What Generation Am I? The Full Birth-Year Chart, and Why Sources Disagree
Every named generation with its birth years, current age band and the year it was named, plus why two reputable sources give you different answers.
Your generation is set by birth year. On the boundaries this site uses: Generation Beta 2025–2039, Generation Alpha 2010–2024, Gen Z 1997–2009, Millennials 1981–1996, Gen X 1965–1980, Baby Boomers 1946–1964, Silent Generation 1928–1945 and the Greatest Generation 1901–1927. They follow Pew Research Center up to 1997 and McCrindle Research from 2009.
Your generation is decided by one thing: the year you were born. Here is the full chart.
| Generation | Born | Age in 2026 | Named by | When |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Generation Beta | 2025–2039 | 0–1 | Mark McCrindle | 2024 |
| Generation Alpha | 2010–2024 | 2–16 | Mark McCrindle | 2008 |
| Generation Z | 1997–2009 | 17–29 | Popular usage | 2010s |
| Millennials (Gen Y) | 1981–1996 | 30–45 | Strauss & Howe | 1987 |
| Generation X | 1965–1980 | 46–61 | Douglas Coupland | 1991 |
| Baby Boomers | 1946–1964 | 62–80 | US press | 1960s |
| Silent Generation | 1928–1945 | 81–98 | TIME magazine | 1951 |
| Greatest Generation | 1901–1927 | 99+ | Tom Brokaw | 1998 |
Why two sources will give you different answers
This is the part that causes most of the confusion, and it has a simple explanation.
There is no official body that defines generations. Two research organisations are cited most:
- McCrindle Research — Gen Y 1980–1994, Gen Z 1995–2009, Generation Alpha 2010–2024, Generation Beta 2025–2039
- Pew Research Center — Millennials 1981–1996, Gen Z 1997–2012, no Generation Beta definition
This site takes Pew's years up to the start of Gen Z and McCrindle's from the end of Gen Z onward, which is why its Gen Z runs 1997–2009.
So a person born in 2011 is Generation Alpha under McCrindle and Generation Z under Pew. Both are defensible. Neither is official.
We follow McCrindle from the end of Gen Z onward for one practical reason: it is the only widely-cited framework that defines Generation Beta at all. If you are comparing our figures with another site's and they differ by a few hundred million, this is almost always why — three birth years contain roughly 400 million people.
Why the alphabet restarted
After Generation Z there was nowhere left to go. Rather than "Generation AA", McCrindle moved to the Greek alphabet, arguing these cohorts are not a continuation of the twentieth-century sequence but the start of something else.
Following that sequence, the cohort after Beta would be Generation Gamma, running 2040 to 2054 if the fifteen-year pattern holds. Nothing has been formally named.
What each name actually came from
Half of these were coined by accident.
- Greatest Generation — the title of a 1998 Tom Brokaw book
- Silent Generation — a 1951 TIME article describing them as cautious
- Baby Boomers — the post-war spike in birth rates
- Generation X — borrowed by Douglas Coupland from a photo essay; X meant undefined
- