Child Heart Rate Calculator

A child’s heart beats faster than an adult’s and slows down as they grow, reaching the adult range around age 10. If you have just counted a pulse and want to know whether it fits, the numbers below are the resting ranges published by MedlinePlus, the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s encyclopedia — the ranges a U.S. clinician is most likely to be reading from.

Resting pulse by age, per MedlinePlus

Age	Resting heart rate (bpm)
Newborn, 0 to 1 month	70 to 190
Infant, 1 to 11 months	80 to 160
1 to 2 years	80 to 130
3 to 4 years	80 to 120
5 to 6 years	75 to 115
7 to 9 years	70 to 110
10 years and older	60 to 100

Two things stand out. The newborn band is enormously wide — 70 to 190 bpm — which reflects how much a newborn’s rate swings between deep sleep and being awake, not uncertainty about what is healthy. And the adult range arrives at 10, earlier than most people assume; there is no separate teenage band.

If you want the same information laid out as a lookup table with the pediatric context around it, the child heart rate chart is the page for that. This one is about what to do with a number you have already taken.

Counting it so the number means something

The measurement is where most home readings go wrong:

• Wait for calm. At rest or asleep. Crying, fever, running around and being startled all raise the rate and it comes back down afterward — that is expected, not a finding.
• Count for a full 60 seconds. The shortcut of counting 15 seconds and multiplying by four is acceptable in adults and unreliable in small children, whose rate varies noticeably from one breath to the next.
• Use the wrist or neck, or an infant finger pulse oximeter for babies.
• Note the context alongside the number: asleep, just woken, half an hour after a tantrum. The same 130 bpm means different things in each.

Why adult formulas do not transfer

The calculator below runs 220 − age, the adult convention. On a child it produces arithmetic rather than physiology: the equation was derived from adult data, and children reach very high rates during ordinary play without that carrying the meaning it would in a 45-year-old. Treat any output here as a rough orientation, never as a training prescription or a screening tool.

For children, the AHA does not talk in heart rate zones at all. Its recommendation is time-based: kids aged 6 to 17 should get at least 60 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous activity, mostly aerobic, with vigorous activity on at least 3 days a week and muscle- and bone-strengthening activity on at least 3 days. Children aged 3 to 5 should simply be active throughout the day. That is a far better framework for a child than a bpm target.

When to call the pediatrician

A resting rate well outside the range for their age, with no explanation like fever or crying, is worth a call — particularly if it comes with fast or labored breathing, unusual sleepiness or listlessness, refusal to feed, paleness, bluish lips, high fever or fainting. A persistently very slow rate deserves the same attention as a very fast one.

MedlinePlus makes the general point for all ages: rates that are continually high or continually below the normal values are worth discussing with a provider, as is a pulse that is irregular.

This content is informational and does not replace medical evaluation. See the max heart rate calculator for how the adult formula works, and normal heart rate for seniors for the other end of the age range.