JEE Main is a competitive exam for engineering students’ college admissions.
Learners who appeared for JEE Mains in 2026 must be eager to know their results and find out if they can get admission in their dream college.
For that, they must know the JEE Mains percentile cutoff, as they vary with each year and category.
The results are already out on official websites. In this article, we will see details about JEE Mains percentile cutoff and the yearly trends that follow
Table of Contents
- What is the JEE Mains Percentile Cutoff?
- Difference Between JEE Main Percentile and Percentage
- How is JEE Main Percentile Calculated?
- JEE Main Qualifying Cutoff vs Admission Cutoff
- Current and Previous Year JEE Main Percentile Cutoff Trends
- Factors Affecting JEE Main Cutoff
- Strategy to Achieve a Good Percentile
- Final Comments
What is the JEE Mains Percentile Cutoff?
JEE Main percentile cutoff refers to the minimum percentile that a candidate has to attain to be eligible to be on the admission list of some of the best national engineering universities. The 2026 JEE Mains percentile cutoff for General is 93.4123549, 80.92 for OBC-NCL, 63.91 for SC, and 52.01 for ST.
Since the percentile system evaluates results based on relative performance of the learners, no individual gets advantage of an easy paper.
This means that, for example, a paper was tough and the top-ranked learners got 75%, then the cut-off will also lie closer (lesser) to the best results. Due to this, learners don’t feel unrealistic pressure to score 90% or more unlike any other tests to qualify the exam.
The National Testing Agency has released the JEE Main results and the respective cutoff for the year 2026 on the official website (jeemain.nta.nic.in). The total no. of candidates that gave JEE Mains in this year was 2.5 lakhs.
Difference Between JEE Main Percentile and Percentage
You should know the difference between a percentage and a percentile so that you can interpret your JEE Main results properly.
Percentage is the actual marks achieved, expressed out of 100. When a student achieves 180 out of 300, then their percent will be 60.
Percentile indicates relative performance. A 90th percentile would imply that the candidate scored higher than 90 percent of the total learners taking the test.
Percentile is based on the performance of others, whereas percentage represents absolute marks. This is the reason why the same marks can get different percentiles in different sessions.
How is JEE Main Percentile Calculated?
The percentile score of JEE Main is calculated by normalization method to limit unfairness among the sessions.
The formula used is:
Percentile = (Number of individuals who scored lower than or equal to you/Total number of individuals) x 100
To begin with, the scores of all the candidates in any given session are arranged in ascending order.
Then, candidates with a score less or equal to a given score are counted. This figure is divided by the total number of applicants and multiplied by 100 to get the percentile.
A 100 percentile is given to the best scorer of a session. To avoid ties, percentile scores are calculated to seven decimal places.
In case a candidate takes two or more sessions, then the best percentile is taken into account.
JEE Main Qualifying Cutoff vs Admission Cutoff
Many people confuse between qualifying cutoff and admission cutoff which might lead to uninformed decisions in career.
Qualifying cutoff is the minimum marks or percentile published by NTA, scoring above which can make a learner eligible to sit for JEE Advanced. Candidates who are successful in crossing this cutoff are allowed to take the next step.
Admission cutoff is defined as the percentile or the rank needed to get admission to a specific college or course.
The admission cutoff is generally higher than the qualifying cutoff, and varies throughout different colleges.
Scoring higher than the admission cutoff of individual universities is necessary to get admission in them.
Current and Previous Year JEE Main Percentile Cutoff Trends
Applicants of JEE Main have to score high to ensure a seat in the favourite college. For that, the JEE Main cutoff trends vary slightly for each year.
The number of candidates and scores vary under each category.
1. General Category
For the year 2026, the JEE Main cutoff for General category is 93.4123549, where the no. of applicants who qualified the exam was 96,873.
The table below shows the year wise JEE Main cutoff trends for General Category:
| Year | General JEE Main Cutoff |
| 2025 | 93.1023262 |
| 2024 | 93.2362181 |
| 2023 | 90.7788642 |
| 2022 | 88.4121383 |
| 2021 | 87.8992241 |
2. OBC-NCL Category
For OBC-NCL candidates, the 2026 cutoff is 80.9232583 percentile.
