Hearing Age Test — How Old Are Your Ears?
Pure tones step down from about 20 kHz. Tap “I can hear it” on the first tone you actually hear, and we estimate a hearing age from where your high end cuts off — using the same age-related (presbycusis) trend the famous “mosquito tone” relies on.
🔊 Use headphones at a low volume and run the calibration step first. This is for fun and curiosity, not a clinical audiogram or medical diagnosis. Your result depends heavily on your gear: many phones, laptops and earbuds roll off above ~16–18 kHz, which alone will mimic an older “hearing age,” and volume, ambient noise and seating all shift it. For any real concern about your hearing, see an audiologist.
Hearing age test
Play a comfortable mid-range reference tone (1 kHz), then set your device volume so it is clearly audible but gentle — about the level of a quiet conversation. Do not crank it; high tones can be louder than they feel.
This is the tool’s own level, on top of your device volume. Keep it modest and adjust your device first.
Per-ear testing needs headphones (speakers reach both ears at once).
The tones descend automatically each time you choose “go lower.” Stop the moment one becomes audible — that pitch is your cutoff.
Output only — there is no microphone, nothing is recorded, and nothing is uploaded or stored.
How to Use
- Put on headphones in a quiet room. They reproduce the high end far better than laptop or phone speakers, and they are required to test each ear separately.
- Calibrate (Step 1). Play the 1 kHz reference and set your device volume so it is clearly audible but gentle. Keep the in-page volume modest. Pick both ears, or one ear if you are on headphones.
- Start the test (Step 2). Press Play this tone. The first tone is the highest (near 20 kHz) and many adults will hear nothing.
- If you hear it, tap “I can hear it.” If you hear silence, tap “Can’t hear — go lower” and the next, lower tone plays.
- Read your estimate (Step 3). The first audible tone is your cutoff; we map it to a typical hearing age and you can copy a shareable result card.
Understanding Your Results
The top of human hearing falls steadily with age — a normal process called presbycusis, the trend described in standards such as ISO 7029. The specific upper-limit numbers in the table below (especially above ~12.5 kHz) are not from that standard — ISO 7029 models thresholds only to ~8 kHz, with informative values to ~12.5 kHz — they are widely-published popular “hearing range by age” averages for healthy ears, the same trend the “mosquito tone” (~17.4 kHz, audible mainly under ~25) exploits. They are a rough guide only — individuals vary a lot, and noise exposure, hardware and listening level all shift the number.
So if you stop hearing tones above ~14 kHz in your 40s, that is squarely in the typical range — and if your earbuds simply don’t reproduce above ~16 kHz, the test would read “older” no matter how good your ears are. That is why this is a bit of fun, not a diagnosis.
How It Works
This test plays a pure sine tone generated by the Web Audio API and steps it down from about 20 kHz in stages (roughly 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 12, 10 and 8 kHz). You drive it by ear: if a tone is silent to you, you send it lower; the first tone you actually hear is your high-frequency cutoff. Because the loss of high-frequency hearing with age (presbycusis) is so consistent across the population, that cutoff maps to a rough hearing age — the same idea behind the “mosquito” or “teen buzz” tone, which sits around 17.4 kHz and is audible mainly to people under about 25. Gain is ramped up and down so tones start and stop without clicks, and the default level is deliberately low because steady high tones can fatigue your ears without ever sounding loud.
The age mapping uses widely-published popular averages: teenagers and people under ~20 typically reach 17–20 kHz; the 20s sit near 17 kHz, the 30s near 16 kHz, the 40s around 14–15 kHz, the 50s around 12 kHz, and 60-and-over commonly tops out around 8–10 kHz. The underlying trend — high frequencies declining with age far faster than low ones — is formalised in ISO 7029, but that standard models thresholds only up to ~8 kHz (with informative medians to ~12.5 kHz), so the specific 14–20 kHz figures here are popular hearing-range-by-age averages rather than values from any single standard. We read your browser’s actual audio sample rate at runtime, so you can see the hard ceiling your system can even produce.
Two honest cautions. First, this is an output-only tool: there is no microphone, so it cannot measure how loud the tone actually is at your ear, your true threshold in decibels, or your equipment’s response. A real clinical hearing test measures your quietest detectable level at each frequency with calibrated equipment in a sound-treated room and produces an audiogram — this does none of that. Second, your device is usually the bottleneck: most phones, laptops, earbuds and Bluetooth links roll off above roughly 16–18 kHz, and many cannot cleanly reproduce the very top at all, so a high cutoff here can simply mean your speaker stopped, not that your ears did. Treat the number as entertainment, and if you have any real concern about your hearing, ringing, or a difference between your ears, see an audiologist.