Heart Disease Risk Calculator
Use this heart disease risk calculator to estimate your 10-year and 30-year risk of heart attack, stroke and heart failure with the AHA PREVENT equations.
Updated October 22, 2026
Medical Disclaimer: This calculator gives a general estimate for education only and cannot diagnose a condition. Share your result with your doctor or the clinician who ordered your test, and do not start, stop or change any medicine based on it. Read our full Medical Disclaimer.
How Heart Disease Risk Is Calculated
Heart disease risk is your estimated chance of a heart attack, stroke or heart failure over the next 10 or 30 years. Doctors group these problems as cardiovascular disease (CVD). It is worked out from routine checkup numbers such as blood pressure, cholesterol, weight and kidney function.
What Heart Disease Risk Measures
A 10-year risk of 6% means that out of 100 people with your numbers, about 6 would be expected to have a heart attack, stroke or heart failure in the next 10 years. It is an estimate for a group of people like you, not a forecast for you. The calculator also splits your risk into heart attack and stroke, which doctors call ASCVD (disease caused by plaque in the arteries), and heart failure, where the heart cannot pump as well as it should¹. It only applies to adults who have not been diagnosed with heart or blood vessel disease¹.
The Formula
With lab results, this calculator uses the American Heart Association (AHA) PREVENT equations, built and tested in more than 6 million US adults aged 30 to 79¹. Each sex and each outcome has its own equation, which multiplies your risk factors by set weights, adds them up, and turns the total into a percentage:
x = constant + the sum of (weight x risk factor term)
Risk = e^x / (1 + e^x)
The terms are built from the inputs listed below, using non-HDL cholesterol (total minus HDL), plus a few terms that change with age. PREVENT does not use race¹.
How This Calculator Computes Your Result
Enter your age, sex, height, weight, total and HDL cholesterol, top (systolic) blood pressure and eGFR, and answer whether you take blood pressure medicine or a statin, have diabetes, or smoke. The tool works out your BMI from height and weight. Cholesterol in mg/dL is multiplied by 0.02586 because the equations use mmol/L. eGFR is usually listed next to creatinine on blood test reports, and our GFR Calculator can estimate it.
You get 10-year risk for total CVD (all three problems combined), ASCVD and heart failure, to one decimal place. Ages 30 to 59 also get 30-year risk for all three, the same age rule the American College of Cardiology (ACC) calculator uses⁴. If a number is outside the range the equations were built on, the tool uses the nearest value in range and tells you, as the AHA describes².
What Your Result Means
Only some of these numbers have a guideline cutoff:
Result | What it is compared with |
10-year total CVD | 7.5% or higher is the high-risk level in the 2025 AHA/ACC blood pressure guideline |
10-year ASCVD | Low under 3%, borderline 3% to under 5%, intermediate 5% to under 10%, high 10% or higher |
30-year ASCVD | 10% or higher is a sign of higher long-term risk in adults 30 to 59 whose 10-year risk is low |
30-year total CVD | No cutoff set |
10-year and 30-year heart failure | No cutoff set |
The 7.5% level comes from AHA guidance on PREVENT², and the ASCVD groups and the 30-year marker from the 2026 ACC/AHA cholesterol guideline³. No cutoff is set for 30-year total CVD or heart failure, and the AHA says heart failure numbers can help guide a talk about prevention². Because ASCVD and heart failure come from separate equations, they can add up to more than your total, which the AHA notes is expected².
Why Heart Failure Gets Its Own Number
In PREVENT, BMI is used only in the heart failure equations, and cholesterol carries no weight in them¹. Diabetes and lower kidney function count for more than in the heart attack and stroke equations¹. So obesity or diabetes can push heart failure risk close to, or above, heart attack and stroke risk, even with normal cholesterol. In testing, the heart failure equations were the best of the three at telling higher-risk from lower-risk people (C statistic 0.83 in women and 0.81 in men, where 1.0 is perfect and 0.5 is chance)¹.
No Cholesterol Results? The Rough Estimate
Without recent cholesterol and eGFR results, you can switch to the no-lab mode. It uses the Framingham office-based model for ages 30 to 74, which needs only age, sex, BMI, systolic blood pressure, blood pressure medicine, smoking and diabetes⁵. It was built in 2008 from 8,491 mostly white adults in Framingham, Massachusetts, followed for 12 years⁵. It ranked risk almost as well as the Framingham version with cholesterol (C statistic 0.749 vs 0.763 in men, 0.785 vs 0.793 in women)⁵.
Its number is not on the same scale as PREVENT, partly because it counts more kinds of events, including angina, mini-strokes and narrowed leg arteries⁵. For the 50-year-old woman in the PREVENT paper's example, it gives 14.4%, while PREVENT gives 5.4%¹. A standard cholesterol test and kidney panel give you the numbers for the PREVENT estimate.
How This Differs From an ASCVD Risk Calculator
An ASCVD risk calculator focuses on heart attack and stroke and the 2026 cholesterol guideline groups. This page uses the same PREVENT-ASCVD equation for that number, but puts total CVD first, adds heart failure (which needs your height and weight), and offers a no-lab estimate.
Guideline Cutoffs for Your Risk Results
The three results that have a guideline cutoff. Enter a result to mark it on each row.
- Low
- Borderline
- Intermediate
- High
- Below the cutoff
- At or above the cutoff
Show data table
| Result | Low | Borderline | Intermediate | High | Below the cutoff | At or above the cutoff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10-year ASCVD | Low: under 3% | Borderline: 3% to under 5% | Intermediate: 5% to under 10% | High: 10% or higher | – | – |
| 10-year total CVD | – | – | – | – | Under 7.5% | 7.5% or higher: the high-risk level |
| 30-year ASCVD (ages 30 to 59) | – | – | – | – | Under 10% | 10% or higher: a sign of higher long-term risk |
A Note on Accuracy
PREVENT predicts well on average in US adults, but any single estimate can be off for one person¹. It was built from US data, so it may fit people elsewhere less well. It leaves out family history, chronic inflammatory conditions, early menopause, preeclampsia and lipoprotein(a), which your clinician may weigh on top of the number³. It is not for people who already have heart or blood vessel disease, people under 30 or over 79, or an eGFR below 15, and it is not meant to show how much a change such as starting a medicine would lower your risk². Use it as a starting point for a talk with your clinician, not as a diagnosis.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a normal 10-year heart disease risk?
There is no single normal number, but a 10-year PREVENT total CVD risk under 7.5% is below the high-risk level in the 2025 AHA/ACC blood pressure guideline². For heart attack and stroke alone, under 3% counts as low³.
Can I check my heart disease risk without cholesterol results?
Yes. The no-lab mode uses the Framingham office-based model, which uses BMI instead of cholesterol⁵. It is a rougher estimate than PREVENT and cannot show heart failure on its own.
Why is my heart failure risk higher than my heart attack and stroke risk?
The heart failure equations give more weight to BMI, diabetes and kidney function, and none to cholesterol¹. With obesity or diabetes, heart failure risk can match or pass heart attack and stroke risk.
How accurate is this heart disease risk calculator?
It uses the published PREVENT equations and matches the 10-year example results reported by the PREVENT authors for all three outcomes¹. It is still a group estimate, so it can be off for any one person.
Sources
Development and Validation of the PREVENT Equations, Khan et al., 2024
PREVENT Frequently Asked Questions, American Heart Association
ACC/AHA Issue Updated Guideline for Managing Lipids, Cholesterol, American Heart Association, 2026
CVD Risk Estimator Plus, American College of Cardiology
General Cardiovascular Risk Profile for Use in Primary Care, D'Agostino et al., 2008