Enter a recent race or best effort time for your chosen distance. You can also enter a normal training session, but an easier effort will usually give you a lower rating.
| Beginner | Faster than 5% of swimmers. |
|---|---|
| Novice | Faster than 20% of swimmers. |
| Intermediate | Faster than 50% of swimmers. |
| Advanced | Faster than 80% of swimmers. |
| Elite | Faster than 95% of swimmers. |
Average is the Intermediate standard (50th percentile), calculated separately for male and female swimmers across all ages. The age tables show the same levels for each age.
Your level describes your performance over that distance. It does not measure how long you have trained, and Elite does not mean you are a professional athlete.
Each distance is rated separately. For example, you could be Advanced over 100m and Intermediate over 1500m. Your strengths and training can differ between distances, and the people submitting results can differ too.
Your headline level and stars use your age-adjusted percentile. The comparison with all swimmers of your gender does not adjust for age.
The age tables use the same adjustments. Your percentile shows how your performance compares with the standards; it is different from an age-grade percentage against a record performance. We do not provide a separate age-grade score.
No. Your level is based on your gender, age, distance and time.
No. We do not currently have suitable height data to produce reliable height-adjusted standards.
Swimming Level does not currently provide personal activity history through your Strength Level account. Calculator submissions contribute to our research, but are not a training log you can retrieve from your account.
The standards are freestyle comparisons, where any stroke is allowed. Front crawl is the usual choice for a fast freestyle time. There are no separate breaststroke, backstroke or butterfly rankings.
Yes. A 100m swim in a 25m pool involves more turns than a 100m swim in a 50m pool, which can affect your time.
Enter the total distance you swam in meters or yards. This does not tell us the length of the pool. For example, entering 100 yards does not tell us whether you swam in a 25-yard or 50-yard pool.
Submitted results do not include pool length, so we do not provide separate standards for different pool lengths or adjust times between them. Record details show the pool length used for each reference record.
Check the event distance before entering your time. A swimming “mile” commonly means 1500m or 1650yd, while a full mile is 1760yd (1609.344m). 1650yd is 1508.76m, so these are three different distances.
They estimate your finish time over another distance, assuming you have trained for that event.
The High, Medium and Low confidence ratings describe how closely performances at the two distances are related in our model. They are not measured accuracy ratings.
The headline average is the overall 50th-percentile time for that gender. It is not an arithmetic average of the age-table rows. The row for your age applies an age adjustment, so its time can differ.
These standards are based on times entered into the Swimming Level calculator. We check submissions for implausible results, duplicates and unusual submission patterns before using them to develop the standards. They reflect results submitted to this site, rather than the general population.
The standards pages show our community result counts.
Qualifying results are the submissions retained after our quality checks and the checks for each distance. We select the best result for each user, gender and event, then use those results to develop and check the standards.
Event pages show qualifying, male and female result counts. The overall standards page shows results that passed the initial quality checks, before event selection and further filtering.
User counts estimate how many people submitted results, using distinct submission IP addresses. Shared addresses and address changes make these approximate counts. One user can submit several results and contribute to more than one event.
We update the standards as more community results become available and our research improves the comparisons. A new version can change your level even if you enter the same performance. See our standards timeline.
Send feedback if you need help with a calculator result.