. It describes the Big Five results as continuous scores from 1 to 100, but it does not say who you are compared with or how long your responses are kept. Comparing the descriptions may be interesting, but use each test’s own explanation to read its numbers. A number from one framework is not necessarily equivalent to the same number from another.
Psych Central: a quiz for entertainment
Psych Central’s “What’s Your Personality?” quiz says it is for entertainment and has not been empirically validated. That is a clear reason to choose something else if you want a research-supported estimate of your traits. The page also lists a medical review, but reviewing an article is different from studying whether a questionnaire measures personality well.
The page says the quiz will tell you how others see you. It does not show the questions, their number, or how results are scored until you start. The linked privacy notice, a Healthline notice that covers Psych Central, includes answers to quizzes among the information it collects. It sets no fixed retention period and says identifiers and browsing information may be shared for targeted advertising.
Use it as a conversation starter if that is what you want. The publisher’s own description gives you no reason to treat its result as a measured personality profile.
Choose the test that answers your question
For a research-based description of your personality, look for a named Big Five questionnaire with research you can follow. Outofservice and OpenPsychometrics make their questionnaires easy to identify; their research-participation terms are part of the choice. If you are considering a paid report, Truity’s samples let you judge what the extra detail adds before spending money. If you want to understand a four-letter result you already have, use the explanation from the service that produced it.
Then check the two practical details that can change your decision: what you get for free and what happens to your answers. A test can require no account and still keep your responses. A free result can also be a brief overview of a much longer paid report. Decide whether those terms suit you before you spend time answering questions.
Finally, think about what you plan to do with the result. Suppose you are thinking about changing careers. Knowing that you tend to be organized or outgoing may help you describe yourself, but it does not tell you whether you enjoy a job’s daily tasks, have the skills it requires, or can make the transition. You still need to investigate the work itself. A personality score is one part of that picture.
Once you have a result, the guide to reading personality test results will help you interpret the numbers. Compare the description with your experience. Where does it explain something you recognize? Where does it seem wrong? A useful result gives you specific tendencies to consider, rather than a label you have to live up to.
Sources and how this guide was researched
This comparison draws on the services’ public English-language pages, available sample reports, research documents, privacy policies, and the published question forms where a site makes them visible before you start, all checked on October 2, 2026. The check did not include submitting personality answers, buying reports, joining research studies, or testing the scoring software and what browsers send to each site.
This guide says when a company did the research itself. It did not review any independent study comparing all 14 tests, so there is no single “accuracy” score or overall winner here. When this guide says a site does not explain something, it means the public pages did not explain it; the provider may still hold evidence it has not published. For more on why the people you are compared with matter, see the examples of test norms and percentiles.
Prices, questionnaires, and privacy policies can change. If a service’s current documentation differs from its description here, use the corrections page and include the service, URL, and claim that changed. The guide to how this site evaluates tests explains the broader editorial method and interests policy.