Twenty questions about how much each problem has bothered you in the past month, following a very stressful experience. Your total and the provisional cutoff appear as soon as you finish. Free and anonymous.
The PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5) is a 20-item self-report measure developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD. Each item corresponds to one of the twenty DSM-5 symptom criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, rated 0–4 for how much it bothered you over the past month.
It's in the public domain, used in both clinical practice and research, and it's the instrument most trauma-informed clinicians will recognize if you bring your results to an appointment. The earlier PCL-C and PCL-M versions were built for DSM-IV and have been superseded — if you're comparing tools, the “-5” matters.
Total score ranges from 0 to 80 — the sum of all twenty items. The commonly cited interpretation:
Scores can also be grouped by DSM-5 symptom cluster — intrusion (items 1–5), avoidance (6–7), negative alterations in cognition and mood (8–14), and hyperarousal (15–20). A clinician may look at cluster patterns as well as the total, since two people with identical totals can have quite different presentations.
An important limit: the PCL-5 measures symptoms, not diagnosis. It doesn't assess whether you experienced a qualifying traumatic event (DSM-5 Criterion A), how long symptoms have lasted, or how much they impair function — all of which are required for an actual diagnosis. A high score means “worth a real evaluation,” not “you have PTSD.” A low score doesn't rule it out.
When you finish, the results screen includes a print option. Printing to PDF from your browser gives you a saved copy — useful for bringing to a first appointment, tracking scores over months, or sharing with a therapist. Nothing you enter here is transmitted to us or stored on a server; the screener runs entirely in your browser.
If you're looking for the official blank form rather than an interactive version, the VA National Center for PTSD publishes the PCL-5 as a free PDF on its website, along with the scoring instructions summarized above.
A total of 31–33 or above is the provisional cutoff suggesting probable PTSD. Scores range 0–80. The cutoff is provisional because the optimal number varies somewhat by population and setting — it's a threshold for further evaluation, not a diagnosis.
Yes — PCL-5 stands for PTSD Checklist for DSM-5. It replaced the older PCL-C (civilian) and PCL-M (military) versions, which were built around DSM-IV criteria. If a clinician asks you to complete “the PTSD checklist” today, this is almost certainly the one they mean.
No. It measures symptom severity only. A diagnosis additionally requires a qualifying traumatic event, a minimum duration, functional impairment, and ruling out other explanations — which takes a clinical evaluation. Screeners are a starting point for that conversation.
In treatment, commonly every 4–8 weeks. A 5-point change is the smallest reliably detectable difference and 10 points is considered clinically meaningful, so repeating it is how clinicians tell whether treatment is actually working rather than relying on impression.
Yes. It's free, requires no account, and runs entirely in your browser — your answers are never sent to us or stored anywhere. The PCL-5 itself is in the public domain.