HRV Interpreter
Enter your age and resting/overnight HRV (RMSSD in milliseconds, the number most rings and straps report) to see where it lands against population norms for your age — and what actually moves it.
Educational estimate, not medical advice. Population percentiles are approximate (synthesised from published normative HRV data). Your own multi-week trend and baseline matter far more than a single reading or a population comparison. RMSSD varies night to night with sleep, alcohol, illness and training load.
Track your HRV automatically every night
ONDA Life reads your overnight HRV, builds your personal baseline, and turns the number into a recovery protocol — no manual entry.
Download ONDA Life on the App Store →HRV (RMSSD) by age — reference table
| Age | Low (p10) | Below (p25) | Median (p50) | Above (p75) | Excellent (p90) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18–29 | 30 | 42 | 58 | 78 | 100 |
| 30–39 | 26 | 36 | 50 | 68 | 90 |
| 40–49 | 22 | 30 | 42 | 56 | 75 |
| 50–59 | 18 | 26 | 36 | 48 | 64 |
| 60–69 | 16 | 22 | 30 | 42 | 56 |
| 70+ | 14 | 19 | 26 | 36 | 48 |
Sources & methodology
These bands are derived, not copied from a single dataset. Most normative studies report means ± SD or medians by decade for short-term, daytime, seated or supine recordings. We combined those central values (Nunan 2010), applied the decade-by-decade decline (Umetani 1998) and the age/sex spread (Voss 2015), then converted to approximate percentiles accounting for the known right-skew of RMSSD. Crucially, the table is keyed to night-time RMSSD — the overnight window consumer wearables (Oura, Whoop, Garmin) measure, when parasympathetic tone and RMSSD are at their highest. That is why these medians sit above the ~42 ms pooled daytime figure in Nunan 2010, and why a daytime 5-minute lab reading should not be compared directly against them. Treat the percentile as a rough population anchor, not a clinical cut-off — your own multi-week trend matters far more.
- [1] Nunan D, Sandercock GRH, Brodie DA (2010). A quantitative systematic review of normal values for short-term heart rate variability in healthy adults. Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology, 33(11):1407–1417.
Pooled reference RMSSD/SDNN values across 44 studies of healthy adults (pooled resting RMSSD ≈ 42 ms) — anchors the central tendency.
- [2] Umetani K, Singer DH, McCraty R, Atkinson M (1998). Twenty-four hour time domain heart rate variability and heart rate: relations to age and gender over nine decades. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 31(3):593–601.
The classic age-decline curve — time-domain HRV (incl. RMSSD) falling decade by decade — shapes the per-band shift.
- [3] Voss A, Schroeder R, Heitmann A, Peters A, Perz S (2015). Short-term heart rate variability — influence of gender and age in healthy subjects. PLoS ONE, 10(3):e0118308.
Large healthy cohort (n ≈ 1,900) with age- and sex-stratified short-term HRV — informs the spread (p10–p90 width).
- [4] Task Force of the ESC and NASPE (1996). Heart rate variability: standards of measurement, physiological interpretation, and clinical use. Circulation, 93(5):1043–1065.
Foundational definitions of RMSSD/SDNN and measurement standards the literature reports against.
Common questions
What is a good HRV for my age?
HRV (RMSSD) declines with age — a healthy median is roughly 58 ms in your 20s, 50 ms in your 30s, 42 ms in your 40s, 36 ms in your 50s and 30 ms in your 60s. But "good" is relative to your own baseline: a value that rises over weeks beats a high one-off reading.
What HRV metric does this use — RMSSD or SDNN?
RMSSD, the short-term parasympathetic metric most consumer devices (Oura, Whoop, Garmin, Polar) report as overnight or resting "HRV". If your device only shows SDNN or a proprietary 0–100 score, the percentile here will not map directly.
Why does my HRV change so much night to night?
RMSSD is sensitive: alcohol, late meals, poor or short sleep, illness, dehydration and hard training all suppress it for a night or two. Day-to-day swings of 10–20 ms are normal — read the weekly trend, not single nights.
How do I raise my HRV?
The levers with the most evidence: consistent sleep timing and duration, Zone-2 cardio, cutting alcohol (especially within 3 hours of bed), slow resonance-frequency breathing (~6 breaths/min), and managing chronic stress load. Improvements show over weeks, not days.
Is low HRV dangerous?
A single low reading is not a medical event — it usually reflects recent sleep, alcohol or training. Persistently low HRV relative to your own baseline can signal accumulated stress or under-recovery. This tool is educational, not a diagnosis; see a clinician for health concerns.
Where do these HRV reference numbers come from?
The bands are derived from peer-reviewed normative HRV research — chiefly the Nunan 2010 meta-analysis of 44 healthy-adult studies, the Umetani 1998 nine-decade age-decline data, and the Voss 2015 age/sex cohort (n≈1,900), against the ESC/NASPE 1996 measurement standards. Because the table is keyed to night-time RMSSD (what wearables measure, when parasympathetic tone is highest), the medians sit above the ~42 ms pooled daytime figure in Nunan. Full citations and the derivation method are listed in the Sources section on this page.