Free Online Beep Test App

What is the Beep Test?

The beep test is a 20-meter multistage shuttle run. You run back and forth between two lines set 20 meters apart, touching each line in time with a recorded beep. The beeps get closer together every minute, so the pace climbs until you can't keep up. The level and shuttle you reach when you drop out is your score.

Sports scientist Luc Léger and his team at the University of Montreal published the test in 1988 in the Journal of Sports Sciences. It spread through schools, sports clubs, and military units worldwide because it needs almost no equipment: just a flat 20-meter space and something to play the beeps.

The test goes by several names depending on where you learned it. In Australia, the UK, and most of the world it's the beep test or bleep test. Sports scientists often call it the MSFT, short for multi-stage fitness test. In US schools it's usually the PACER (Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run), run as part of the FitnessGram assessment, the same 20m shuttle format under a different name. You may also see it written out as the 20m shuttle run test.

Whatever it's called, it measures the same thing: how much oxygen your body can use during hard exercise, known as VO₂ max. Coaches use it because it's cheap to run with a whole group at once, and it predicts endurance well enough to be useful for team selection, fitness testing, and tracking progress over a season.

How the Test Works

If you complete every level, the test runs about 21 minutes. Few people get that far. Most drop out well before the end, and that's the point: the test is built to push you past your limit, not to be finished.

There are 20 levels. Level 1 starts at a jog, 8.5 km/h, giving you 8.47 seconds to cover each 20m shuttle. Every level adds 0.5 km/h and shortens the time you get for each shuttle, up to Level 20 at 18.0 km/h, a pace few recreational runners can hold for more than a shuttle or two. Across all 20 levels there are 231 shuttles in total, adding up to 4,620 meters if you complete the entire test.

The stopping rule is simple: if you fail to reach the line before the beep on two shuttles in a row, the test is over. One missed beep is a warning, not a fail. Catch up on the next shuttle and you keep going. Two in a row and you stop, and your score is the last shuttle you completed before that happened.

You can run the test right here in your browser, or grab the beep test audio to play it from a phone or speaker without a screen. See the full levels chart for the speed and shuttle count at every level.

Beep Test Distance

A common question: how far do you actually run? It depends how far you get. Each shuttle is 20 meters, so the distance adds up level by level as the shuttles get shorter and more frequent.

Complete all 20 levels and you've covered 4,620 meters (about 15,157 feet, or 2.87 miles). Most people stop well before that. Here's the cumulative distance at a few common stopping points, worked out directly from the shuttle counts at each level:

Understanding Your Score

Your score is the last level and shuttle you completed. This maps to a running speed and an estimated VO₂ max using the Léger equation: VO₂max = −24.4 + 6.0 × speed (km/h). Complete your profile in the results screen to get a fitness rating benchmarked for your age and sex.

What's a Good Beep Test Score?

There's no single "good" score. It depends on your age, your sex, and what you're training for. A fit 45-year-old and a fit 20-year-old shouldn't be judged on the same scale, and a soccer player's target looks nothing like a police recruit's.

As a rough guide, adult males aged 20–29 land in the "good" range around Level 8–11, and adult females in the same age group around Level 7–9. Full breakdowns by age and sex are on our beep test scores by age page.

Sport changes the target too. Professional soccer players typically reach Level 12–14, since the position demands near-continuous running for 90 minutes. See beep test standards by sport for rugby, basketball, and other benchmarks. Entry-level police and military standards are usually lower, often Level 5–8 depending on the force. Whatever your target, the levels chart shows the speed and VO₂ max behind each level.

Beep Test World Record

There's no governing body for the beep test, so any "world record" claim is reported rather than certified. The highest scores backed by named witnesses sit around Level 17, according to marks compiled by topendsports.com. Higher claims exist, but several are disputed and some appear to come from a different test (the yo-yo test) rather than the 20m beep test.

Level 17 works out to 16.5 km/h, held in short, repeated 20-meter bursts. Very few people, even elite endurance athletes, get anywhere close.

Frequently Asked Questions