Without compromising competition, the relaxation in marks guarantees the representation of 67597 eligible participants for admission in national engineering institutes.
| Year | OBC-NCL JEE Main Cutoff |
| 2025 | 79.4313582 |
| 2024 | 79.6757881 |
| 2023 | 73.6114227 |
| 2022 | 67.0090297 |
| 2021 | 68.0234447 |
3. EWS Category
The GEN-EWS category usually has normally higher cutoffs than OBC-NCL within the past few years.
In the year 2026, the cutoff reached 82.4164528 percentile with 26009 candidates who qualified the JEE Main exams.
| Year | General JEE Main Cutoff |
| 2025 | 80.3830119 |
| 2024 | 81.3266412 |
| 2023 | 75.6229025 |
| 2022 | 63.1114141 |
| 2021 | 66.2214845 |
4. SC Category
SC candidates who have scored 63.9172792 percentile in 2026, will be eligible to apply for JEE Advance exams.
| Year | SC JEE Main Cutoff |
| 2025 | 61.1526933 |
| 2024 | 60.0923182 |
| 2023 | 51.9776027 |
| 2022 | 43.0820954 |
| 2021 | 46.8825338 |
The total number of SC applicants who qualified JEE Main 2026 were 37,522.
5. ST Category
A total of 18,790 ST category applicants met the minimum 52.0174712 percentile required to be eligible for JEE Advance exams.
The past trends were as follows:
| Year | ST JEE Main Cutoff |
| 2025 | 47.9026465 |
| 2024 | 46.697584 |
| 2023 | 37.2348772 |
| 2022 | 26.7771328 |
| 2021 | 34.6728999 |
Factors Affecting JEE Main Cutoff
The central factors that affect JEE Main cutoff includes the following:
1. Number of Candidates
The number of applicants who have given JEE Main examination might impact the cutoff for that year.
For example, when there are more participants, the overall competition might increase due to higher population and the cutoff gets increased.
Similarly, lower participants entail lower cutoff as well as competition.
2. Difficulty Level of the Exam
The difficulty level of the question paper often affects the final cutoff in JEE Mains.
To understand better, it can be said that the complexity of the question paper is inversely proportional to JEE Main percentile cutoff.
Tougher paper will have relatively lower cutoff, while an unchallenging paper will show higher cutoff.
3. Performance Distribution
JEE Main results are also determined by performance distribution, which means the more learners score higher in the exam, the more will be the cutoff.
4. Reservation Policies
Reservation by category significantly contributes to different cutoffs for various groups.
As we saw in previous sections, reservation policies ensure to provide reserved seats for certain sections of society and have a lower cutoff than the General category.
5. Number of Available Seats
When there are less seats, the cutoff percentile is higher than when more seats are available.
Lesser seats mean that the same population of students have to compete harder to secure a seat for themselves in their respective colleges.
Strategy to Achieve a Good Percentile
Follow the following blueprint to score higher in JEE Mains and get admission in IIITs or NITs:
1. Focus on Strong Concepts
The JEE Main exam is centrally focused on assessing an individual’s conceptual depth about complex topics.
This is why you should emphasize more on seeking deep knowledge, instead of relying on memorization of facts.
2. Practice Regularly
Continuous practice enhances familiarity with questions and their retention for longer time periods..
It can aid in improving your precision while giving exams, so practice regularly by solving mock papers and sample questions of the past years.
3. Time Management
One of the most crucial factors that might decide your final performance in JEE Main exams is time-management.
Learners can practice time-management by solving previous year question papers within the allotted time frame of 3 hours.
This would prepare them to complete each section of the paper with confidence during the final exams.
4. Accuracy Over Attempts
Remember to answer accurately in exams. More number of failed attempts or wrong answers would affect your performance poorly due to negative marking.
Some learners think that attempting more questions will give them higher marks, but it often leads to lower scores.
5. Analyze Mock Tests
Giving mock tests is a great way to learn about an applicant’s weak areas and work on them before the final exams.
Through this approach, learners can analyze preparation and score better in JEE Main exams.
Final Comments
JEE Main percentile cutoff is the minimum percentile by scoring which a learner can qualify for attempting JEE Advance exams.
With increased sources of preparation and population, the overall cutoff in JEE Mains has increased over time. This represents the increased competition in such exams.
You can score better in JEE Main if you focus on advanced-level preparation of basic concepts and time-management.
