What your Copenhagen Burnout Inventory score means

The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory gives you three scores rather than one, and that is its main advantage. A single burnout number tells you how tired you are. Three tell you where the tiredness is coming from, which is what you need in order to do something about it.

This guide explains how the scores are calculated, what the ranges mean, and how to read the combination. If you have not taken the test yet, it takes about five minutes.

How the scoring works

The CBI has nineteen questions in three scales. Six ask about personal burnout, seven about work-related burnout, and six about client-related burnout. Each question has five answer options. For frequency questions they run from "always" to "never or almost never." For intensity questions they run from "to a very high degree" to "to a very low degree."

Each answer is converted to a number: 100, 75, 50, 25, or 0. One work question, about whether you have enough energy for family and friends in your leisure time, is reverse-scored, because having energy left is a good sign. Your score for each scale is the average of its questions, so every scale runs from 0 to 100, and higher always means more burnout.

The overall score shown on your results page is the average across all the questions you answered. It is a convenient summary, but the three scale scores are more informative.

The ranges

The original CBI validation study and the occupational health literature that followed use these approximate anchors:

0 to 49: low. Exhaustion is present at a level most working people experience. Daily recovery is doing its job. This is not a guarantee that everything is fine, but it suggests that whatever strain exists is currently being absorbed.

50 to 74: moderate. Exhaustion is a regular feature of your weeks, and recovery is not fully keeping up. This is the range where most people first notice something is wrong, and it is also the range where fairly modest changes have the largest effect. People here tend to benefit from looking at recovery habits and at one or two specific demands.

75 to 89: high. Exhaustion is dominating. Rest is probably no longer restoring you, and some cynicism or sense of inefficacy is likely to have set in. Changes to the work itself are needed, not only to habits around it, and it is worth talking to your manager, occupational health, or a doctor.

90 to 100: very high. Severe strain. At this level, functioning is usually affected and there is a real risk of progression to something more serious. Prioritise rest, reduce load as much as you can, and seek professional support.

These are guides, not diagnostic thresholds. The CBI is a screening tool. It tells you that a pattern is present and how strong it is. It does not tell you why, and it cannot distinguish burnout from other causes of exhaustion such as depression, sleep disorders, or physical illness. Burnout versus depression explains the overlap.

Reading the pattern

The combination of your three scores matters more than any one of them.

Work high, personal lower. The exhaustion is anchored to the job. This is the most classic burnout pattern and, in some ways, the most encouraging, because it points clearly at what needs to change. Look at workload, control, and support. Work habits that reduce burnout and talking to your manager are the relevant guides.

Client high, work moderate. The strain is coming from the people you serve rather than from the volume or structure of the work. The fixes are about buffers, debriefing, rotation, and recovery between interactions. Client fatigue covers these.

Work and client both high. Both the load and the emotional demand are heavy. This is common in healthcare, social work, and teaching. It usually needs a temporary reduction in client-facing time alongside changes to workload, and it is worth involving a manager or occupational health early.

Personal highest, all elevated. The exhaustion has spread beyond work into life generally. This can happen when work burnout has gone on long enough, but it can also indicate something else: depression, a health condition, or strain from outside work such as caregiving. This pattern is the one most worth discussing with a doctor.

Everything low, but you feel terrible. The CBI measures exhaustion. If you feel unwell but your scores are low, the cause may not be burnout. Consider sleep, physical health, and mood, and talk to a doctor if it persists.

Comparing yourself to others

Because the CBI is openly available, many studies have published reference values. As rough orientation:

• Healthcare workers often average in the high 50s on personal burnout, with client burnout highest in emergency, oncology, and psychiatric settings.
• Teachers and social workers commonly sit in the mid 40s to low 50s, with work burnout rising sharply during peak periods.
• Knowledge workers with high autonomy tend to score in the 30s and 40s, with spikes above 60 marking crunch periods or unclear priorities.

Use these as context, not as targets. A score of 55 in a role where the average is 40 means something different from a 55 in a role where the average is 60. And your own trend matters more than any comparison. The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory guide has more on benchmarks.

What people in each range tend to change first

Low. Nothing urgent. Retest in a couple of months, and use the questions themselves as a monthly check-in. Notice which items scored highest even within a low total.

Moderate. Pick one recovery habit and one workload conversation. The most common first moves are fixing a sleep window, adding a daily walk, protecting a focus block, and naming top priorities with a manager. Retest in a month.

High. Reduce load now, not after the current project. Have the workload conversation this week. Start the stabilisation phase in how to recover from burnout. Consider talking to occupational health or a doctor, especially if sleep is badly affected.

Very high. Talk to a doctor. Reduce demands as far as possible, which may mean time off. Recovery from this range takes months and goes better with support.

Retesting

Take the test again in about a month, and then monthly for a while. A single score is a snapshot on a particular day, affected by what happened that week. The trend across several tests is far more reliable. Your results page has a private link you can return to, and each new test gives you a new one.

A score that has moved from 78 to 66 is meaningful progress, even though 66 is still moderate. A score that has stayed flat despite changes means the changes are not reaching the cause, and it is time to look harder at the demands themselves.

This article is for information only and is not medical advice. If you are worried about your health, talk to a qualified professional.