Free personality tests: what free usually means

What does free actually mean on a personality test?

Writing, hosting and scoring a personality test costs money, so every free test is free because something else pays for it. That is not a criticism. It is simply the thing to work out before you spend ten minutes answering questions, because the four common arrangements give you very different amounts of result.

• Fully free research instruments. Published questionnaires released for anyone to use. The International Personality Item Pool put a large bank of personality items into the public domain precisely so that researchers and the public would not have to pay for them (Goldberg et al., 2006), and the IPIP-NEO gives facet-level scores from that bank (Johnson, 2014). The BFI-2 is available at no cost for research and educational use, and its development and validation are published in full (Soto & John, 2017). You get numbers and, on some sites, short descriptions. You rarely get a written report, because nobody is being paid to write one.
• Free test, paid report. The questions cost nothing, the result is a summary, and the depth sits behind a one-off payment. This is the most common commercial model, and it is honest when the free part is worth having on its own and the price is shown before you start.
• Free test, account required. You answer, then you are asked for an email address before results appear. Sometimes this is so your answers have somewhere to live and can be shown back to you. Sometimes it is a mailing list. Usually it is both, and the privacy policy tells you which.
• Trial that renews. The test is described as free, results are shown after a small charge, and the charge starts a subscription that renews on a date given in the small print. Everything about this can be lawful and disclosed, and people still find it a surprise on their statement. The tell is a card field on a page that said free, and a price expressed per week.

There is also a fifth arrangement worth naming: the test is free because the answers are the product. Read the privacy policy for what is shared with advertisers or data partners. A test that says plainly what it does with your answers is telling you something about how it will treat the rest of the experience.

What should you check before you start?

Five questions, none of which take more than a minute to answer from the test's own pages. Do it before you answer question one, not after you have invested twenty minutes.

What can a free result legitimately include?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. A free test that asks enough questions can honestly give you a score on each broad dimension and your position relative to a reference sample. It can also describe what that position tends to look like in ordinary life, and say how much weight to put on it. The free public-domain inventories have been doing exactly this for years (Goldberg et al., 2006; Johnson, 2014).

What a free result cannot honestly give you is precision it did not buy with questions. A ten-item measure covering 6 dimensions is asking one or two questions per trait, and very short scales lose validity relative to longer ones even when they are carefully built (Credé et al., 2012). If a short test hands you a confident paragraph about your career and your relationships, the paragraph is doing work the questions did not support.

Two other limits are worth knowing. Free tests rarely publish their norms, so a percentile may be relative to whoever else happened to take the test on that site rather than to a representative sample. And a description that feels strikingly accurate is not by itself evidence of accuracy: generic sketches presented as personal read as accurate to most people (Forer, 1949). Look for scores you can check against your own life, not for the sentence that gave you a jolt of recognition.

Which free tests are worth your time?

If you want the broad dimensions and are happy reading a table of scores, the free public-domain inventories are the best value in the field. The IPIP-NEO comes in a 120-item version and a 300-item version and reports all 30 facets (Johnson, 2014). The BFI-2 is 60 items with 15 facets and its scoring key is published (Soto & John, 2017). The HEXACO-PI-R adds Honesty-Humility as a sixth factor and is available online for personal use (Ashton & Lee, 2007).

If you want something written rather than scored, that is where the commercial tests come in, and where the money is. The fair question to ask of any of them is whether the free part is genuinely useful on its own, or whether it is a teaser that ends at a paywall with nothing behind it. Our own comparison of the field is at best personality tests.

What does Wellington charge, and for what?

Wellington is a science-based personality assessment from Therabot Labs LLC. It measures personality as continuous traits, built on the Big Five and HEXACO models, and writes the results back as a personal report rather than a type.

The free Snapshot asks 60 questions and takes about 7 minutes. The first ten are answered before anything is asked of you. After question ten you sign in with an email address, so that your answers are saved and your results can be shown to you, and you can come back to a half-finished sitting on another device. There is no card at any point in the free tier. At the end every trait is reported as a percentile against the reference sample, in one of three bands, Quiet below the 30th percentile, Balanced to the 70th, High above, with a full written page on each of the 6 dimensions, 6 pages in all, yours to keep. The bands and the Portrait names exist to make the result easier to talk about; the percentile is the measurement, and it is always shown alongside. Our own norms are provisional while the norming sample is completed, and the methods page says so rather than leaving you to assume otherwise. Wellington is a wellness tool for reflection, not a medical or psychological diagnosis, and it does not replace care from a qualified professional.

The paid tiers are stated once and do not move. The Wellington Membership is $4.99 a month, cancel any time, and it adds the Portrait, 336 questions in 4 chapters over about 36 minutes, to reach 90 traits including every Big Five facet and all 24 VIA character strengths, with a downloadable PDF, then adds a short module each week. You can read the methodology before paying for anything, and you can export or delete your data from your dashboard at any time. It is written for the person taking it and is not designed for hiring.

Questions people ask

Are free personality tests any good?

The best ones are as good as the paid ones at measuring the broad dimensions. The BFI-2 and the IPIP-NEO are published, validated instruments that cost nothing to take. What free tests usually lack is written interpretation: they hand you scores and leave you to read them. If what you want is the numbers, free is enough.

Why do tests ask for an email address before showing results?

Usually for two reasons at once. Your answers need somewhere to live if the result is going to persist, be scored server-side, or be opened again later on another device. And an email address is worth something to the company. A test that tells you which of those it is doing, and lets you opt out of the marketing half, is treating you fairly.

How do I avoid a test that charges me later?

Look for a card field. A test that never asks for card details cannot charge you. If one does ask, read the line above the button for a renewal date and a recurring price, and check whether the amount shown is the full charge or a weekly figure. Screenshot the terms before you agree to them.

Is the Wellington Snapshot really free?

Yes. All 60 questions cost nothing, and you get a personality card and a band and a percentile on each of the 6 dimensions, with no card requested. You sign in with an email address after question ten so your answers are saved and your results can be shown to you. The written trait pages come with the $0.99 Portrait Report, and the Wellington Membership is $4.99 a month. Both are optional and priced on the pricing page.