Survey response rate calculator
Enter how many people your survey reached and how many completed it. The calculator returns the response rate, and if you know some invitations never reached an eligible person, it removes those from the denominator first.
Calculate your response rate
Everyone the survey link reached.
Finished responses only.
Bounced or outside the audience. Blank means 0.
Enter the numbers above to see the rate.
The formula
Response rate = completed surveys ÷ (invitations sent − known ineligible invitations) × 100.
This is the everyday form of the measure. The American Association for Public Opinion Research publishes stricter definitions in its Standard Definitions document. Its RR1 counts only complete interviews as responses and places partial interviews, refusals and cases of unknown eligibility in the denominator. Use AAPOR’s definitions when a figure has to be defended in a report, and this calculator for a quick, transparent read.
A worked example
You send 200 invitations and 50 people finish. The response rate is 50 ÷ 200 = 25%.
Now suppose 20 of those invitations bounced, so they could never have reached anyone. The eligible base is 180, and 50 ÷ 180 = 27.8%. Removing invitations you know were never eligible is the only adjustment this calculator makes.
What the number does and does not tell you
A response rate measures how much of the group you reached answered. It says nothing about why the others did not, and a survey with a high rate can still be unrepresentative if the people who answered differ from those who did not. Reporting the rate with the number invited and the number completed lets a reader judge both.
The calculator runs entirely in your browser. The numbers you enter are not sent to Seagit or anywhere else.
Track completions in a form
A Seagit form records each completed response with the time it was submitted, and the dashboard shows the total against your limit. Responses export to CSV, so the completed count you need for this calculator is the number of rows.
Sign in to build a survey on the free plan, or browse the form templates.
Common questions
- What is a good survey response rate?
- There is no single benchmark that holds across surveys, because the rate depends on the channel, the audience and how the invitation was sent. Compare your rate with your own earlier surveys of the same kind, and use a published benchmark only when it describes a comparable audience and method.
- Should I count people who started but did not finish?
- This simple rate counts completed surveys only, and abandoned surveys are not in the numerator. AAPOR’s RR1 also counts only complete interviews, but it puts partial interviews in the denominator as non-responses, so when many people start and stop, RR1 comes out lower than this figure. Say which definition you used whenever you report the number.
- What counts as an ineligible invitation?
- An invitation you know could not have reached an eligible person: an address that bounced, a person who has left the audience you were surveying, or a recipient outside the group the survey is for. Leave the field at 0 if you do not know of any, rather than guessing.
- Does a higher response rate make the results accurate?
- Not on its own. A high rate from a group that differs from the people you did not hear from can still mislead. Response rate tells you how much of the invited group answered, not whether the answers represent everyone.