Resting heart rate by age: chart for men and women

The average adult resting heart rate is about 71 beats per minute (bpm) for men and 74 bpm for women, and it changes very little between age 20 and age 80. The normal adult range is 60 to 100 bpm, and well-trained athletes can sit at 40 to 60 bpm. Children run faster: about 129 bpm before age 1, falling to about 75 bpm by the late teens.

Those numbers come from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which measured a seated pulse in 35,302 healthy people. The charts below show the average and the normal spread for each age group, for men and women separately. After the charts, this guide explains why your watch shows a different number, what moves resting heart rate up or down, and when a value needs a doctor.

What is resting heart rate?

Resting heart rate (RHR) is the number of times your heart beats per minute when you are awake, calm and still, usually measured sitting or lying down. It is one of the basic vital signs. The adult normal range is 60 to 100 bpm, but the value that matters most is your own usual number and how it changes over time.

Clinics measure it as a pulse after a few minutes of quiet sitting. Wearables estimate it differently. Apple describes its HealthKit resting heart rate as "an estimation of the user's lowest heart rate during periods of rest", built by analyzing sedentary heart-rate samples through the day. Methods differ between devices. This is one reason a watch value can differ from a clinic reading.

What is the average resting heart rate by age?

In US national survey data, the average resting heart rate falls from about 129 bpm in infants to about 75 bpm in the late teens, then levels off. Adults aged 20 to 80 and over average between 70 and 76 bpm. The normal adult range of 60 to 100 bpm applies at every adult age.

The table below gives the mean and the middle 90% of healthy people (5th to 95th percentile) for each age group.

Age group	Average RHR (bpm)	Median (bpm)	Middle 90% of people (bpm)
Under 1 year	129	126	103 to 156
4 to 5 years	96	94	79 to 114
6 to 8 years	87	85	68 to 105
9 to 11 years	83	81	63 to 101
12 to 15 years	78	76	58 to 98
16 to 19 years	75	73	58 to 95
20 to 39 years	73	71	57 to 92
40 to 59 years	72	70	57 to 91
60 to 79 years	72	69	56 to 91
80 years and over	72	70	57 to 93

Source: Ostchega et al., NCHS National Health Statistics Reports No. 41, NHANES 1999 to 2008, Table 1. Seated pulse after about 4 minutes of rest; people with conditions or medicines that affect pulse were excluded.

Two points stand out. First, the adult averages are almost flat. Age alone does not push resting heart rate up or down much in adulthood. Second, the spread between people is wide. A healthy 40-year-old at 57 bpm and a healthy 40-year-old at 91 bpm are both inside the middle 90%.

What is a normal resting heart rate for men by age?

For men aged 20 and over, the average resting heart rate is 71 bpm in US survey data, and it stays between 70 and 71 bpm in every adult age group. The middle 90% of healthy men fall between about 50 and 94 bpm. Men's resting heart rate levels off in early adulthood.

Men, age	Average RHR (bpm)	Median (bpm)	Middle 90% (bpm)
16 to 19	72	69	52 to 92
20 to 39	71	69	52 to 89
40 to 59	71	68	52 to 90
60 to 79	70	67	50 to 91
80 and over	71	68	51 to 94

Source: Ostchega et al., NCHS NHSR No. 41, Table 2 (NHANES 1999 to 2008).

In the same survey, 15.2% of adult men had a resting heart rate below 60 bpm, the traditional cut-off for a slow heart rate (bradycardia). Only 1.3% were at 100 bpm or above. A rate in the 50s is common in healthy men, especially active ones.

What is a normal resting heart rate for women by age?

For women aged 20 and over, the average resting heart rate is 74 bpm in US survey data. It is highest in women aged 20 to 39 (76 bpm) and settles at 73 bpm from age 40. The middle 90% of healthy women fall between about 56 and 95 bpm. Women level off later than men, in middle age.

Women, age	Average RHR (bpm)	Median (bpm)	Middle 90% (bpm)
16 to 19	79	77	58 to 99
20 to 39	76	74	57 to 95
40 to 59	73	71	56 to 92
60 to 79	73	70	56 to 92
80 and over	73	71	56 to 93

Source: Ostchega et al., NCHS NHSR No. 41, Table 3 (NHANES 1999 to 2008).

In the survey, 6.9% of adult women had a resting heart rate below 60 bpm and 1.9% had one at 100 bpm or above. A wearable study of 92,457 adults found the same direction: women had a higher resting heart rate than men in every age bracket.

