IPF GL Points Calculator

The International Powerlifting Federation’s current relative score from its own published closed form, 100 ÷ (A − B·e^(−C·bodyweight)) × result, with the A, B and C the IPF publishes for each sex, each equipment class and each event. Reproduced against 14 rows of a federation scoresheet.

The published closed form

The IPF’s own published coefficients, edition May 2020

Reproducing the EPF’s own published GL column, Hamm 2026

The IPF’s current formula, and the scoresheet that proves it

This page is about the strength sports — powerlifting, the squat, bench press and deadlift, and weightlifting, the snatch and the clean and jerk. They are different sports under different bodies, the International Powerlifting Federation and the International Weightlifting Federation, and almost nothing carries from one rulebook to the other. Every figure below that belongs to an edition, a rulebook date or an Olympic cycle is printed with it, because both bodies revise them.

Why a score like this exists. A total in kilograms ranks lifters inside one weight class and nowhere else, and the heavier lifter lifts more almost without exception. A bodyweight-adjusted score multiplies the total by a coefficient that falls as bodyweight rises, so a federation can award one best-lifter prize across the classes. It is a comparison against one published curve and nothing more — not a measure of talent, not a prediction, and not transferable between the two sports, which use different formulas fitted to different data.

The IPF’s answer is a closed form, not a table. Its coefficient sheet gives A, B and C for eight categories, names the parts of the equation in prose — “Bwt – body weight; A, B, C – constants; e is the base of the natural logarithm; 100 – normalization factor” — and says a coefficient is computed “with an accuracy of 6 decimal places”. The coefficients come, in its own words, from regression on elite “Golden Standard Samples” from IPF and European competitions from 2011, which is why 100 points is an elite reference level rather than a ceiling.

And the sheet does not print the equation. Both of its formulas are images: the first came through the fetch as nothing but the label “(1)”, the second as “⋅⋅ (2)” — two multiplication dots with every operand, constant and exponential missing — and its two worked examples give inputs without answers. So the arrangement of A, B, C and the exponential here was not taken on trust. It was confirmed the only way that settles the question: all 14 rows with a valid total on the European Powerlifting Federation’s detailed scoresheet for Hamm 2026 reproduce from it to within five thousandths of a point, the two decimals that sheet prints.

Thirty-odd coefficients in a PDF is exactly the shape a confabulated table takes, so none was trusted on its own. Every set here was read from a federation document, corroborated against a second independent source, and then checked by reproducing figures the federations themselves published — a scoresheet column recomputed from the formula, not a table cell quoted back. That is the only check that catches an internally consistent wrong coefficient, and on this batch it caught one.

An edition problem the IPF has not resolved in public. The coefficient sheet is headed “ACTUAL FROM MAY 01, 2020 TO DEC 31, 2023” and recommends recounting the parameters “one year before the World Games year”. That period ended nearly three years ago and no successor set was found on the IPF’s own site. The Hamm 2026 scoresheet shows the 2020 coefficients are still the ones in use, exactly — so this page implements them and prints their stated validity rather than quietly dropping it. If a new set is adopted, every GL figure shifts and scores either side of the change will not be comparable.

Eight rows, not one. Classic and equipped are fitted separately because supportive equipment changes what a total means; powerlifting and bench press because a single lift is not a third of a total; men and women likewise. The same 730.5 kg at 73.46 kg is 90.96 points as an equipped total and 107.65 as a classic one — the classic curve is calibrated to smaller totals, so it scores the same kilograms higher. The wrong row gives a believable number that is not the IPF’s.

Where GL points actually decide something. The IPF’s qualification guideline for The World Games 2025 awards places by finishing first to third at a named world championship and uses GL points only to separate lifters of the same country in a category, to fill remaining slots and to order the reserve lists — a tiebreaker and a ranking device rather than an entry standard. For the three older formulas, the Wilks and DOTS score calculator computes all three on one lifter, and the bodyweight score comparison interpreter says which formulas disagree about two.

This is the third place in this section where a governing body’s “scoring table” turns out to be a published closed form rather than a lookup, after the combined events scoring calculator — the decathlon and heptathlon tables — and the World Aquatics points calculator, a cubic. Where a table really is a table this section says so and takes the reader’s own figure, as the age-graded performance calculator does with its age factor.

