What is the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory?

The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, or CBI, is a burnout measure developed in Denmark and released free of copyright by its authors. It has three subscales: personal, work-related, and client-related burnout. This test uses the six personal burnout items, which ask about physical and emotional exhaustion without assuming a job is the cause.

Is burnout the same as depression?

No, though they overlap and can occur together. Burnout is usually tied to a specific draining context and tends to lift when that context changes. Depression is broader, follows you across situations, and flattens enjoyment and self-worth more generally. If low mood rather than exhaustion is the main feature, a depression screen is the more useful starting point.

Is the test free and private?

Yes. The test is free, needs no account or email, and runs entirely in your browser. We do not store your answers or your score.

Can burnout be caused by something other than work?

Yes. The World Health Organization defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon, but the same pattern of exhaustion follows caring for a relative, studying, parenting, or a long stretch of illness. The personal burnout subscale used here deliberately asks about exhaustion in general rather than about your job.

What should I do with my score?

Use it as a starting point. A single score is a snapshot, so tracking it over time tells you far more than one result. If your score is high, look at the demands producing it rather than at your tolerance of them, and speak with a doctor if the exhaustion persists or comes with physical symptoms.

Free Burnout Test (CBI Exhaustion Self-Check)

1)What is burnout?

Burnout is what happens when demands outrun recovery for long enough that rest stops working. It is not the ordinary tiredness of a hard week, which a weekend usually fixes. It is a state of depletion that follows you into Monday, and then into the Monday after that. The World Health Organization classifies it as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition, describing it as chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

That framing is useful but narrow, because exhaustion of this kind is not confined to paid work. Caring for a relative, studying, parenting, or carrying a long stretch of illness produce the same pattern. The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, which this test is based on, was built partly to address that: its personal burnout subscale asks about physical and emotional exhaustion in general, without assuming a job is the source. That is the subscale used here.

2)Signs of burnout

Burnout is rarely only in your head. It shows up across energy, mood, and body at once, which is part of why people so often put it down to something else.

Physical: persistent tiredness that sleep does not fix, frequent illness, headaches, muscle tension, and changed appetite.
Emotional: feeling drained or numb, irritability, cynicism about work you used to care about, and a sense of not being able to take much more.
Cognitive: trouble concentrating, forgetfulness, and decisions that used to be easy suddenly feeling heavy.
Behavioural: withdrawing from people, putting off tasks, and relying more on caffeine, alcohol, or late nights to get through.

Everyone hits some of these in a hard month. What the test is really probing is how often this is true of you, because frequency is what separates a rough stretch from genuine depletion.

3)How the scoring works

Each of the six questions scores from 0 (never or almost never) to 4 (always), so your total runs from 0 to 24. A higher total points to more exhaustion. The original Copenhagen Burnout Inventory reports an average from 0 to 100 rather than a sum; if you want that number, divide your score by 24 and multiply by 100. The bands below are set at the equivalent points, and are guides for reflection rather than clinical cut-offs:

Burnout test score bands
Score	Level	What it usually suggests
0 to 11	Low burnout	Ordinary tiredness that recovery still clears
12 to 17	Moderate burnout	Depletion building; recovery works if you take it
18 to 21	High burnout	Rest alone is unlikely to be enough
22 to 24	Severe burnout	Worth a conversation with a doctor

There is no official pass or fail line here. Treat a higher band as a reason to look at what is generating the load, not as a verdict on how you are coping.

4)What your score means, and what it doesn't

A single score is a snapshot of the last few weeks, not a label and not a diagnosis. Exhaustion rises and falls with workload, sleep, illness, and life events, so the direction it moves matters far more than any one number. Two people can both score 15 and be in opposite situations: one heading into a hard quarter, the other climbing out of one.

It is also worth knowing what burnout is not. It is not laziness, and it is not a lack of resilience; it is a predictable response to a sustained mismatch between demands and recovery. It overlaps with depression without being the same thing: burnout is usually tied to a specific draining context and lifts when that context changes, while depression tends to follow you across all of them and flattens enjoyment more broadly. Persistent exhaustion also has physical causes worth ruling out, including thyroid problems, anaemia, and sleep disorders. This test measures the exhaustion pattern, not the cause.

5)What to do next

Low or moderate: protect the basics first, since steady sleep, real breaks that are not spent on a screen, and movement do more here than any productivity system.
High: look at the load itself rather than your tolerance of it. Which specific demands are non-negotiable, which are assumed, and which could be handed over or dropped? Burnout at this level rarely improves while the input stays constant.
Severe: speak with a doctor. That covers both support for the exhaustion and ruling out physical causes that look identical from the inside.
In every case, retake the test in a few weeks. The trend tells you whether what you changed is working.

Burnout and chronic stress feed each other, so a high score here often pairs well with the free stress test (PSS-10), which measures how unpredictable and overloaded your life has felt this month. If low mood is the bigger part of the picture, the free depression test (PHQ-9) is a better place to look.

If you are struggling to cope, or you are having thoughts of harming yourself or feel in immediate danger, please contact local emergency services or a crisis line you trust right now. You do not have to manage this alone, and reaching out is a sign of strength, not weakness.

6)Why tracking exhaustion over time helps

Burnout is hard to see from the inside precisely because it arrives slowly. The week you are in always feels like the normal amount of tired, and the comparison you would need in order to notice the slide is a version of yourself from three months ago that you cannot accurately remember. That is the specific problem a record solves. Tracking your energy and mood alongside everyday factors like sleep, workload, and time off tends to surface patterns that are invisible day to day, that the flat stretches follow the weeks with no real break, say, or that a bad Monday is reliably a short Sunday night. Those patterns are where change becomes possible, because they turn a vague sense of being drained into specific, addressable causes. Andy is built around exactly this loop: a quick daily check-in, and a clear view of how your mood and energy move over the weeks.

7)About this test

This test uses the six-item personal burnout subscale of the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, which its authors released free of copyright for public use. It is intended for self-check and education only. It does not store your answers and is not a substitute for professional care or diagnosis. Source: Kristensen TS, Borritz M, Villadsen E, Christensen KB (2005), The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory: A new tool for the assessment of burnout, Work & Stress. Last reviewed September 2026.