Grade Scale Converter

Written byOleh Soloninupdated 25 September 2026

What you know

Percentage

Your place in the group from the top, %

Needed for the ECTS letter: it came from a share of the group — the best 10% took an A, the next 25% a B, 30% a C, 25% a D and the last 10% an E. Leave at 0 if you do not know your percentile.

Advanced options

Top grade from, %

Every institution sets its own percentage thresholds — take them from your own grading regulations.

Second grade from, %

Pass grade from, %

Result

Five-point5
GPA on 4.03
LetterB
ECTS
a percentile is needed: the ECTS letter came from the position in the group, not from a percentage
Percentage85%
Resulta pass
How it was worked out
85% falls in the 83—86 band — B, GPA 3; against your own 85/70/55 thresholds it is 5

Five systems for one piece of knowledge

Converts a mark between percentages, the Russian five-point scale, ECTS, a 4.0 GPA and letter grades.

There is no official conversion from a percentage to an ECTS letter, and that is the first thing worth knowing before hunting for a table of one. The A–E scale was never based on the mark for a piece of work: it was based on where a student stood in the group. The best 10% of those who passed took an A, the next 25% a B, the next 30% a C, the next 25% a D and the final 10% an E. The scale was dropped in 2009 in favour of grade distribution tables.

So this converter asks for your percentile separately — without it there is nothing to build the letter from. Percentages do convert straight into a letter grade and a GPA, using a table found in some United States colleges.

The five-point thresholds are not universal either: institutions set their own. Here they are input fields, defaulting to 85, 70 and 55 — replace them with the ones in your own grading regulations.

How to use

Choose what you know: a percentage, a five-point grade or a GPA.
Enter the value — 85 percent, say.
If you know where you stand in the group as a percentage from the top, enter it and the pre-2009 ECTS letter appears.
Adjust the thresholds for the top, second and pass grades if your institution uses different ones.

Percentages, letters and GPA

Every row is a calculator run with the five-point thresholds at 85 / 70 / 55. The letter and GPA columns follow an illustrative percentage table of the kind some United States colleges publish; it is not an official conversion for any institution, and MIT, for one, uses a scale that goes up to 5.0.

Look at the 55 percent row: on the institution's own scale it is a pass, and on the American letter scale it is an F, because everything below 60 percent fails there.

Calculator runs in percentage mode.
Percentage	Letter	GPA	Five-point at 85 / 70 / 55	Result
95%	A	3.9	5	a pass
88%	B+	3.3	5	a pass
85%	B	3.0	5	a pass
75%	C	2.0	4	a pass
70%	C−	1.7	4	a pass
60%	D−	0.7	3	a pass
55%	F	0	3	a pass
45%	F	0	2	a fail

The ECTS letter came from the group

The scale split everyone who passed into five shares: the best 10% took an A, the next 25% a B, the next 30% a C, the next 25% a D and the last 10% an E. Those who failed were split into FX, meaning some more work was needed before the credit could be awarded, and F, meaning considerable further work was.

The point was moving marks between countries. If a French programme awarded a 14 to its top tenth, an A went beside it on the transcript — and that A was comparable with an Italian 30 awarded to the same share in the same subject area. Words like "excellent" and "good" were discouraged, because they do not fit a ranking built on percentages.

Since 2009 institutions publish a grade distribution table instead: what share of students received each mark in that programme. So if all you hold is a percentage for one piece of work, the honest answer is that no ECTS letter follows from it.

The ECTS grading scale as it stood before 2009.
Letter	Share of those who passed	Cumulative	What it meant
A	10%	10%	outstanding performance without errors
B	25%	35%	above the average standard, with minor errors
C	30%	65%	generally sound work with some errors
D	25%	90%	fair, but with significant shortcomings
E	10%	about 100%	meets the minimum criteria

What this calculator shows

The same mark in five systems at once
The percentage band a five-point grade corresponds to
Whether the result is a pass

What to keep in mind

The ECTS letter follows the pre-2009 scale, by position among those who passed: A for the best 10%, B the next 25%, C 30%, D 25% and E the final 10%. A percentage for a piece of work does not settle the letter.
Converting from a five-point grade to percentages uses the middle of the band: a single grade cannot recover the exact figure.

FAQs

What percentage is an A?

93–96 percent in the college table used here, with A+ at 97–100 and A− at 90–92. Other institutions draw the lines elsewhere, so check your own handbook before relying on it.

How do I convert a grade to ECTS?

Not from a percentage: the letter came from your share of the group, not from the mark on a piece of work. You need your percentile — top 10% of those who passed is an A, the next 25% a B, and so on. The scale was dropped in 2009 in favour of grade distribution tables.

What GPA is 85 percent?

3.0 and a letter B in the college table used here, whose B band runs 83–86 percent. The scale is not universal, and some institutions use a different one.

Why is 55 percent a pass but still an F?

Because those are two different scales. A pass threshold is set by the institution, and 55 percent clears many of them. On the American letter scale, everything below 60 percent is an F with no exceptions.

What was FX?

A fail from the pre-2009 ECTS scale meaning some more work was required before the credit could be awarded. It was kept separate from F, where considerable further work was needed.

Can a grade be converted back into a percentage?

Only approximately, because a grade covers a band. Converting back returns the middle of that band: with thresholds at 85 / 70 / 55, the top grade comes back as 92.5 percent — halfway between 85 and 100.

What is the highest GPA?

4.0 in this table, for an A+ at 97–100 percent; an A at 93–96 percent gives 3.9 in it. It is a table used by some US colleges, not a universal conversion — MIT's scale runs to 5.0 — so an official conversion needs your own institution's scale.

Worked example

85 percent on a course

Input: 85%, thresholds 85 / 70 / 55

Output: top grade on the five-point scale, letter B, GPA 3.0

Note: At stricter thresholds of 90 / 75 / 60 the same 85 percent drops to the second grade, while the letter and GPA do not move.

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Result

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