What is the beep test score chart by age and gender?

The chart

The figures are completed stages of the 20 m shuttle run, the test known as the beep test, the bleep test or the multi-stage fitness test. Each age row covers a full year: 6 means 6.0 to 6.9 years. P50 is the median, the score half of European children of that age and sex did not reach. P80 is the score that four in five did not reach.

Girls

Age	P10	P20	P50	P80	P90
6	0.9	1.1	1.8	2.8	3.4
7	1.0	1.3	2.1	3.2	3.9
8	1.1	1.5	2.4	3.7	4.5
9	1.3	1.7	2.9	4.4	5.3
10	1.4	2.0	3.3	4.9	5.9
11	1.6	2.2	3.6	5.3	6.4
12	1.8	2.4	3.8	5.6	6.6
13	1.9	2.5	3.9	5.6	6.6
14	1.9	2.5	3.9	5.6	6.6
15	1.9	2.5	3.9	5.6	6.6
16	1.9	2.5	3.9	5.6	6.6
17	1.9	2.5	3.8	5.5	6.4
18	1.8	2.4	3.8	5.4	6.3

Boys

Age	P10	P20	P50	P80	P90
6	0.9	1.2	2.0	3.4	4.2
7	1.1	1.4	2.5	4.0	4.9
8	1.2	1.7	3.0	4.8	5.8
9	1.5	2.0	3.6	5.7	6.8
10	1.7	2.4	4.2	6.4	7.5
11	2.0	2.7	4.6	6.8	8.0
12	2.2	3.1	5.0	7.3	8.5
13	2.6	3.5	5.5	7.8	9.0
14	2.9	3.9	6.1	8.4	9.6
15	3.2	4.3	6.5	8.8	10.0
16	3.4	4.4	6.7	8.9	10.1
17	3.4	4.5	6.6	8.8	10.0
18	3.3	4.4	6.5	8.6	9.7

The published table also gives P1, P5, P30, P40, P60, P70, P95 and P99. They are in Table 1 of the article.

Stages, levels, speed and laps

FitBack does not count laps. It converted every dataset into completed stages of the original Léger protocol, written as a decimal. The whole number is the last stage finished. The decimal is how far the child got into the next one: 3.9 is stage 3 finished and nine tenths of stage 4.

From stage 2 on, the stages of the original protocol run at the same speeds as the levels of the beep test table on this site: 9.0 km/h at level 2, then 0.5 km/h more per level. Stage 1 differs. The original protocol starts at 8.5 km/h, the version used here at 8.0 km/h. A score under 2.0 therefore reads as level 1, without a speed.

To turn a decimal into laps, we add the laps of the finished levels (7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10…) and the same fraction of the laps of the next level, rounded. This is our conversion, not a figure from the article.

Age	Girls’ median	Where it falls	Boys’ median	Where it falls
8	2.4	level 2 done (9.0 km/h), about 18 laps	3.0	level 3 done (9.5 km/h), 23 laps
10	3.3	level 3 done (9.5 km/h), about 26 laps	4.2	level 4 done (10.0 km/h), about 34 laps
12	3.8	level 3 done (9.5 km/h), about 30 laps	5.0	level 5 done (10.5 km/h), 41 laps
14	3.9	level 3 done (9.5 km/h), about 31 laps	6.1	level 6 done (11.0 km/h), about 52 laps
16	3.9	level 3 done (9.5 km/h), about 31 laps	6.7	level 6 done (11.0 km/h), about 58 laps
18	3.8	level 3 done (9.5 km/h), about 30 laps	6.5	level 6 done (11.0 km/h), about 56 laps

Reading your row

Take a 13-year-old girl who stops at level 6, lap 2. She finished level 5, so her score is 5 point something, about 5.2. In her row, 5.2 sits between the median (3.9) and P80 (5.6). She ran further than more than half of European girls her age, and less far than the top fifth.

A 16-year-old boy who finishes level 8 has 8.0 completed stages. In his row that is between the median (6.7) and P80 (8.9).

Where the numbers come from

The FitBack network gathered 106 datasets from 34 European countries, with 1,026,077 shuttle run results from 30 of them. The values were smoothed by age and weighted by each country’s population. Each row is computed at the middle of the age band, 6.5 years for the row of 6.

The authors compare their medians with those of Tomkinson and colleagues (2017), which covered ages 9 to 17. For those ages, Tomkinson’s medians range from 3.4 to 4.1 stages for girls and from 4.4 to 7.7 for boys. FitBack’s range from 2.9 to 3.9 and from 3.6 to 6.7. The two tables do not agree to the decimal, so a score should be read against one of them, not a mix.

Adults

Neither study goes past 18. We found no adult chart by age and sex built the same way, so this page gives none. The figures you see online for adults are not from these reference values. For adults, what is a good beep test score gives this site’s coaching benchmarks and says that they are not a norm.

Limits

The sample is European, and the authors write that it does not represent every European child. The course must be 20 m. A PACER score in laps can be set against the lap conversions above, and the FitnessGram minimum for each age is a different standard. The lap count of each level and the beep test page give the full table.