What is a good HRV by age?
“What’s a good HRV for my age?” is one of the most-searched HRV questions, and the honest answer frustrates people: there’s a typical range by decade, but it varies so much between individuals that your own baseline matters far more than any chart. Here’s both halves of that answer.
On this page
HRV falls with age
Heart-rate variability tends to decline as we get older — broadly, a healthy person in their twenties will average higher than the same person in their fifties. That’s normal and not in itself a problem. It’s why comparing your number to a twenty-something’s, or to an athlete’s, is a recipe for needless worry.
Typical ranges by decade
As a rough orientation only: nighttime rMSSD (what Oura reports) often runs higher in the 20s and trends down each decade thereafter, with very wide overlap between age groups. Published averages exist, but the spread within any decade dwarfs the difference between decades — two healthy 40-year-olds can sit 40 ms apart. Treat any “good HRV by age” table as a loose backdrop, never a target.
Why your own baseline beats the chart
Because the between-person spread is so large, a population average can’t tell you whether your number is good. An HRV of 45 might be excellent for one person and a warning sign for another. What’s reliable is the comparison to yourself: is today near your own rolling average, climbing, or dropping? That question is answerable and actionable; “is 45 good?” mostly isn’t.
How to read yours
Wear the ring consistently for a few weeks to establish your baseline, then watch the trend and the normal range around it rather than the absolute figure. A multi-day decline is worth heeding; a single low night usually isn’t. And remember the everyday movers — alcohol, late meals, stress, hard training — before reading anything dramatic into a dip. None of this is medical advice.
Vitra grades your HRV against your own rolling baseline and its normal range, and explains each day in plain English — so you get “normal for you” or “lower than usual, here’s the likely reason” instead of an age chart you can’t map onto yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Pedro Thomaz builds Vitra, a desktop app that reads Oura data against your own baseline instead of a population average. He has worn a ring daily for years and reads these same numbers every morning — which is where most of what is written here comes from. Vitra is not a medical device and nothing on this blog is medical advice.
Local AI on your Mac or PC. One-time purchase, 7-day trial, no Vitra subscription.
Download Vitra →