TL;DR: A good reaction time on an online click test is under 250 ms, and under 200 ms is genuinely fast. Adults averaged 230.8 ms in the largest recent laboratory study, while the median across more than 81 million online attempts is 273 ms, because home screens and mice add delay that laboratory equipment removes.
You do not have to guess where you stand. Take our free reaction time test now: five rounds, about a minute, no sign-up. Then read your score against the averages below, including the average for your age band, because a score that looks ordinary at 22 can be strong at 60.
Published: 12 November 2026. Last checked: 12 November 2026.
What is a good reaction time?
For most adults, good means under 250 ms on a browser test, and under 200 ms is fast by any standard. The healthy average band online runs from about 230 to 270 ms. Over 320 ms usually says more about a slow screen, a touchscreen or a tired evening than about you.
Those bands rest on the two most solid anchors available: a laboratory mean of 230.8 ms measured on calibrated equipment (Woods et al., 2015), and a median of 273 ms across more than 81 million attempts on Human Benchmark. Your browser score belongs on the second scale, because your screen and mouse sit between you and the signal:
| Your average | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Under 170 ms | Exceptional. Near the floor of honest reactions. |
| 170 to 200 ms | Very fast. Quicker than almost everyone online. |
| 200 to 230 ms | Fast. Comfortably ahead of the typical tester. |
| 230 to 270 ms | Average. The healthy middle for adults online. |
| 270 to 320 ms | Below average. Check device and tiredness first. |
| Over 320 ms | Slow on this setup. Retest rested, on a mouse. |
One rule matters more than any band: a single round proves almost nothing, because scores swing by 50 ms or more between attempts. Judge yourself on a five-round average.
What is the average human reaction time?
In the laboratory, the average adult simple reaction time to a visual signal is 230.8 ms. That figure comes from Woods and colleagues (2015), who tested 1,469 adults aged 18 to 65 for 120 trials each on a calibrated rig. Online, the median on Human Benchmark is 273 ms. Both are honest; the gap is mostly your equipment.
The maths shows why. Human Benchmark’s median, 273 ms, minus the laboratory mean, 230.8 ms, leaves about 42 ms, and that is roughly what a home setup adds: a 60 Hz screen can only show the signal at its next refresh, up to 16.7 ms late, and a mouse, keyboard or touchscreen adds its own smaller delay on the way back. Comparing your browser score with a textbook laboratory figure will always make you look slower than you are.
One caution: the online figure comes from people who chose to test themselves, so it describes keen testers rather than a random sample. The laboratory figure is a mean across ages 18 to 65, and the average moves with age.
What is the average reaction time by age?
Reaction time is fastest in the early twenties and slows gently. In Woods and colleagues’ study, the average rose from 217.9 ms at ages 18 to 24 to 239.1 ms at 59 to 65, a slope of 0.55 ms per year. A repeated claim that reactions slow by 7 ms per year is not supported by this data.
Here is the study’s full table (Woods et al., 2015, Table 2):
| Age band | People tested | Laboratory average |
|---|---|---|
| 18 to 24 | 86 | 217.9 ms |
| 25 to 31 | 115 | 221.0 ms |
| 32 to 38 | 201 | 224.8 ms |
| 39 to 45 | 273 | 227.7 ms |
| 46 to 51 | 276 | 233.6 ms |
| 51 to 58 | 272 | 236.4 ms |
| 59 to 65 | 246 | 239.1 ms |
To use the table, add roughly 40 ms to your age band, because that is the delay a typical home setup adds. An online average near 258 ms is then par at 25, and near 279 ms at 60. So 280 ms at 60 is right on your band’s average, while 280 ms at 25 is a touch slow. Age context changes the verdict completely.
The study also found something reassuring: detection time did not change with age at all; the slowing sits in the movement that follows. A representative British sample of 7,414 adults tells the same story, peaking in the early twenties (Der and Deary, 2006). One honest limit: the study tested nobody under 18 or over 65, so precise-looking averages for those ages do not come from it.
Is 200 ms a good reaction time?
Yes. At 200 ms you beat the typical online tester, whose median is 273 ms, and you are close to the laboratory average for adults in their twenties, 217.9 ms, despite your screen’s delay. At 250 ms you sit around the online average. At 300 ms you are a little slow for a young adult, but unremarkable past 60.
Put plainly: 200 ms is a strong result at any adult age, 250 ms is a normal, healthy result that beats the online median, and 300 ms is a prompt to retest rested before worrying.
There is also a floor below which a score stops being a reaction at all. A press under about 100 ms cannot have travelled from eye to brain to finger in time, which is why athletics treats sprint starts under 0.100 seconds as false starts, and why Woods and colleagues excluded every response under 110 ms. If a test celebrates your 80 ms score, it is measuring your guessing.
What is a good reaction time for gaming?