Frequently asked questions

Related calculators

References

1. International Powerlifting Federation. IPF GL Coefficients for Relative Scoring, powerlifting.sport (read 15 Oct 2026; about 8,000 characters). Headed “ACTUAL FROM MAY 01, 2020 TO DEC 31, 2023”. Table 1 gives A, B and C for eight categories; all 24 values came through as text and match the IPF’s separate evaluation report digit for digit. Says the coefficients come from regression on elite “Golden Standard Samples” from IPF and European competitions from 2011, that a coefficient is computed “with an accuracy of 6 decimal places”, and that it is “reasonable to adopt a four-year cycle”, recounting them “one year before the World Games year”. Both printed formulas are images. Formula (1) came through as the bare label “(1)” and Formula (2) as “⋅⋅ (2)”, with every operand, constant and exponential missing; the prose names the parts (“Bwt – body weight; A, B, C – constants; e is the base of the natural logarithm; 100 – normalization factor”) and not their arrangement. Its two worked examples give inputs only — their results are absent — so neither was used as a check.
2. Kopayev O, Onyshchenko B, Stetsenko A. Evaluation of Wilks, Wilks-2, DOTS, IPF and Goodlift Formulas for Calculating Relative Scores in IPF Powerlifting Competitions, March 2020, published by the IPF at powerlifting.sport (read 15 Oct 2026; about 20,000 to 25,000 characters). Its Appendix 1 prints the coefficients of all five formulas side by side and all of them came through as text. Its conclusion ranks GoodLift first overall (23), then DOTS (44), Wilks-2 (50), Wilks (57) and the IPF’s then-official formula last (66), with GL first in six of eight categories. Two extraction defects were found in it by arithmetic rather than by reading. The men’s DOTS row came through with no minus signs, giving a coefficient of 0.239 at 50 kg where the women’s row on the same page gives 1.253. The women’s Wilks fifth-order coefficient came through as −0.0000009054, which makes the coefficient negative above about 55 kg; the correct figure is ten times smaller. Neither defect is in the published document — both are in what the fetch delivered. The five equations themselves are absent.
3. European Powerlifting Federation. Detailed Scoresheet — XVII Western European Men’s Equipped Championships, Hamm (Luxembourg), 17-20.09.2026, goodlift.info (read 15 Oct 2026; about 5,500 characters, readable as text, though the table arrives flattened so the column mapping is a reading of the layout rather than a parse). Columns “Rnk, Name, d.o.b., Team, Bwt, IPF GL, Cf., Lot, All Squat, All Bench Press, All Deadlift, Total, IPF GL Pts”. The decisive check for GL on this batch: all 14 rows with a valid total reproduce from the IPF’s May 2020 men’s equipped coefficients to within 5e-3 of the two decimals the sheet prints. That also establishes something no IPF document states — a championship in September 2026 is still scored on a set whose own sheet says it was valid to 31 December 2023.
4. International Powerlifting Federation. Detailed Scoresheet — 49th World Open Men’s Championships, Dubai, 18-23.11.2019, powerlifting.sport (read 15 Oct 2026; about 25,000 characters, readable as text). Cited for a negative result. Its points column is headed “IPF Pts”, not GL, and against the 1035.0 kg total at 92.04 kg that the GL coefficient sheet uses as a worked example it prints 784.90 (784.9009 in its best-lifter table) — the 2019 IPF-points formula, not GL. So the GL sheet’s worked examples cannot be checked against the competition they come from, which is why the GL reproduction rests on a 2026 scoresheet instead.
5. International Powerlifting Federation. Technical Rulebook 2026, the file dated 01.03.2026, powerlifting.sport (read 15 Oct 2026; about 50,000 characters, truncated partway through section 6.3, so sections 7 to 10 — referees, jury, records and coaches — were not read). Source for: “Each competitor is allowed three attempts on each lift”; “The lifter’s best valid attempt on each lift counts toward his competition total”; “If two or more lifters achieve the same total, the lighter lifter ranks above the heavier lifter”, and on an equal bodyweight too, “the lifter making the total first will take precedence”; the bodyweight categories, printed as intervals to the hundredth (“83.0 kg Class from 74.01 kg up to 83.0 kg”); “the progression must be at least 2.5 kg between all attempts” and “the weight of the barbell must always be a multiple of 2.5 kg”, with a record bar “at least 0.5 kg in excess of the current record”; “Three unsuccessful attempts in any lift will automatically eliminate the lifter from the overall competition”; and the barbell — “Weight of the bar and collars are to be 25 kg”, collars that “Must weigh 2.5 kg each” and “Shall always be used”, the disc face values with their maxima and minima, the tolerance “within 0.25 percent or 10 grams of their face value”, and the colour code “10 kg and under – any color, 15 kg – yellow, 20 kg – blue, 25 kg – red”. The bar and disc diagrams and the knurling distances are images and were not read. The GL formula is not in this rulebook at all: it names an “IPF formula” for the best-lifter award and prints neither equation nor coefficients.
6. International Powerlifting Federation. IPF Qualification guideline for The World Games 2025, powerlifting.sport (read 15 Oct 2026; about 6,500 to 7,000 characters; no publication date is printed on it). Cited for what the IPF publishes INSTEAD of a strength standard: places in the eight IWGA weight classes go to the lifters finishing first to third at a named 2024 world championship, with GL points used only to separate lifters of the same country in a category, to fill remaining slots and to order the reserve lists. There is no qualifying total in kilograms and no performance tier anywhere in it.