How to find what percentile a value falls in
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3The inverse of a percentile: given a value, what fraction of the data is at or below it — where a score, price, or time ranks in the pack.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel | =PERCENTRANK.INC(A2:A100,30) | Returns 0-1 (multiply by 100 for a percent). Replace 30 with a cell. PERCENTRANK() is the older alias; PERCENTRANK.EXC excludes the endpoints. |
| Google Sheets | =PERCENTRANK(A2:A100,30) | Identical (matches Excel's .INC). PERCENTRANK.EXC also available. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =PERCENTRANK(A2:A100,30) | Identical. |
How it works
PERCENTRANK is the mirror image of PERCENTILE: instead of 'what value sits at the 90th percentile?', it answers 'what percentile is THIS value?'. It ranks the target within the sorted data on a 0-to-1 scale — in {10,20,30,40} the value 30 sits above two of the three gaps, so its rank is 2/3 ≈ 0.667, i.e. the ~67th percentile. Multiply by 100 to show a percent. Values between data points are interpolated, so you can ask the rank of a number that isn't in the list. Like PERCENTILE it comes in two flavours: .INC (inclusive, the default and what plain PERCENTRANK uses) spans 0 to 1 across the min and max, while .EXC (exclusive) never quite reaches 0 or 1. Use it to turn raw scores into 'top X%' language, or to place a new observation against a historical distribution.
Verified, not just documented
We ran =ROUND(PERCENTRANK.INC(A2:A5,30),4) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned 0.667 — exactly the expected result. Every formula here is confirmed by actually executing it.
Functions used
PERCENTRANK.INC · PERCENTRANK — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.