Resting heart rate in women also moves with the menstrual cycle. Wearable studies have found higher resting pulse in the luteal phase, the second half of the cycle. If you track your cycle, compare a value with the same cycle phase in previous months, not only with last week.

Why is my watch resting heart rate lower than these charts?

Watch values are usually lower than clinic charts because they measure at quieter moments. The survey data come from a seated pulse after about 4 minutes of rest. A watch picks low values from the whole day or night. In a study of 92,457 wearable users, the average daily resting heart rate was 65.5 bpm, about 6 to 8 bpm below the clinic averages.

The wearable study, by researchers at Scripps Research, used about 33 million daily values. Its key ranges:

Measure (wearable study, adults)	Value
Average daily RHR, all adults	65.5 bpm (SD 7.7)
Range that held 95% of men	50 to 80 bpm
Range that held 95% of women	53 to 82 bpm
Lowest and highest personal averages	39.7 and 108.6 bpm
Typical week-to-week change for one person	about 3 bpm
People with at least one week changing 10 bpm or more	about 20%
Seasonal swing in the population average	about 2 bpm (highest in early January, lowest late July)

Source: Quer et al., PLOS ONE 2020, 92,457 US adults with a wrist-worn tracker, March 2016 to February 2018.

The practical rule: compare a watch value with your own past watch values, and a clinic value with clinic charts. Do not mix the two.

Does resting heart rate change with age?

In adults, average resting heart rate changes only slightly with age. US survey averages stay between 70 and 76 bpm from age 20 to over 80. In wearable data, daily resting heart rate rose a little until about age 50 and then declined. The large changes happen in childhood, when it falls by more than 50 bpm.

The flat adult average hides a different trend: maximum heart rate falls with age, and fitness tends to fall too. So the same resting value can mean different things at 25 and at 70. For an age-related fitness marker, VO2 max is more informative. See VO2 max by age.

What is a normal resting heart rate for children and teens?

Children have faster resting heart rates than adults, and the rate falls steadily with age. In US survey data, the average was about 129 bpm before age 1, 96 bpm at age 4 to 5, 83 bpm at age 9 to 11 and 78 bpm at age 12 to 15. By the late teens it is close to adult values.

Girls and boys start to differ in the teenage years. At age 16 to 19, the average was 79 bpm for girls and 72 bpm for boys. Under age 20 overall, the average was 90 bpm for females and 86 bpm for males. Adult charts and the 60 to 100 bpm range do not apply to young children; a pediatrician uses age-specific ranges. If a child has a fast or slow heart rate with fainting, breathing trouble, poor feeding or unusual tiredness, see a doctor.

Why do two healthy people have such different resting heart rates?

Healthy adults can differ by a lot. In the 92,457-person wearable study, personal averages ranged from 39.7 to 108.6 bpm. Age, sex, BMI and sleep together explained no more than 10% of the difference between people. Each person's own value, however, was fairly stable over time.

That is the main reason population charts are a starting point, not a verdict. A value at the 10th or 90th percentile can be normal for you. What deserves attention is a change: a resting heart rate that rises or falls by several beats for days or weeks without a clear reason.

What is a good resting heart rate?

A good resting heart rate for most adults sits in the lower part of the 60 to 100 bpm range, and lower values within the normal range are associated with better outcomes in large studies. A meta-analysis of 46 studies and about 1.2 million people found that each 10 bpm higher resting heart rate was associated with a 9% higher risk of death from any cause.

The same meta-analysis compared groups. People with a resting heart rate above 80 bpm had a 45% higher risk of all-cause death than people in the lowest group. These are associations in populations. They do not mean that a low number protects a single person, or that a higher normal number causes disease. Fitness, illness, medicines and genetics all sit behind the number.

A useful way to read your own value:

Your resting heart rate	What it usually means	What to do
Below 60 bpm, no symptoms, active	Common in fit adults and athletes (40 to 60 bpm)	Nothing, keep tracking your trend
Below 60 bpm with dizziness, fainting or fatigue	Can be a sign of a slow heart rhythm (bradycardia)	See a doctor
60 to 80 bpm	Inside the normal range for adults of every age	Track your trend
80 to 100 bpm	Normal, but in the upper part of the range	Look at sleep, activity, alcohol, illness, stress
Above 100 bpm at rest	Fast heart rate (tachycardia) by the standard definition	See a doctor, especially if it persists

Ranges: MedlinePlus (NIH), NCHS NHSR No. 41. Risk associations: Zhang et al., CMAJ 2016.

