Bug severity calculator

Rate bug severity in seconds. Answer six quick questions about impact, reach, frequency, workaround, risk and the affected flow, and get a severity (critical, high, medium or low), a suggested priority and an explanation you can paste into the ticket.

How the bug severity calculator works

The calculator separates two things teams often mix up:

  • Severity is how bad the bug is when it happens: what it breaks, and whether anything is lost.
  • Priority is how soon to fix it: severity combined with how many people hit it, how often, and how important the affected flow is.

Severity comes mainly from the impact and the workaround. Any bug involving data loss, a security issue or money charged incorrectly is critical, regardless of anything else. Priority then adds reach, frequency and the flow: a high-severity bug in checkout that everyone hits is a P0; the same bug in a rarely used export on one browser can wait for the next sprint.

The four severity levels

  • Critical: data loss or corruption, a security or privacy problem, incorrect charges, or a core flow (signup, login, checkout, the main feature) blocked with no workaround. Stop and fix.
  • High: a major feature doesn't work, or a core flow fails for some users, and the workaround is hard. Fix before the next release.
  • Medium: something works incorrectly but users can get around it, or it affects a secondary feature. Schedule it.
  • Low: cosmetic problems, typos, alignment and minor inconsistencies. Fix when convenient, or batch them.

Priority levels

  • P0, fix now: drop other work. Usually critical bugs, or high-severity bugs in signup, login or payments that most users hit.
  • P1, fix next: fix in the current cycle, before shipping more features.
  • P2, schedule: goes into the backlog with a clear owner and target release.
  • P3, when convenient: bundle with related work or fix during cleanup time.

Examples

  • Critical: after changing their email in settings, users can no longer log in, and support cannot recover the account.
  • High: the "Export to CSV" button does nothing in Safari; Chrome users are fine, and there is no other export option.
  • Medium: the date filter on the dashboard resets after a page refresh; users can set it again.
  • Low: the "Save" button on the profile page is two pixels lower than the "Cancel" button.

Run each through the calculator and you'll see how the same severity can lead to different priorities depending on reach and the flow involved.

Using severity in a beta test

A shared severity scale saves hours of debate during a beta test. Agree on it before testers start, include it in your bug report template, and let the reporter set severity while the product owner sets priority.

Some tips that keep the scale honest:

  • Rate the bug, not the effort. A bug that takes five minutes to fix can still be critical.
  • Re-rate when you learn more. A "rare" bug that turns out to affect every Safari user moves up.
  • Watch for severity inflation. If everything is critical, nothing is. Review a sample of ratings each week.
  • Cosmetic is not unimportant. Many low-severity bugs on your pricing page or onboarding add up to a product that feels unfinished, so batch-fix them before launch.

Get severity right automatically

An AI beta tester assigns a severity to every bug it files, based on what it observed: whether the flow was blocked, whether data was lost, and whether it happens on every device it tested. Each bug comes with steps to reproduce, annotated screenshots and a recording, so you can check the rating in seconds rather than reproducing the bug yourself.

Let an AI beta tester do it for you

An AI beta tester opens your website, web app, Android or iOS app or browser extension in a real browser or on a phone, signs up, clicks through every flow like a real user, and files bugs with steps, severity, annotated screenshots and recordings, then sends a report with a quality score.

Bug severity calculator: FAQ

What are the bug severity levels?

A common scale has four levels: critical (data loss, security, payments or a blocked core flow), high (a major feature broken with no easy workaround), medium (incorrect behavior with a workaround) and low (cosmetic issues and typos).

What is the difference between severity and priority?

Severity is how bad the bug is when it happens. Priority is how soon it should be fixed, which also depends on how many users hit it, how often, and how important the affected flow is.

Is a typo a low severity bug?

Usually, yes. But priority can still be high, for example a typo in your product name on the homepage or a wrong price.

Why is any data loss automatically critical?

Lost or corrupted data and security problems hurt users in ways a fix cannot undo, and they damage trust. Most teams treat them as critical regardless of how many users are affected.

Can I change the result?

Yes. The calculator gives a suggestion with its reasoning. Your team knows the context best, so adjust it when needed and note why in the ticket.

Is my answer data saved?

No. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing is stored or uploaded.

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