Free belt checker
Most people are either further along than they think or nowhere near, and almost nobody knows which. Here is how to check it against the federation standard instead of guessing.
A belt check has three inputs and nothing else: how long you have held your current rank, how many classes you have actually attended, and how regular that attendance has been. Everything else people worry about, tournament medals, who your professor trained under, how many people you tap, changes nothing about eligibility.
The federation publishes minimum time in grade, not maximums and not averages. White to blue has no time minimum, only a minimum age of 16. Blue to purple requires two years at blue. Purple to brown requires eighteen months at purple. Brown to black requires one year at brown.
Those are floors. Hitting the floor does not mean you get promoted, it means you become eligible. The gap between eligible and promoted is where mat time and consistency live, and that is the part a belt checker can actually measure.
Time in grade is the easy one. Take your last promotion date and count. If you cannot remember the date, look at the photo you posted, that is what most people end up doing.
Volume is where the surprises are. A blue belt working toward purple needs somewhere near 63 classes per stripe by most academy standards, so roughly 250 classes across the rank. Training twice a week, that is two and a half years. Training four times a week, it is fifteen months. Same belt, same syllabus, half the calendar.
Consistency is the one nobody counts. Two hundred classes crammed into eight months then nothing for a year is not the same as two hundred classes spread evenly, and no professor treats it the same. A month long gap resets more than it costs in raw numbers.
A spreadsheet tells you how many rows you have. It does not tell you that your last four weeks averaged 1.2 sessions when your own stated target was three, or that you have not logged a no gi class since March, or that at your current rate your eligibility date moves further away every week rather than closer.
That is the difference between recording and checking. Recording is what you did. Checking is what it means.
If the check says you are eligible and you have not been promoted, that is useful information and it is not a complaint to take to your professor. It usually means volume is there but something else is not: you are absent from the classes that matter, you avoid competition rounds, or you have been drilling the same three positions for a year.
If the check says you are not close, that is more useful. It converts an anxious question into a number of classes, and a number of classes into a date. Most people find the date is nearer than the anxiety suggested.
Free to track, forever
Enter your belt and your promotion date. The app works out where you stand against the IBJJF requirements, then keeps the number current every time you log a class.
Get the appNo account needed. Session tracking is free with no time limit.
Compare three things against the IBJJF minimums: time since your last promotion, total classes attended at this rank, and how consistent your attendance has been. Time in grade is a hard floor set by the federation. Volume and consistency are what decide whether you are promoted once that floor is passed.
The IBJJF publishes the graduation requirements but does not provide a tool. Any checker applies those published minimums to your own training history. The promotion itself is always your professor decision.
It varies by rank. A common academy benchmark is 21 classes per stripe at white, around 63 at blue, 58 at purple and 52 at brown, so roughly 200 to 250 classes per belt. At two sessions a week that is two to three years, at four sessions a week it is half that.
Yes, and it is the normal case. The IBJJF minimum makes you eligible. Promotion depends on your professor and typically on things a calendar cannot see, such as whether you show up for hard rounds and whether your game has actually changed.
It can, but far less than attendance does. A medal is one data point. Two hundred classes is two hundred. Competitors tend to get promoted faster mostly because competitors tend to train more.