Stick Drift Test for Xbox, PS5, PS4 and Switch Controllers

Press Start 10-second test, keep your hands off both sticks, and after ten seconds each stick gets a grade: No drift under 2%, Fine under 5%, Slight drift between 5% and 10%, Drifting at 10% or more. Under 5% is normal for any analog stick; 10% or more is the stick drift that moves your camera or character on its own.

The test reads the two sticks through the Gamepad API in your browser, so it works with Xbox, DualSense, DualShock 4, Switch Pro and most generic pads on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. Nothing is installed and nothing leaves your device. If you only want a quick look at where a stick rests, the gamepad tester on the home page shows the live offset; this page is for a measurement you can write down and compare.

How to run the stick drift test

1. Connect the controller by USB cable or Bluetooth and press any button once. The browser keeps every gamepad hidden until the first press, so the panel shows a Connect prompt until you do.
2. Put the controller down on a flat surface. Do not hold it: your palm, the cable or the table edge can push a stick a few percent and spoil the result.
3. Press Start 10-second test. The instruction changes to Hands off and a progress bar runs across the panel while both sticks are sampled on every frame, several hundred samples each depending on your screen's refresh rate.
4. Wait for the countdown. If either stick moves more than 30% the test stops with the message that a stick moved and asks you to let go and press Start again.
5. Read the grade and the four numbers for each stick. Press Run again to repeat, or Reset to clear the result and start over.

Up to four controllers can be connected at the same time. The P1 to P4 slots above the panel show what the browser sees; click one to switch the test to that controller. The status line under the slots shows the controller's name, its button and axis count and the rate it is reporting at, which is a quick way to confirm the browser is talking to the pad you think it is.

What the stick drift test results mean

The grade is based on the average offset: the mean distance of the stick from centre, as a percentage of full travel, across every sample in the ten seconds. The scale below shows the three bands the tester uses and where a game's dead zone usually sits.

Average offset decides the grade. Peak offset is the single largest reading in the run, and it matters because a game only needs one bad frame to start moving the camera. Jitter is the standard deviation of the offset, so a stick that rests at one point scores near zero even when that point is off centre. Centre is the mean X and Y, with a sign, so you can see which direction the stick leans.

The advice line under the grade changes with the band. A Fine stick needs nothing. A Slight drift stick gets a suggested dead zone equal to the peak offset plus one percent, which is the smallest setting that hides the drift in a game with a dead zone slider. A Drifting stick is past most default dead zones, and the next steps are in the guide on how to fix stick drift.

Why does an analog stick drift?

Most sticks measure position with two potentiometers, one per axis. A metal wiper slides over a carbon track, and the resistance at the wiper's position becomes the number the controller reports. Every time the stick springs back, the wiper lands on the same patch of track, and that patch wears first.

Once the centre of the track is worn, the resistance there no longer matches what the controller expects for 0.00, so it reports an offset with nobody touching the stick. Dust and skin oil under the cap, a tired centring spring, a knock that bent the module and a bad factory calibration cause the same symptom. The test cannot tell these apart, but the pattern of the numbers helps: a steady offset with low jitter points to calibration or spring, a wandering reading with high jitter points to wear or dirt.

Sticks built on Hall effect or TMR sensors read a magnet instead of a track, so they do not wear at centre. If a replacement module of that type still shows an offset, it is almost always calibration rather than damage.

Stick drift test for PS5, Xbox and Switch

The test treats every controller the same: the left stick is axes 0 and 1, the right stick is axes 2 and 3, and the offset is the distance from the origin. What differs is what you can do about a bad result.

A DualSense or DualShock 4 can be recalibrated from the browser with the PlayStation stick calibration tool at dualshockcalibrationgui.com, which rewrites the centre point the controller stores. Run this test first, calibrate, then run it again to confirm the average dropped. The PS5 controller test covers the DualSense's other buttons and what a browser can and cannot read from it.

An Xbox controller has no official calibration on PC or console; the Xbox Accessories app only remaps buttons. For Xbox the practical order is a per-game dead zone, cleaning, then a module swap. A Switch Pro Controller or Joy-Con can be calibrated in the console's system settings, but the result does not carry over to a PC connection, so test on the device you play on.

What a drifting stick looks like during the test

A healthy stick shows a dot sitting on the crosshair with a rest offset in teal, and the progress bar simply fills. A drifting stick shows the dot resting away from the crosshair before you even press Start, with the offset in orange or red. The animation below is the same picture the stick panel draws.

Two patterns are worth a second run. If the first run says Drifting and the second says Fine, something touched the controller, or the stick was returning from a push when you pressed Start; wait a second after letting go next time. If every run shows the same offset in the same direction, the stick is genuinely off centre and the number is real.

What this test does not measure

The drift test only looks at the stick at rest. It cannot see whether the stick reaches full travel in every direction, whether its path around the edge is round, or whether one side is clipped. Those faults show up as a character that walks slower in one direction or a camera that turns unevenly, and they need the joystick test, which draws the stick's path and reports circularity error and range.

It also cannot see drift that only appears in a game. Steam Input, DS4Windows and console-side dead zones sit between the controller and the game, so a stick that reads 7% here can be invisible in one game and obvious in another. When a game drifts but this test says Fine, check that game's dead zone setting before you blame the hardware.

Finally, the numbers are relative to what the controller reports, not to the physical stick. A controller with a built-in dead zone in its firmware will show 0.0% here even if the mechanism is slightly worn, because the firmware already clamps small readings to zero. That is fine for play; it just means the first sign of wear will be a sudden jump rather than a slow rise.

Before and after comparison

The main use of a graded test is comparison. Note the average and peak for each stick, do one thing, then run the test again from the same position. Cleaning the stick base typically drops a dirty stick by several percent; calibration can take a steady offset to near zero; a dead zone changes nothing here because it is applied in the game, not in the controller.

Keep the controller in the same orientation and on the same surface for both runs, and wait a second after letting go of the sticks before you press Start. Drift can also change with temperature and with how long the controller has been in use that day, so a stick that grades Fine cold and Slight drift after an hour of play is not a contradiction; test it in the state you play in. If you are testing a second-hand controller before buying, a Fine on both sticks plus a full button sweep on the gamepad tester is a fair pass; a Drifting grade is a reason to walk away or negotiate the price of a module.

Related tests

Start with the gamepad tester on the home page to confirm every button and trigger works, run the joystick test to check range and circularity once drift is ruled out, and follow the guide on how to fix stick drift when either stick grades Slight drift or Drifting. PlayStation owners can also open the PS5 controller test for the DualSense-specific checks.