What is the normal range for ApoB?
The normal range tells you where you sit among other people, and among untreated US adults the middle is 90 mg/dL (0.90 g/L). That’s already the top of the goal for borderline risk. Judge your number against the goal for your risk instead: under 90 at borderline or intermediate risk, under 70 at high risk, and under 60 after a heart attack or stroke.
What we’d do
Ignore whether your result is flagged. Find your risk band, ask your doctor if you don’t know it, and compare your ApoB with that goal. If you don’t know your band, use under 90. A result inside the printed range can still be over your goal, and plenty are.
How common each number is
The best US table comes from the National Lipid Association’s 2024 statement. It covers 12,696 adults aged 18 to 85 from the national health survey (NHANES 2005 to 2016), none of them on a cholesterol medicine.
One bead for each percentile of untreated US adults, pale to deep rose.
The labeled beads are ApoB 60 (about the 9th percentile), 90 (the middle) and 120 (about the 86th). Light up your own bead.
| Percentile | ApoB | LDL | Non-HDL |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 410.41 g/L | 45 | 59 |
| 5 | 540.54 g/L | 63 | 79 |
| 10 | 610.61 g/L | 72 | 88 |
| 20 | 700.70 g/L | 85 | 103 |
| 30 | 770.77 g/L | 95 | 114 |
| 40 | 840.84 g/L | 104 | 125 |
| 50 | 900.90 g/L | 112 | 135 |
| 60 | 970.97 g/L | 121 | 145 |
| 70 | 1041.04 g/L | 131 | 156 |
| 80 | 1131.13 g/L | 143 | 170 |
| 90 | 1251.25 g/L | 161 | 191 |
| 95 | 1371.37 g/L | 176 | 208 |
| 99 | 1601.60 g/L | 211 | 247 |
The table isn’t split by age or sex. LDL and non-HDL come from the same people, so you can see where each of your numbers sits.
Why normal isn’t the goal
MedlinePlus, the US National Library of Medicine’s health encyclopedia, gives the normal range as about 50 to 150 mg/dL and says it varies a little by lab. By that range a 145 is normal, while the 2026 guideline calls 140 or more severe high cholesterol. A normal range is built from the crowd, and the crowd isn’t healthy. Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the US, and the 2026 guideline says even the slow rise in ApoB through young adulthood, about half a point a year, “should not be perceived as optimal”.
A study of young adults shows why. CARDIA measured ApoB in 2,794 Americans aged 18 to 30, and their average was already about 91 mg/dL at a mean age of 25. Twenty-five years later, the third with the highest ApoB had 2.28 times the odds of calcium in their heart arteries of the third with the lowest, after the usual risk factors were taken into account.
It’s like a class average on a test. Scoring in the middle tells you how you did against the class, and nothing about whether you’d pass.
The goals, side by side
| Your risk | ApoB goal |
|---|---|
| Heart attack, stroke, stent or bypass | under 60 mg/dL (0.60 g/L) |
| High 10-year risk | under 70 (0.70) |
| Borderline or intermediate, or diabetes from 40 | under 90 (0.90) |
| Low | no number goal |
At any risk, the guideline lists 120 or more as something that raises risk, and 140 or more as severe. What should my ApoB be? explains where the goals come from, and the checker holds your number against each one.
6 sources
- Soffer DE, Marston NA, Maki KC and others, Role of apolipoprotein B in the clinical management of cardiovascular risk in adults: an Expert Clinical Consensus from the National Lipid Association, Journal of Clinical Lipidology, 2024pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Blumenthal RS, Morris PB, Gaudino M and others, 2026 ACC/AHA guideline on the management of dyslipidemia, JACC, 2026doi.org
- The same guideline, full text, Circulation, 2026api.iscpcardio.org
- Northwestern University, Little-used cholesterol test could prevent more heart attacks, strokes, news release on a JAMA modeling study, April 2026news.northwestern.edu
- MedlinePlus, Apolipoprotein B, US National Library of Medicinemedlineplus.gov
- Wilkins JT and others, Discordance between apolipoprotein B and LDL-cholesterol in young adults predicts coronary artery calcification: the CARDIA study, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2016pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
