The Rarest Personality Type: All 16 Types Ranked

The answerWhat Is the Rarest Personality Type?

In shortINFJ is the rarest of the 16 personality types: about 1.5% of people, or 1 person in 67. The next rarest are ENTJ (1.8%), INTJ (2.1%), ENFJ (2.5%) and ENTP (3.2%).

These shares come from a national sample of about 3,000 US adults that the publisher of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) collected for the MBTI Manual (3rd edition, 1998). It is still the most widely quoted representative sample of the 16 types, and it is the one all of our 16 personality type guides use, so the figures on this page match the “How rare is…” section of every type page.

Here are the rarest MBTI types in order, which also answers “what is the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th rarest personality type”:

1. INFJ Advocate: 1.5% (1 in 67)
2. ENTJ Commander: 1.8% (1 in 56)
3. INTJ Architect: 2.1% (1 in 48)
4. ENFJ Protagonist: 2.5% (1 in 40)
5. ENTP Debater: 3.2% (1 in 31)
6. INTP Logician: 3.3% (1 in 30)

So the three rarest personality types are INFJ, ENTJ and INTJ, and the four rarest are those three plus ENFJ. ENTP and INTP sit almost level in fifth and sixth place, only 0.1 points apart, so in a smaller sample they could easily swap.

The rare types are easy to mix up with each other. These side-by-side guides show how to tell them apart:

• INFJ vs INTJThe two rarest introverts
• INTJ vs ENTJTwo rare strategists
• INFJ vs ENFJThe rare Diplomats
• INTJ vs INTPRare planner vs rare theorist

Want to meet them? See famous INFJs and INFJ characters, or find the best jobs for the rarest types: INFJ careers, ENTJ careers and INTJ careers.

The full listAll 16 Personality Types Ranked by Rarity (Percentages)

In shortFrom rarest to most common: INFJ, ENTJ, INTJ, ENFJ, ENTP, INTP, ESTP, INFP, ISTP, ENFP, ESFP, ESTJ, ISFP, ISTJ, ESFJ, ISFJ.

The table lists every type with its share of the population, how many people that is (“1 in …”), its share among women and among men, and its type group. Click a type for its full guide or a group for what its four types share.

Source: US national sample, MBTI Manual (3rd ed., 1998). The published shares are rounded to one decimal, so the 16 overall figures add up to 100.3%; the figures for women and for men each add up to 100%.

The other endWhat Is the Most Common Personality Type?

In shortISFJ is the most common personality type at 13.8% (about 1 in 7 people), followed by ESFJ (12.3%) and ISTJ (11.6%). Together these three account for 37.7% of people.

The most common personality type is nine times as common as the rarest: for every INFJ in the sample there were about nine ISFJs. All three of the most common types share two letters, S and J, which places them in the Sentinel (SJ) group, the largest of the four type groups at 46.4% of people.

• ISFJ Defender: 13.8% (1 in 7)
• ESFJ Consul: 12.3% (1 in 8)
• ISTJ Logistician: 11.6% (1 in 9)
• ISFP Adventurer: 8.8% (1 in 11)
• ESTJ Executive: 8.7% (1 in 11)

The most common type is not the same for everyone: it is ISFJ for women (19.4%) and ISTJ for men (16.4%). Both are covered below.

WomenRarest Personality Type for Women (Female)

In shortThe rarest personality type for women is INTJ at 0.8%, about 1 woman in 125, followed by ENTJ (0.9%) and INFJ (1.6%). The most common female type is ISFJ at 19.4%, nearly 1 woman in 5.

Among women the rarest four are all Intuitive types, and three of them are Thinking types. That pattern follows from one letter: only 24.5% of women in the sample preferred Thinking over Feeling, against 56.5% of men.

An INTJ woman is rare twice over: INTJ is rare overall, and it is about four times as common among men (3.3%) as among women (0.8%). Read more in the INTJ personality guide.

MenRarest Personality Type for Men (Male)

In shortThe rarest personality type for men is INFJ at 1.3%, about 1 man in 77, followed by ENFJ (1.6%) and ENTJ (2.7%). The most common male type is ISTJ at 16.4%, about 1 man in 6.

INFJ is rare for men and for women alike (1.3% and 1.6%), which is why it is the rarest type overall. The types with the biggest gap between men and women are INTJ and ISTP, both about 3.5 to 4 times as common among men, and ISFJ, ESFJ and ENFJ, all at least twice as common among women.

Our analysisWhy Is INFJ the Rarest Personality Type?

In shortINFJ is rare because it combines Intuition (N) with Judging (J), and that pairing is unusual: only 7.9% of people are any of the four NJ types, which are also the four rarest types. Introversion and Feeling are not rare on their own.

