“Free IQ test, no sign-up” is one of the most searched phrases in this niche. The wording itself is telling: people add “no sign-up” because they have already been caught, or been warned.
How it works
1. The test really is free. You answer thirty, forty, sometimes fifty questions. It takes twenty minutes to an hour. Payment is never mentioned.
2. The result is withheld. After the last question, a screen says your score has been calculated and one formality remains. The time you have just invested is the lever: nobody wants to have wasted forty minutes.
3. The amount shown is trivial. One euro, sometimes a little more, framed as a “processing fee” or “verification”. At that price, hesitation is low.
4. The real amount is elsewhere. Inside the terms, often behind a discreet link, sits the actual transaction: registration fees of several tens of euros, then a monthly subscription of fifteen to twenty, automatically renewed, with a minimum term. Victims discover the charge a month later on their statement.
5. Cancelling is hard. Public reports describe forms that never complete, unanswered support addresses, and charges that continue. The advice that recurs in those accounts is to ask the bank to block the payments.
Signals to look for before you start
The word “official” in the domain name. No online IQ test is official. There is no body that certifies a test on the web. In a URL, that word is a sales argument and, statistically, a bad sign.
A certificate front and centre. An IQ certificate is worth nothing — no employer, school or society recognises one. It is an object designed to justify a payment.
No identifiable operator. A site with no company name, no address and no registration number is telling you something. An empty or missing legal page is enough to conclude.
A card field. A test that costs nothing has no reason to ask for card details, including “for verification” or “for a €1 trial”. Past that point, it is your bank you will be calling.
A countdown on the payment page. “Your result will be deleted in 9:58.” A calculated score does not evaporate; that timer exists only to stop you thinking.
The simplest check: scroll to the bottom first
Before answering question one, go to the foot of the page and open the terms. Search for “subscription”, “monthly”, “renewal”, “cancel”. If those words appear on a site advertising itself as free, you know what is waiting at the end. It takes thirty seconds and saves you forty minutes.
If you are already caught
Contact your bank to block the payments — that is the step that reliably works. Send a written cancellation in parallel and keep a record. In the EU, rules on automatic renewal and on cancelling online work in your favour, and reporting the site to your national consumer protection authority is free and worth doing even if you do not recover the money.
What a decent site looks like
The criteria are the mirror image: the price is stated before you begin — or there is no price; the legal page names a real company; no payment method is requested; the test explains what it does and does not measure; and the result appears unconditionally.
That is the specification this site was built to. The test is free, the full correction is free, and there is no payment screen anywhere in the journey.