Are Online IQ Tests Legit?

Are online IQ tests legit? Most are not—made by amateurs with no science behind them. Discover the only truly legitimate online IQ test (RIOT) that meets real professional standards.

Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist

A test’s legitimacy depends on scientific evidence, not presentation. In psychology, a legitimate IQ test must show reliability, validity, and unbiased results. Reliability means scores remain stable when conditions are consistent. Validity confirms that an IQ test measures intelligence rather than unrelated skills. Unbiased results ensure that scores have the same meaning for all examinees. Without these qualities, an IQ test cannot be considered a professional instrument, regardless of how sophisticated it appears online.

The Quality Gap in Online Testing

The internet has made intelligence testing widely available, but very few online tests meet scientific standards. Many are written by unqualified creators and lack important documentation about item development, scoring, or the samples used to interpret scores. To be trustworthy, a test should be created by someone with the necessary expertise and its technical properties are documented.

How Psychologists Determine Legitimacy

Professional IQ tests are built through a transparent, evidence-based process. Test developers create large sets of questions, analyze them statistically, and retain only those that measure reasoning ability consistently across diverse groups. These procedures generate reliability and validity data that are independently reviewed and published.

Ethical standards from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) require that such information be available in a test’s technical manual. That documentation allows professionals to verify the test’s quality and interpret its scores responsibly.

The Importance of Documentation and Oversight

Professionally-developed tests have detailed manuals describing their construction, standardization, and statistical properties. Their transparency allows independent researchers to evaluate how well the tests measure what they are designed to measure. Often, the manual is accompanied by technical reports and scholarly articles published in peer-reviewed journals.

By contrast, most online tests provide no supporting documentation, no expert review, and no other evidence regarding the test’s technical properties. Without these, the scores cannot be interpreted, and the results are meaningless.

The Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test (RIOT) exemplifies how rigorous methodology can be applied online, showing that accessibility and professional integrity can coexist. The test has a manual in progress (with a summary available to the public), and research on the test is publicly available. As a new test, the RIOT is still the topic of research research, but has already surpassed every other commercial online test in its level of documentation. More research and data about the RIOT will accumulate over time.

Watch “Why Are the Tasks on the RIOT Relevant to Intelligence?” with Dr. Russell T. Warne on the Riot IQ YouTube channel to see what sets legitimate online IQ tests apart from the rest.