Each letter of INFJ is fairly common on its own in the sample: Introversion (50.7% of people), Feeling (59.7%) and Judging (54.1%) are all near or above half. Only Intuition is a minority letter, at 26.8%. If the four letters were independent, simple multiplication would predict that about 4.4% of people are INFJs. The real figure is 1.5%, about a third of that.

The reason is how Intuition and Judging combine. In this sample, 7 in 10 intuitive people are Perceiving types, while sensing people lean the other way (6 in 10 are Judging). That makes N + J the rarest letter pair, and it is no accident that the four rarest types, INFJ, ENTJ, INTJ and ENFJ, are exactly the four NJ types. Type theorists describe these four as led by Introverted Intuition (Ni) or by a judging function backed by it, a style built around long-range patterns and firm conclusions. Curious whether Ni leads for you? The cognitive functions test shows how much you lean on each of the eight functions.

The table works in the other direction too. ENFP is the most “over-represented” type: at 8.1% it is more than twice as common as its letters predict, because the N + P pairing is common. So the answer to “why is INFJ so rare” is not that introverted, feeling people are rare. It is that intuitive people who also prefer closure and plans are rare.

Predicted share = the share of each of the four letters multiplied together, using the same 1998 sample. This is our own calculation, shown so you can check it; it describes the sample, not a law of nature.

Letters and groupsRarest Letters and Type Groups

In shortIntuition (N) is the rarest of the eight letters at 26.8% of people, against 73.2% for Sensing (S). Among the four type groups, the Analysts (NT, 10.4%) are the rarest and the Sentinels (SJ, 46.4%) the most common.

The split between Introverts and Extraverts is almost even (50.7% to 49.3%), so the answer to “what percentage of people are introverts” in this sample is about half. Not sure which side you are on? The 4-minute introvert or extrovert test tells you, including whether you are an ambivert. The other three letters are lopsided, and the most lopsided is S versus N: nearly three in four people prefer Sensing.

The four type groups pair the letters the way most type theorists do: Intuitive types by their T or F letter, Sensing types by their J or P letter.

• 10.4%Analysts (NT): INTJ · INTP · ENTJ · ENTP
• 16.5%Diplomats (NF): INFJ · INFP · ENFJ · ENFP
• 27%Explorers (SP): ISTP · ISFP · ESTP · ESFP
• 46.4%Sentinels (SJ): ISTJ · ISFJ · ESTJ · ESFJ

Women and men differ most on the T/F letter: in the sample 56.5% of men but only 24.5% of women preferred Thinking. That single letter explains most of the gender gaps in the ranking above.

How rare am I?How Rare Is My Personality Type?

In shortPick your type below to see its share overall, for women and for men, and where it ranks. In real life, two random strangers share all four letters about 1 time in 12.

Some numbers that help put rarity in proportion, all worked out from the same sample:

• 1 in 12chance that two random people have the same four-letter type (8.7%)
• 64%chance that a class of 30 random people includes no INFJ at all
• 15INFJs in a crowd of 1,000 people, next to 138 ISFJs
• 9 to 1ISFJs outnumber INFJs nine to one, the gap between the most common and the rarest type

In a crowd of 1,000 people you would expect about: 15 INFJs, 18 ENTJs, 21 INTJs, 25 ENFJs, 32 ENTPs, 33 INTPs, 43 ESTPs, 44 INFPs, 54 ISTPs, 81 ENFPs, 85 ESFPs, 87 ESTJs, 88 ISFPs, 116 ISTJs, 123 ESFJs, 138 ISFJs.

Rare types meet each other less often, but a rare match is not a worse one. Check how any two types get along in the MBTI compatibility chart.

Not sure which type you are? The free personality test takes about 12 minutes and gives you your four letters with the strength of each preference.

Read this firstWhere These Numbers Come From, and Their Limits

In shortThese are US figures from one large sample collected for the MBTI Manual. Other countries, age groups and online test takers show different mixes, so treat each share as a good estimate, not an exact count.

• One country. The sample was drawn to match the adult US population. Type shares in other countries are not the same, and no published national sample covers every country.
• One way of measuring. The figures come from the official MBTI questionnaire. Free online tests, including ours, use their own questions, so their counts can differ.
• Online samples lean intuitive. People who seek out personality tests online are not a random slice of the population, and the type counts of online tests are usually heavier on intuitive types. That is why some websites call INFJ “common” among their visitors.
• Rare is not better. A rare type is not smarter, more gifted or more “special”, and a common type is not ordinary. The share only tells you how many people have the same preferences.

You will see other percentages online. Many come from online test samples, from older college-student samples, or from estimates such as David Keirsey’s guesses for his four temperaments; some blend several sources into one table. We keep to one representative sample and say which one. How our own test turns answers into letters is explained in how our tests work, and the theory behind the types in our personality framework.

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Written byLeon FalknerData & Research AnalystReviewed byAarav VardhanEditor-in-Chief