What affects resting heart rate?

Resting heart rate responds to fitness, sleep, illness, alcohol, stress, medicines, temperature and hormones. Some of these factors move it for one night, others for months. A rise of 5 to 10 bpm over a few days is often a short-term signal, while a slow drift over months usually reflects fitness or health changes.

Factor	Typical direction	Time scale
Regular endurance training or yoga	Down	Weeks to months
Fever and acute infection	Up	Days
Alcohol in the evening	Up during sleep: about 1.4, 4.0 and 8.7 bpm after low, moderate and high intake	Same night
Short or very long sleep	Up; lowest RHR at about 7 to 7.5 hours of sleep in wearable data	Days
Luteal phase of the menstrual cycle	Up	About 2 weeks each cycle
Season	About 2 bpm higher in winter than summer (population average)	Months
Medicines, thyroid problems	Up or down depending on the cause	Varies

Sources: Reimers et al. 2018; Pietilä et al. 2018; Quer et al. 2020; Goodale et al. 2019. Infection: see the linked article below.

For the full list of reasons and what to check first, see why your resting heart rate is going up. For the specific pattern during an infection, see heart rate when sick.

How can you lower your resting heart rate?

Regular aerobic exercise is the most consistent way to lower resting heart rate. A meta-analysis of 191 studies found that endurance training and yoga lowered resting heart rate in both men and women, with drops of about 3 to 6 bpm reported. People who started with a higher rate, and younger people, tended to see larger drops.

Other levers act on the night-to-night number rather than the long-term baseline: enough sleep, less alcohol in the evening, and time to recover from illness. The full evidence, with what to expect and how fast, is in how to lower your resting heart rate.

How do you measure resting heart rate correctly?

Measure resting heart rate in the morning after waking, before coffee and before getting up, or let a wearable estimate it during sleep. For a manual reading, sit quietly for a few minutes, find the pulse at the wrist or neck, and count the beats for a full minute, or for 30 seconds and multiply by 2.

Tips that make readings comparable:

• Same time: Measure at the same time of day, ideally right after waking.
• Same position: Sitting and lying give different values. Pick one.
• Same method: Watch, chest strap, camera or manual count. Do not compare across methods.
• Look at the trend: One reading is noisy. A 7-day average shows your real baseline.

If you have only an iPhone, you can still measure. The camera method and the other options are covered in how to check your heart rate on iPhone. Resting heart rate during the night has its own pattern, explained in sleeping heart rate.

How does resting heart rate relate to HRV?

Resting heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) come from the same heartbeats but answer different questions. Resting heart rate counts beats per minute. HRV measures how much the time between beats varies, in milliseconds. A lower resting heart rate and a higher HRV both tend to appear when the body is rested and the parasympathetic system is active.

The two often move in opposite directions on a bad night: after alcohol, during illness or after very hard training, resting heart rate tends to rise while HRV falls. Because they respond together, many recovery scores combine them. See what is a good HRV for HRV ranges and recovery score explained for how the two are combined.

When should you see a doctor about your resting heart rate?

See a doctor if your resting heart rate stays above 100 bpm, or below 60 bpm when you are not a trained athlete and you have symptoms. Also see a doctor for an irregular pulse, a pounding pulse that lasts more than a few minutes, fainting, chest pain or shortness of breath. Call emergency services for severe symptoms.

A wearable or an app can show a trend, but it can not diagnose a heart rhythm problem. If a number worries you, bring the trend to your doctor. The data can help the conversation, and an ECG can answer the question a wrist sensor can not.

How Svanu tracks resting heart rate

Svanu reads resting heart rate from Apple Health, where Apple Watch writes it. Some watches from other brands do not write a resting heart rate to Apple Health. In that case the app derives one from heart-rate samples: the lowest 30-minute average during your main sleep. A derived value is only compared with other derived values, so the method never changes under your trend.

Resting heart rate is one input to the recovery score, together with HRV and sleep, compared with your own recent baseline. It is also one of the signals in illness detection, which compares your resting heart rate, HRV, wrist temperature, blood oxygen and respiratory rate with your own recent baseline and flags a change only when it is both unusual and large. That is a wellness signal, not a diagnosis. All scores are computed on your iPhone. You can see how the app works and what it costs on the Svanu home page.