For gaming, treat 200 to 250 ms as a solid base and anything under 200 ms as strong, but keep the research in view: across seven studies, expert action game players reacted about 11 percent faster than non-players, with identical accuracy (Dye, Green and Bavelier, 2009). The advantage is real, and smaller than gaming folklore suggests.
Eleven percent is easy to picture: a non-player averaging 250 ms corresponds to a player at about 222 ms, because 0.89 times 250 is 222.5. That gap matters in a duel, but no primary study we could find supports the claim that professionals average anywhere near the 150 ms quoted in forum posts. Treat unsourced pro benchmarks as marketing.
Two practical points follow. Most in-game reactions are choice reactions, choosing the right response to the right target, and those run far slower than any simple click test for everyone, pros included. And your equipment is part of your score: a high refresh rate monitor and a wired mouse remove delay that talent cannot cancel. If you record gameplay to review it, our guide to the best free screen recorders covers the built-in tools.
What reaction time do you need for driving?
Driving does not run on click-test numbers. Seeing a hazard, judging it, deciding to brake and moving your foot takes far longer than pressing a mouse: about 0.7 seconds when a driver expects trouble, and about 1.5 seconds for a complete surprise (Green, 2000). Road designers assume 2.5 seconds (AASHTO), because a road has to work for nearly every driver.
The distances make the point better than the times do. At 50 km/h a car covers 13.9 metres every second, so an expected-hazard response of 0.7 seconds travels about 9.7 metres before the brake is touched. A surprise response of 1.5 seconds covers about 20.8 metres, and the 2.5 second design assumption about 34.7 metres, all at full speed before braking begins. That is why following distance matters more than fast feet.
So a 230 ms test score does not certify anyone as a safe driver, and 320 ms does not condemn anyone either. Driving adds divided attention, judgement and a foot movement, and expectation and attention, not raw nerve speed, separate the 0.7 second response from the 1.5 second one.
Can you improve your reaction time?
A little, and mostly around the edges: practice makes the task familiar, rest keeps you consistent, and faster hardware removes delay that was never yours. In Woods and colleagues’ data, times drifted from 228.1 ms in the first block of trials to 237.2 ms in the last, inside a test of only a few minutes.
The improvements with a real basis are modest:
- Warm up first. Woods and colleagues gave every participant 20 practice trials before the 120 that counted. Treat your first set of five rounds as a warm-up and judge the second.
- Test rested, and keep it short. The drift above is tiredness in miniature. A score chased late at night measures your evening, not your reflexes.
- Remove delay you control. A wired mouse beats a touchscreen, and a faster screen shows the signal sooner. If your device is generally sluggish, our guides to speeding up a slow Windows laptop, speeding up an Android phone and speeding up an iPhone fix the machine, not your nerves.
- Compare like with like. Same device, same input, same time of day: scores chased across hardware mostly measure the hardware.
Practice will not hand you a new nervous system. Expect your average to settle and steady over your first sessions rather than plunge, and treat a tight spread across five rounds as the real sign of progress. When ready, retake the reaction time test and see whether your average, not your best click, has moved.
Frequently asked questions
Is 250 ms a good reaction time?
It is a solid, typical adult result: it beats the online median of 273 ms and sits inside the healthy average band for a browser test. In laboratory terms it is a little above the adult mean of 230.8 ms, but your screen and mouse explain most of that.
Is 300 ms reaction time slow?
For a young adult using a mouse, it is a little below the norm and worth a retest when rested. For someone in their sixties, or anyone tapping on a phone, it is ordinary: the measured laboratory average at 59 to 65 is already 239.1 ms before home equipment adds its delay.
What is the fastest possible human reaction time?
For a simple visual reaction, honest scores bottom out near 100 ms. Below that, the signal cannot have reached the brain and returned to the finger, so the press was a guess. Athletics uses the same line, treating sprint starts under 0.100 seconds as false starts, and serious studies discard responses under 110 ms.
Does reaction time get worse with age?
Yes, but gently. The measured slope in the largest recent laboratory study is 0.55 ms per year, about 21 ms between the youngest and oldest adult bands tested. The detection part of the reaction did not slow at all with age in that study; the extra time sits in producing the movement.
Why is my reaction time slower on my phone?
Because the phone adds more delay than a mouse setup: the touchscreen samples your tap less often, and the screen refresh adds its own wait. The gap is hardware, not ability. Compare phone scores with phone scores and mouse scores with mouse scores.
Can you train your reaction time?
Up to a point. Familiarity, warm-up rounds and being rested produce small, real gains, and years of action gaming are associated with responses about 11 percent faster. Training does not move the 100 ms floor, or turn an average adult into an outlier in a week.
Sources
Woods et al. (2015), Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9:131. Dye, Green and Bavelier (2009), Current Directions in Psychological Science 18(6). Human Benchmark, reaction time statistics. Green (2000), Transportation Human Factors 2(3). AASHTO, A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets. Der and Deary (2006), Psychology and Aging 21(1).
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