Free social anxiety test
How much does social anxiety hold you back?
Answer 17 quick questions based on the SPIN scale. You get your score and what it means straight away.
17 questions · about two minutes · private
This free social anxiety test uses the SPIN, one of the most widely trusted screening questionnaires for social anxiety. It takes about two minutes, asks nothing personal, and gives you a score with a plain-language explanation of what it means. It runs entirely in your browser: nothing is saved, and you never have to sign up or hand over an email. Below the test you will find how it works, how to read your result, and what sensible next steps look like.
1)What is the SPIN?
The SPIN, short for Social Phobia Inventory, is a brief questionnaire that screens for social anxiety. It was developed by Kathryn Connor and colleagues in 2000 and has since become one of the most widely used self-report measures for social anxiety in clinics and research. It asks how much, over the past week, seventeen common experiences have bothered you, spanning fear, physical symptoms, and avoidance, from being scared of parties to trembling in front of others.
Its popularity comes from being short, well validated, and easy to repeat. You can take it in a couple of minutes and take it again a week or two later to see whether anything has shifted. That repeatability is a big part of why it is useful: social anxiety tends to ebb and flow with circumstance, and a measure you can retake cheaply tells you more over time than any single reading.
2)Signs and symptoms of social anxiety
Social anxiety is more than shyness. It shows up across fear, the body, and behaviour, and the pieces feed each other: the fear drives physical symptoms, and the physical symptoms fuel avoidance. The SPIN covers all three.
- Fear: dreading judgement or criticism, fearing embarrassment, worrying about people in authority, and expecting to look stupid or say the wrong thing.
- Physical: blushing, sweating, a racing heart, trembling or shaking, and a shaky voice when others are watching.
- Avoidance: skipping parties and social events, staying quiet in groups, dodging speeches or being the centre of attention, and avoiding people you do not know.
Almost everyone feels some of this now and then, and a little social nervousness is normal and often useful. What the test is really probing is how much these experiences bother you and how much they push you to avoid things, because that is what separates ordinary shyness from something worth a closer look.
3)How the scoring works
Each of the seventeen questions scores from 0 (not at all) to 4 (extremely), so your total runs from 0 to 68. A higher total points to more social anxiety. The commonly used bands are:
| Score | Level | What it usually suggests |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 20 | None to minimal | Little or no social anxiety right now |
| 21 to 30 | Mild | Some social anxiety, often eased by small steps |
| 31 to 40 | Moderate | Worth discussing with a doctor or therapist |
| 41 to 50 | Severe | A professional assessment is a good next step |
| 51 to 68 | Very severe | Everyday social situations may feel overwhelming |
A score of 19 or more is the cutoff commonly used to flag likely social anxiety disorder, so anything in that range is worth taking seriously. Like most screening scales, the SPIN is designed to be sensitive, meaning it errs slightly towards flagging people rather than missing them. A raised score is an invitation to look closer, not a verdict.
4)What your score means, and what it doesn't
A single score is a snapshot of the past week, not a label and not a diagnosis. Social anxiety naturally rises and falls with sleep, stress, workload, and life events, so the direction it moves over time matters far more than any one number. Two people can both score 25 and be in completely different places: one heading into a daunting stretch of presentations, the other coming out the far side of one.
It is also worth being clear about the test's limits. The SPIN was built specifically for social anxiety, the fear of being judged, watched, or embarrassed in front of others. It is not designed to pick up generalized anxiety, panic disorder, or obsessive-compulsive patterns, though it may catch their overflow. It also helps to separate shyness from social anxiety disorder: shyness is a personality trait many people live with comfortably, while social anxiety disorder is when that fear becomes intense and persistent enough to shrink your life. And because it relies on your own honest reporting of the past week, a rough week can inflate it and a calm one can flatter it. This is exactly why retaking it and watching the trend is more informative than fixating on a single result.
5)What to do next
- None to minimal or mild: keep doing the small things that help. Staying gently connected, leaning into situations rather than avoiding them, and steady sleep and movement all tend to keep social anxiety from building.
- Moderate: keep an eye on it, put the basics in place, and consider a conversation with your doctor if it holds or climbs over the coming weeks.
- Severe or very severe: it is worth speaking to a doctor or therapist. CBT and gradual, structured exposure to feared situations are well established and effective for social anxiety. A screen is a prompt to get a proper assessment, not the assessment itself.
- In every case, retake the test every week or two. The trend line tells you far more than any single reading.
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 over time helps
A test taken once tells you where you are today. A test taken regularly tells you where you are heading, and direction is what you can actually act on. When you log the social situations you face alongside how anxious they left you, patterns start to surface that are invisible from the inside, that speaking up in meetings gets easier the more weeks you do it, say, or that a run of cancelled plans quietly ratchets the dread back up. Those patterns are where change becomes possible, because they turn a vague sense of being socially anxious into specific, addressable moments. Andy is built around exactly this loop: a quick daily check-in, and a clear view of how your mood and anxiety move over the weeks.
7)About this test
The SPIN is freely available for clinical and research use. This page follows the original scoring and is intended for screening and education only. It does not store your answers and is not a substitute for professional care or diagnosis. Source: Connor KM, Davidson JRT, Churchill LE, et al. (2000), Psychometric properties of the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN), British Journal of Psychiatry. Last reviewed August 2026.
17 questions · about two minutes · private
What is the SPIN social anxiety test?
The SPIN, or Social Phobia Inventory, is a short 17-question screening scale for social anxiety. Each answer scores 0 to 4, for a total from 0 to 68. Higher scores point to more social anxiety.
Is this social anxiety test accurate?
The SPIN is a validated screening tool used in clinics and research, but a screen is not a diagnosis. It tells you whether it may be worth speaking with a professional, not what you have.
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.
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 19 or higher, or in the moderate range and up, consider talking with a doctor or therapist.