Am I Balding?

This tool can tell you whether what you are seeing matches a recognised pattern of male pattern hair loss, and which published Norwood stage it is closest to. That is the honest version of the question. What it cannot do is tell you what your hair will look like in five years, because nothing on a web page can. The way to answer that is two dated readings a few months apart.

This tool matches what you describe at your temples and crown against the published Norwood stage descriptions and returns the closest one. It is a classification of what you can see today, not a diagnosis and not a forecast.

Most men's hairlines move back slightly in their late teens and twenties and then stop. That is a mature hairline, not balding. The difference is whether it keeps moving, which is why a single look tells you very little and two dated measurements tell you almost everything.

No. It is a descriptive scale for classifying male pattern hair loss so that people and clinicians can describe the same thing in the same words. Diagnosis needs a clinician, and other causes of loss do not fit this scale.

No, and no questionnaire can. Progression depends on factors this page cannot see. What is measurable is the change between two dated readings, which is why the tool asks you to re-run it rather than treating one result as an answer.

The Norwood scale describes a gradual, patterned loss. Patchy, sudden, or inflamed loss does not fit it and is worth taking to a clinician rather than staging yourself.

The hairline checker measures how fast a hairline is moving between two measurements. This assessor classifies the overall pattern across the temples and crown. One is speed, the other is shape.