Hearing Test — How High Can You Hear?
Tones go up from 8 kHz. Answer whether you can hear each one, and the test finds your limit.
Set your volume to about half before starting, and do not raise it mid-test just to force a tone to appear — that skews the result and can be unpleasant.
Press start to play the first tone.
Ear age (just for fun):
Even 8 kHz did not come through. Check your volume and speakers first — almost everyone can hear this tone on working equipment.
This is an entertainment self-check, not a hearing exam. It measures one narrow aspect with uncalibrated equipment in an uncontrolled room. If you are worried about your hearing, see a specialist.
About the Hearing Test
The upper limit of human hearing falls with age. Children can often hear close to 20 kHz; by middle age the ceiling has usually dropped below 15 kHz, and the change is so predictable that a rough "ear age" can be read off the highest tone you can still hear. That is the entire idea of this test: it plays pure tones from 8 kHz upward, one rung at a time, and you say whether each one is there or not.
The tones are generated inside your browser, so nothing is downloaded and nothing you do is recorded or sent anywhere. The estimate you get at the end is for fun and self-comparison. It is not an audiometric examination: a real hearing test measures much more than the upper frequency limit, uses calibrated equipment in a controlled room, and is read by a professional. If you have any actual concern about your hearing, that is the test you want.
What this page is genuinely good for is curiosity and comparison — checking whether the famous "mosquito tone" is audible to you, comparing ears with friends and family on the same device, or noticing how much difference a pair of good headphones makes.
How to take the hearing test
- Set your volume to a comfortable level, about half, using a tone you can hear. Then leave it there — turning it up to chase a tone invalidates the comparison between steps.
- Do the test somewhere quiet. Background noise masks exactly the faint tones this test is looking for.
- Press start. The first tone is 8 kHz, which nearly everyone hears.
- Press "I hear it" and the next, higher tone plays. The moment a tone is genuinely absent, press "I can't hear it". Answer honestly — hearing something in silence is more common than people expect, and a guessed "I hear it" moves the next tone higher and lifts your result above what you actually hear.
- Read your highest audible frequency and the for-fun ear age next to it.
- Use headphones and try again — they usually reach higher than laptop speakers.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a real hearing test?
No. It finds your approximate upper frequency limit, which is only one narrow aspect of hearing. Clinical audiometry measures sensitivity across many frequencies at calibrated volumes in a controlled environment. Treat this page as a toy with a grain of science, and see a professional for anything that worries you.
How accurate is the ear age?
It is a rough estimate, not a measurement. Published age norms (ISO 7029) stop at 8 kHz, with medians given for information only up to 12.5 kHz — the first three rungs of this ladder. From 14 kHz up none have been established, so those labels are a common convention rather than a figure you could look up. Loud-music history, headphones, genetics and the equipment you are using all shift the result. Two healthy people of the same age can differ by several kilohertz.
I heard a faint click or hiss rather than a tone. Does that count?
No — answer for the steady tone only. At the edge of your hearing range you may catch the start and stop transients while the tone itself is inaudible. If you are unsure whether the tone is there, it usually is not.
My ears are ringing after the test. Is that normal?
Turn the volume down and give your ears a rest. A brief ringing after listening to pure tones at a high volume is common and usually fades on its own — it is exactly why the instructions ask you to set the volume to about half at the start and leave it there instead of turning it up to chase a tone you cannot hear. If the ringing lasts for hours, or comes back on its own later, see a specialist rather than repeating the test.
Why does this start at 8 kHz instead of 20 Hz?
Because the part that changes with age sits at the top. Almost everyone hears low tones, and small speakers reproduce them poorly or not at all, so starting down there would mostly measure your equipment rather than your ears. Beginning at 8 kHz puts the first rung just below the range where real differences appear, which means every rung above it is doing useful work.
What is the mosquito tone?
A nickname for tones around 17 kHz, used by some shops as a deterrent audible mainly to young people. If the 17 kHz rung of this hearing test is audible to you, you can hear the mosquito tone.
Is anything recorded?
No. The tones are generated in the page, your hearing test answers stay in the page, and everything disappears when you close it. Nothing is sent to a server, and the microphone is never used.
Is the Hearing Test free, and is there anything to download?
Free, with no account and no download. Every tone is synthesized by the browser at the instant it plays, which is also why the page weighs almost nothing — no audio files travel to your device and none are left on it afterwards.
Do I need headphones, or will speakers do?
Headphones give a truer answer. Laptop and phone speakers are physically small and usually roll off steeply somewhere between 15 and 17 kHz — below the range where this test gets interesting. So a tone you “cannot hear” may never have left the speaker, and the result gets a ceiling that has nothing to do with your ears. Wired headphones are the steadiest choice: a wireless link runs the sound through a codec first, which is one more thing standing between the tone and you. One thing headphones do not fix: both ears hear the same tone at once, so the rung you stop on is whichever ear hears better. To compare them, run the ladder again with only the left side on, and then, after a short rest, only the right.