Updated October 2026 · Format researched 4 October 2026 · Alva Labs
Alva Labs sells a short logic test to employers who screen early-career applicants at volume. It is a non-verbal matrix test: a 3×3 grid of figures with the bottom-right cell missing, six candidate figures, and one of them completes every row and every column. There are 20 scored tasks after two unscored practice ones, each with its own two-minute clock, and the test adapts: get one right and the next is harder.
Everything in the table below comes from Alva's own candidate guide (dated 3 December 2025) or its scoring article, and is marked where it is not.
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| Questions | 20 |
| Time | Not published |
| Adaptive | Yes |
| Answer choices | 6 |
| Clock | 120 seconds per task. Derived maximum answer time is 40 minutes across 20 tasks, not a published separate whole-test clock; instructions and practice are additional. |
A 3×3 grid. Across each row one thing changes by a rule — the figure rotates, the fill cycles, a shape is added — and down each column another thing changes. The missing cell has to satisfy both. Alva states the patterns run horizontally and vertically and never diagonally, and that you cannot skip a task and return to it. A warning shows with 30 seconds left on a task.
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Alva reports a norm-referenced score on a 10-point scale. Because the test is adaptive, the score is an ability estimate that weighs which tasks you were given and how hard they were, not a count of right answers; two candidates with the same number correct can score differently. Alva does not describe conventional negative marking, but a wrong answer lowers the estimate. No universal pass mark is published — each employer sets its own.
The free test below is ten 3×3 matrices with six choices, each wrong choice a specific mistake, on a clock of one minute per task. Alva allows up to two, but says most people finish all twenty in 15 to 20 minutes, so a minute is the pace you are actually up against. It is not adaptive — the difficulty mix is fixed — and it is our format, not Alva's items.
Twenty scored tasks with two minutes each, so up to 40 minutes of answering, plus two practice tasks and instructions. Most people finish well inside that because the easy tasks take seconds.
Six, confirmed by Alva's own guide. Exactly one is correct.
Yes. Alva states it adapts task difficulty to your answers, and the score is an ability estimate on a 10-point scale rather than a raw count.
Where a value above is marked as reported or inferred, the publisher has not confirmed it. Nothing on this page reproduces a test item.
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