What Is a Good LinkedIn Profile Score? Benchmarks From 6,000+ Profiles
A good LinkedIn profile score is 70 or above, and an excellent one is 85 or above. Across the 6,000+ profiles analyzed by HookTide's LinkedIn Profile Analyzer, the average score is 71.6 out of 100, the median is 72, and only 23.5% of profiles reach the top band.
Here is how to read your own score against the data.
What do the score bands mean?
| Band | Share of profiles | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| 85-100 | 23.5% | Working profile: it earns clicks, holds visitors, and asks for action |
| 70-84 | 33.0% | Fundamentals in place; usually one or two sections short of the top band |
| 55-69 | 27.6% | Presentable but leaking: visitors arrive, few act |
| 40-54 | 11.3% | Underperforming: weak sections outnumber strong ones |
| Below 40 | 4.5% | Working against you: missing or generic sections cost real opportunities |
Two useful reference points: scoring 72 puts you right at the median, and scoring 85 puts you roughly in the top quarter of profiles whose owners already care enough to run an analyzer.
How do benchmarks differ by goal?
Averages vary meaningfully by what people are on LinkedIn to do:
| Primary goal | Average score |
|---|---|
| Client acquisition / consulting | 78.3 |
| Personal brand / thought leadership | 76.2 |
| Job seeking | 71.4 |
| Exploring / mixed goals | 70.1 |
| Networking | 68.7 |
| Profile polish, no set goal | 66.3 |
The pattern makes sense: people who sell through their profile (consultants, brand builders) invest in it most, and it shows. If you are a job seeker at 71, you are average for your group; a consultant at 71 is below theirs.
Which sections drag scores down?
Among the sections that persuade a visitor, the weakest by average share of possible points are recommendations (11.8%), experience (42.2%), and skills (49.4%). The strongest are education (92.2%) and visuals (88.7%). In other words: most people have finished the easy sections, and the persuasion sections are where bands are won. The full section table is in the state of the average LinkedIn profile.
How do you move up a band?
The same fixes anchor our improvement guide, because they target the most common flags:
- Get recommendations (81.7% of profiles have zero; the section averages 11.8% of its points)
- Add metrics to recent roles (51.8% have none)
- End the about section with an ask (54.9% flagged for no call to action)
- Rewrite the headline from a keyword list into an argument
Recommendations and experience both average under half their possible points on the typical profile, which is exactly where movement is cheapest; the about and headline rewrites then convert the visitors the stronger profile attracts.
What score should you aim for?
Aim for your goal's benchmark, then the top band. Job seekers competing for attention against other applicants need 71+ just to be at par; anyone selling services through their profile should treat 78 as par and 85+ as the target.
To find out where you stand, get your own LinkedIn profile score free: same 0-100 scale, same section breakdown as the benchmarks above.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average LinkedIn profile score? 71.6 out of 100 across more than 6,000 analyzed profiles, with a median of 72.
Is a LinkedIn profile score of 80 good? Yes. 80 sits in the upper half of the 70-84 band, above the average of 71.6, and within reach of the top band that only 23.5% of profiles hit.
Is this the same as LinkedIn's SSI score? No. The Social Selling Index measures your activity on the platform; this score measures how convincing your profile is to the people who visit it. You can have a high SSI and a weak profile, or the reverse.
Benchmarks come from 6,000+ profile analyses by HookTide's LinkedIn Profile Analyzer, November 2025 to July 2026. Goal segments are inferred from profile signals during analysis; every segment reported has at least 95 profiles. Aggregates only.