HOMA-IR Insulin Resistance Calculator
Calculate your HOMA-IR score to estimate insulin resistance using fasting blood glucose and fasting insulin levels.
Assess your metabolic health risk.
What Is HOMA-IR?
HOMA-IR (Homeostatic Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance) is a mathematical model that estimates insulin resistance from a simple pair of fasting blood tests: fasting glucose and fasting insulin. It was developed by Matthews et al. in 1985 and remains one of the most widely used clinical tools for assessing insulin resistance outside of an invasive euglycaemic clamp procedure.
The formula:
HOMA-IR = (Fasting Glucose [mmol/L] × Fasting Insulin [µIU/mL]) ÷ 22.5
If your glucose is measured in mg/dL, divide by 18.0182 to convert to mmol/L first. The calculator does this for you; just set the unit selector correctly, because a mg/dL figure read as mmol/L inflates the score roughly eighteenfold.
Interpretation ranges:
| HOMA-IR Score | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| Below 1.0 | Highly insulin sensitive |
| 1.0 to under 2.0 | Normal insulin sensitivity |
| 2.0 to under 3.0 | Early insulin resistance |
| 3.0 and above | Significant insulin resistance |
What each variable means:
- Fasting Glucose: your blood sugar after at least 8 hours without food. Tests what your liver is producing overnight.
- Fasting Insulin: your baseline insulin level. High fasting insulin means your pancreas is working harder than it should to keep glucose in range.
Why it matters: Insulin resistance is the root driver of Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and is linked to higher cardiovascular risk, PCOS, fatty liver disease, and obesity. Fasting glucose stays normal for years while insulin quietly climbs to hold it there, so HOMA-IR moves first. Catching it at that stage is what makes it reversible.
How to improve HOMA-IR: Time-restricted eating and low-carbohydrate diets can lower fasting insulin within weeks. Regular aerobic and resistance exercise improves muscle glucose uptake. Weight loss of just 5–10% of body weight significantly reduces insulin resistance in most people.
Note on the cutoffs: there is no internationally agreed HOMA-IR threshold. The 2.0 and 3.0 lines used here are common in European and North American work, but published cutoffs run from about 1.8 to 2.9 depending on the population, and lower in East Asian cohorts.
Insulin assays are not standardised between laboratories either, so a HOMA-IR from one lab is not strictly comparable with one from another. Track the trend within a single lab rather than comparing absolute numbers across them. HOMA-IR also assumes a pancreas still making its own insulin, so it means nothing in Type 1 diabetes or for anyone on injected insulin. This tool is for educational purposes only.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
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