PSL Scale Chart: Every Tier Explained

The PSL scale is a facial attractiveness rating from looksmaxxing forums. It usually runs from 0 or 1 up to 8, with 4 as the average. Scores are grouped into named tiers. For men these are sub 3, LTN, MTN, HTN, Chadlite, Chad and True Adam. The scale is designed to be harsher than a casual 1–10 rating, and it is an internet convention, not a validated measurement.

PSL scale chart at a glance

These are the bands most community rubrics use, and the same cut-offs apply to the female PSL chart. Other charts move the boundaries; see "Sources disagree" below.

What does PSL stand for?

PSL comes from the names of three early-2010s forums: PUAHate (Pick-Up Artist Hate), SlutHate and Lookism. Their members built the rating system and much of the vocabulary around it. Later, people started reading the letters as "Proportion, Size, Lineation". AI-generated summaries add other expansions too, such as "Physical Sexual Level", "Pretty Scale Level" and "Peak Soft Looks". These are after-the-fact inventions; the forum names are the actual origin.

PSL tiers explained

Sub 3 and sub 5

Sub 3 is the lowest band. "Sub 5" is looser: some guides use it for anything below 5, others for anything under the 4.0 midpoint. Both terms come from the harsh, often insulting end of looksmaxxing slang.

Normie tiers: LTN, MTN, HTN

"Normie" is the ordinary majority. LTN (Low-Tier Normie, about 2–3.5) is below average, MTN (Mid-Tier Normie, about 3.5–5) is the average band where community guides say most people land, and HTN (High-Tier Normie, about 5–6) is above average. A frequently quoted breakdown puts PSL 6 at roughly the top 15–25%. Detailed charts such as the Aesthetica Index wiki add plus and minus sub-tiers (MTN+, HTN- and so on).

Chadlite and Chad

Chadlite (about 6–6.5) means clearly attractive. Chad (about 6.5–7.75) is the rare, striking tier. The same breakdown estimates PSL 7 at roughly the top 5–10% and 8 or more at under 1%. "Gigachad" turns up as a meme term for the extreme top end.

True Adam

True Adam is the ceiling, about 7.75–8 or "PSL 8+". It describes a hypothetical peak of male facial attractiveness: near-perfect symmetry, a strong jawline and balanced masculine features. Forum users often admit it is more a concept than a real category. On TikTok the phrase drifted into a synonym for "terachad", a more extreme version of Chad. Its female counterpart is True Eve.

Sources disagree: other PSL cut-offs

The two columns share the same 4.0 midpoint but put the tier names up to a full point apart. The percentages are community estimates. No one has measured them on a real population.

What the PSL scale claims to measure

According to GQ's reporting, as summarised in Google's results, ratings rest on four main "pillars":

• Harmony: how features fit together, symmetry, balance across the facial thirds and fifths.
• Sexual dimorphism: how clearly masculine or feminine the face reads (for men: brow ridge, jaw width, chin projection).
• Angularity and lineation: sharpness of the jaw and cheekbones, often tied to low body fat.
• Miscellaneous: skin clarity, teeth, eye spacing and tilt, nose shape, eyebrows.

Clothes, charisma and grooming are deliberately left out. That is one reason critics say the scale captures only a slice of what people actually find attractive.

PSL out of 8 vs a 1–10 scale

On casual 1–10 scales, most people get placed around 7 or 8. The PSL scale pins the average at 4 out of 8, so its numbers run lower. There is no agreed formula for converting between them. A casual "7/10" means "good-looking", while PSL 7 is described as near the top of the population. If someone gives you a number, ask which scale they mean.

Female PSL tiers

Women are rated on the same numbers with different names: Becky in place of Normie, Stacylite and Stacy in place of Chadlite and Chad, and True Eve at the top. See the female PSL chart for the full breakdown.

Limits and criticism of the PSL scale

Google's own summary calls the PSL scale "an informal internet subculture artifact, not a medically, psychologically, or scientifically validated metric of beauty". The Conversation has described it as pseudoscientific. GQ and others link it to harsh online rating culture and to self-esteem problems among teenagers on TikTok and Discord. Interest in the term peaked in spring 2026 and has since settled at about a third of that level in Google Trends, but the vocabulary is still widely used.

If you use the chart, use it to decode slang, not to judge yourself or anyone else. We never rate real people.

Want to see how the pillars combine? Try the PSL calculator (no photo). It is a self-rated, just-for-fun estimate.