How to Measure Your Penis, Length and Girth the Right Way

How to Measure Penis Length, Step by Step

This gives you bone-pressed erect length, or BPEL, the number doctors, studies and our coaches use. It takes about a minute.

1. Étape 1

   Get a rigid ruler that starts at zero

   Use a hard ruler, metal or plastic. Many rulers have a blank strip before the 0. If yours does, measure from the 0 line or use our printable ruler, which starts at the edge.

2. Étape 2

   Get fully erect

   Measure at your normal full erection, the same way every time. A half erection can read short.

3. Étape 3

   Stand up straight

   Stand, don't sit, and don't lean forward. Hunching changes the angle and the reading.

4. Step 4

   Point it straight out

   Hold the penis level, at 90 degrees to your body, parallel to the floor. Not angled up or down.

5. Step 5

   Ruler on top, pressed to the bone

   Lay the ruler along the top of the shaft. Press the end into the fat pad above the penis until you feel the pubic bone.

6. Step 6

   Read at the very tip

   Read where the tip of the head lands, not past it. Round down to the nearest eighth of an inch or millimeter.

7. Step 7

   Repeat and write it down

   Take 2 or 3 readings and keep the best one. Write it down with the date, or log it in the PE Trainer app.

Measure straight out perpendicular to your pelvis. Don't hunch over.

Coach Chaswood, in our Discord

Why Measure on Top

The top of the shaft has a fixed starting point, the pubic bone. The underside starts at the scrotum, which moves and stretches, so the number changes every time. Measuring along the side is just as unreliable.

Top is the accepted medical way to measure but as long as you measure the same way, you can track that you made progress.

Coach Chez, in our Discord

If You Are Uncircumcised

Pull the foreskin back first and measure to the tip of the head, not to the end of the foreskin. Measure girth with the foreskin back too.

If Your Penis Curves

Measure straight-line length with the rigid ruler, the same way as everyone else. If you want to track the curve, take a side photo at full erection from the same spot each month and compare the angle. If a curve is new, painful or getting worse, see a urologist. Read our guide to penis extenders for Peyronie's disease.

Inches or Centimeters?

Either works, as long as you stick with one. Many men track in centimeters and millimeters because the steps are smaller. A 2 mm gain shows on a metric ruler but falls between the eighth-inch marks.

How to Measure Penis Girth

Girth is the distance around the shaft, not across it. Measure it erect, around the middle, with a soft tape.

• Get fully erect and stand up straight.
• Find the middle of the shaft, halfway between the base and the head.
• Wrap a soft tape around it once, snug against the skin but not squeezing.
• Read where the tape meets the zero end. That is mid-shaft erect girth, often written MSEG.
• Repeat once or twice and keep the number that comes up most.

Girth is not the same all the way along. Many men are thicker at the base or just below the head. If you track those too, measure them the same way every time.

No Tape? Use a String or a Strip of Paper

Wrap a piece of string or a thin strip of paper around the middle, mark where it overlaps with a pen, then lay it flat along a ruler. Our printable ruler has a girth strip you can cut out and wrap.

Girth for Condoms and Pump Cylinders

Your erect girth is the number that matters for fit. Condom brands size by girth, so compare it with their chart. For a penis pump, divide your girth by 3.14 to get your width, then pick a cylinder a little wider. Our cylinder size calculator does the math, and coaches tell men to measure hard, not soft.

The 9 Most Common Measuring Mistakes

Measuring the wrong way is the second most common thing our coaches correct, about 173 times in our Discord, and 91 new members have asked how to measure. These are the usual culprits.

1. Measuring along the side or the underside. The underside starts at the scrotum, which moves. Measure on top, the way doctors do.
2. Pressing differently each time. Pick bone-pressed and press firmly to the bone every time. Switching between pressed and not pressed can swing your number by half an inch.
3. Pointing up or down. Angle changes the reading. Hold it straight out, level with the floor.
4. Sitting or hunching. Stand up straight. Bending forward pushes the fat pad around.
5. A ruler with a gap before zero. Measure from the 0 line, not the end of the ruler, or use a ruler that starts at the edge.
6. A soft tape for length. A tailor's tape bends over the curve of the shaft and reads long. Use a rigid ruler for length and the soft tape for girth.
7. A half erection. Measure fully hard, the same way and at the same time of day. How you get hard can change the number.
8. Measuring right after a session. Pumping and extending cause swelling for a few hours. Measure on a rest day, before training.
9. Rounding up. Round down, and read at the tip, not past it. Gains are measured in millimeters, so an extra eighth hides real progress.

What Is the Average Penis Size?

The best numbers come from studies where doctors did the measuring. The largest review pooled up to 15,521 men.

Veale and colleagues, BJU International, measured by health professionals.

When 1,661 American men measured themselves for a condom study, the averages came out a little higher: 5.57 inches long and 4.81 inches around. Self-measured numbers usually run higher than clinic numbers. To see exactly where you land, enter your numbers in our penis size calculator.

How Men in Our App Measured at the Start

These are the first bone-pressed numbers men logged in the PE Trainer app, before training. They are self-measured and bone-pressed, so they run higher than the clinic averages above, and these are men starting an enlargement routine, not a random sample.

How Much Bigger Does It Get When Erect?

On average, from about 3.61 inches soft to 5.17 inches erect in clinic studies. But soft size is a poor guide. Some men grow a lot when erect and some grow very little, which is why studies, and our coaches, use erect or stretched length instead.

Is 6 Inches Big?

Yes, 6 inches erect is above the clinic average of 5.17 inches. 5 inches is close to average and well inside the normal range. For girth, the clinic average is 4.59 inches, so 4.5 to 5 inches is about average and over 5.5 inches is large. Most men who worry measure normal. In one clinic study of 67 men asking for penis lengthening surgery, most had a normal length.

Penis Measuring Questions