# How to calculate percent rank in Excel

Count the values below each one and divide by the count minus 1: `=COUNTIF($B$2:$B$11,"<"&B2)/(COUNT($B$2:$B$11)-1)`, the same as PERCENTRANK.INC.

**Excel:** `=COUNTIF($B$2:$B$11,"<"&B2)/(COUNT($B$2:$B$11)-1)` (Excel 2010 and later)

**Google Sheets:** the same formula works.

## Example

Sample data (row 1 is the header):

| A | B | C |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Student | Score | Percent rank |
| Ava | 72 |  |
| Ben | 85 |  |
| Chloe | 91 |  |
| Dan | 64 |  |
| Eve | 85 |  |
| Finn | 78 |  |
| Gia | 99 |  |
| Hugo | 58 |  |
| Iris | 88 |  |
| Jack | 70 |  |

Formula in C2, filled to C11: `=COUNTIF($B$2:$B$11,"<"&B2)/(COUNT($B$2:$B$11)-1)`

Result: 33.33%; 55.56%; 88.89%; 11.11%; 55.56%; 44.44%; 100%; 0%; 77.78%; 22.22%

## How it works

Percent rank says what share of the other values a value beats. COUNTIF counts the scores strictly below this one, and dividing by the number of other scores (10-1 = 9) turns that into a share. The lowest score gets 0%, the highest 100%, and tied scores share a rank: both 85s beat 5 of 9 others, 55.56%.

This is what PERCENTRANK.INC returns, except that PERCENTRANK.INC rounds down to 3 significant digits by default (0.555).

## Other ways

- `=(RANK.EQ(B2,$B$2:$B$11,1)-1)/(COUNT($B$2:$B$11)-1)`: Ranks the scores in ascending order (1 for the lowest); the rank minus 1 is the number of scores below.

## Common mistakes

- PERCENTRANK.EXC uses a different scale, so it never returns exactly 0% or 100%. Don't mix the two in one report.
- Percent rank is not the percentage score: 99 points is the 100th percentile here, not 99%.

## Questions

**How do I use PERCENTRANK.INC directly?**

`=PERCENTRANK.INC($B$2:$B$11,B2)`. Add a third argument for more digits: `=PERCENTRANK.INC($B$2:$B$11,B2,4)`.

**How do I find the score at the 90th percentile?**

Use `=PERCENTILE.INC(B2:B11,0.9)`.

Every formula and result on this page was checked by running it in the Spreadsheet Practice formula engine on 2026-10-30.

Source: https://spreadsheetpractice.com/formulas/percent-rank