Australian method, plain English
Cardiovascular risk calculator
This is a free calculator that uses the same equation GPs often use to estimate your chance of a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular event in the next 5 years. It is not a coronary calcium score - that is a separate CT scan that looks at the calcium in your heart arteries. Instead, this tool follows the same Australian CVD risk method used by GPs: the same inputs, the same equation family and the same Australian recalibration and risk categories. Every number and rule is referenced at the bottom of the page.
Your details
Nothing you type here is sent anywhere or saved. The maths runs in your browser.
Use the average of your last two seated readings taken in a clinic.
Both are on a standard cholesterol blood test. The calculator uses the ratio between them, which for you is 4.6.
The official calculator works this out from your postcode using the ABS SEIFA index. If you are not sure, leave it in the middle.
Do any of these apply? They change the answer completely.
Your estimate
Low risk (less than 5%)
Fewer than 5 people in 100 like you would have a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular event in the next 5 years.
What this usually means next
Medicines are not routinely recommended. The focus is on keeping your blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, activity and smoking status in a healthy place.
When to check again
Guideline advice: reassess your risk every 5 years, or sooner if things change.
Includes the Australian recalibration factor of 1.0 for your age and sex, applied to an equation estimate of 3.2%.
This is health information, not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for the official Aus CVD Risk Calculator used by your doctor. Take the result to a GP rather than acting on it alone.
The scale
The three Australian risk categories
Australia uses 5-year risk, not the 10-year figure you may have seen from American or UK calculators. A 5-year risk of 10% is a serious number, not a small one.
less than 5%
Low risk
Fewer than 5 people in 100 like you would have a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular event in the next 5 years.
Medicines are not routinely recommended. The focus is on keeping your blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, activity and smoking status in a healthy place.
5% to under 10%
Intermediate risk
Between 5 and 10 people in 100 like you would have a cardiovascular event in the next 5 years.
Lifestyle change is strongly encouraged, and your doctor may consider blood pressure or cholesterol medicine depending on your full picture. This is the group where extra tests, such as a coronary calcium score, are most likely to change the decision.
10% or more
High risk
10 or more people in 100 like you would have a cardiovascular event in the next 5 years.
The guideline recommends both lifestyle change and starting blood pressure-lowering and cholesterol-lowering medicine, unless there is a reason not to. See your doctor to discuss this.
Read the number with care
Six things the equation leaves out that can move you up or down
The guideline calls these reclassification factors. Doctors are told to consider them after the calculation, especially when your score sits close to a cut-off.
Family history of early heart disease
A parent, brother or sister with heart disease or stroke before 55 (men) or 65 (women) pushes your real risk above the calculated number.
Ethnicity
Risk tends to be higher for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Maori, Pacific Islander and South Asian people, and lower for East Asian people.
Kidney function
Reduced kidney function (eGFR) or protein in the urine raises risk. Moderate to severe kidney disease is treated as high risk without using the calculator at all.
Severe mental illness
A mental health condition needing specialist treatment in the last 5 years raises cardiovascular risk.
Coronary artery calcium score
A calcium score can move you up or down a category. A score of zero can reclassify intermediate risk down; a score above 99 can reclassify low or intermediate risk up.
Other things not in the equation
Pregnancy complications such as pre-eclampsia or gestational diabetes, early menopause, chronic inflammatory conditions, and very high single cholesterol readings.
Method
How this calculator works, exactly
The Australian calculator, Aus CVD Risk, is built on a statistical model called PREDICT, developed in more than 400,000 New Zealand primary care patients and published in the Lancet in 2018. Your answers are turned into a single score, that score is fed into a survival curve, and the result is your probability of an event in 5 years.
Australia then adjusts the result. The developers compared Australian and New Zealand cardiovascular death rates and published a multiplier for each age band and sex, from 1.3 for women in their thirties to 0.7 for older women. This page applies those exact published multipliers, which is why the raw equation figure and your final figure are both shown.
We use the same inputs as the official tool: age, sex, smoking status, systolic blood pressure, the ratio of total to HDL cholesterol, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood-thinning medicines, and a socioeconomic quintile. The Australian version deliberately drops ethnicity, family history and BMI from the equation and handles them as reclassification factors instead, which is what we do above.
One honest limitation: the final Australian coefficients are licensed and have not been published. This page therefore uses the published New Zealand coefficients plus the published Australian recalibration multipliers. Results track the official calculator closely and use identical categories and rules, but they can differ by a small amount. For a clinical decision, ask your GP to run the official calculator, and if you have diabetes, ask for the diabetes-specific version that also uses HbA1c, kidney results and BMI.
References
Sources and further reading
Aus CVD Risk Calculator and 2023 Australian guideline
The official calculator and the full guideline for assessing and managing cardiovascular disease risk, from the Australian Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance and the Heart Foundation.
Guideline overview and risk categories (Table 1)
Where the low, intermediate and high risk cut-offs, the management advice and the reassessment intervals used on this page come from.
Using the calculator: variables and eligibility
The list of inputs the official calculator uses, the 30 to 79 year validated age range, and the people who are treated as high risk without a calculation.
Reclassification factors and other considerations
The factors the equation does not include, such as ethnicity, family history, kidney disease, severe mental illness and coronary artery calcium score.
Pylypchuk R et al. Lancet 2018: PREDICT risk equations in 400,000 primary care patients
The original New Zealand equations, including the published coefficients and worked example that this calculator implements.
Paige E et al. Med J Aust 2025: developing and calibrating the 2023 Australian equations
Describes how the Australian equations were built from the New Zealand model and publishes the age and sex recalibration multipliers used here.
Brown S et al. Med J Aust 2023: evidence for choosing the new Australian equation
Why Australia moved from the 2012 Framingham-based charts to the recalibrated PREDICT equation.
Low or intermediate risk, but still worried?
This is exactly where a coronary calcium score helps most. It looks directly at your arteries instead of estimating from averages, and it can move you up or down a risk category.