What rating each chess title means
Where GMs, IMs, FMs and CMs actually sit — counted from FIDE’s own list, not from the title regulations.
A title is earned through norms and a rating floor, and then kept for life. So "what rating is a GM?" has two answers: the floor you had to cross once, and where grandmasters actually sit now. The table below is the second one, taken from every titled player in FIDE’s current standard list.
| Title | Holders | Median | Middle half | Above |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GM | 1,883 | 2,481 | 2,410–2,542 | 99.7% |
| IM | 4,264 | 2,350 | 2,278–2,404 | 98.9% |
| FM | 9,714 | 2,243 | 2,161–2,303 | 97.1% |
| CM | 3,802 | 2,099 | 1,993–2,181 | 92.3% |
| WGM | 339 | 2,220 | 2,141–2,276 | 96.5% |
| WIM | 927 | 2,116 | 2,015–2,189 | 93.4% |
| WFM | 2,201 | 2,028 | 1,943–2,105 | 89.7% |
| WCM | 1,351 | 1,836 | 1,739–1,940 | 70.2% |
The percentile column is the more useful number. It puts each title against every active FIDE-rated player, and the gaps are not what most people expect: the step from CM to FM covers about five percent of the population, while the step from IM to GM covers less than one. Almost everyone who plays rated chess is below all of them.
Common questions
What rating do you need to be a grandmaster?
The title requires crossing 2500 once, along with three norms. Grandmasters today have a median standard rating of about 2480 — some sit below the floor they once crossed, because a title is kept for life while a rating keeps moving.
Is a titled player much stronger than me?
Almost certainly, and the table shows by how much. Even a CM — the entry-level title — sits above roughly 92% of active FIDE-rated players, and FIDE-rated players are already a small, self-selected slice of everyone who plays.
Are the women’s titles different?
They are a separate set with lower rating requirements, awarded alongside the open titles, which any player of any gender may also earn. The table lists both so the difference is visible rather than implied.
Data updated 2026-08-01
Chess.com publishes no rating distribution. Those figures are derived from the Lichess distribution mapped through the conversion anchors, and are rounded accordingly.