Chronotype quiz: early bird or night owl?
Six quick questions about when you fall asleep and wake up. You get an estimate of your chronotype, the middle of your sleep on free days, and the morning light window the LightOtter app uses for it.
What is my chronotype?
Your chronotype is the time of day your body clock prefers for sleep. A common way to describe it is the middle of your sleep on free days, when no alarm sets the time. Early types sleep early, late types sleep late, and many people are in between.
How this quiz works
The quiz takes the middle of your sleep on free days. If you sleep longer on free days than on workdays, it subtracts half of that extra sleep, because catching up pushes the middle later. It assumes five workdays and two free days, and it asks when you fall asleep, not when you go to bed.
A middle before 3:00 counts as early, after 5:00 as late, anything in between as in between. This is a simplified grouping taken from a large US diary study; its authors advise caution with such limits. Teenagers and young adults are later on average, and the quiz does not adjust for age.
What your social jet lag means
The quiz also shows your social jet lag: how much later the middle of your sleep falls on free days than on workdays (Roenneberg et al., 2019). It is usually larger for later types. A steady wake-up time, also on weekends, and daylight soon after waking keep the gap small.
How your chronotype changes with age
In a large US diary study, chronotypes got later during the teenage years, were latest at around 19 and became earlier after that. Before 40, men were on average later types than women; after 40 it was the other way round (Fischer et al., 2017). So the same result can mean something different at 16 and at 60.
Does your chronotype stay the same?
Over months it tends to stay similar: in a small study, chronotype measures were reproducible from one visit to the next, months to years apart (Kantermann and Eastman, 2018). Bigger changes in your sleep schedule, your age and your daily routine can still move it.
Can you shift your chronotype?
Partly. Daylight is one of the main cues your body clock uses to keep time. In an early survey on chronotypes, people who reported more time outdoors in daylight tended to sleep earlier. That is an association, not a promise – but morning daylight is often the easiest part of the day to change.
Sources
- Roenneberg, T., Wirz-Justice, A., Merrow, M. (2003). Life between clocks: daily temporal patterns of human chronotypes. Journal of Biological Rhythms 18(1): 80–90.
- Roenneberg, T., et al. (2007). Epidemiology of the human circadian clock. Sleep Medicine Reviews 11(6): 429–438.
- Roenneberg, T., et al. (2019). Chronotype and social jetlag: a (self-) critical review. Biology 8(3): 54.
- Fischer, D., et al. (2017). Chronotypes in the US – influence of age and sex. PLOS ONE 12(6): e0178782.
- Kitamura, S., et al. (2014). Validity of the Japanese version of the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire. Chronobiology International 31(7): 845–850.
- Kantermann, T., Eastman, C. I. (2018). Circadian phase, circadian period and chronotype are reproducible over months. Chronobiology International 35(2): 280–288.
Last reviewed: October 2026
The quiz builds on these papers. The questions are our own, and the three groups are a simplification.
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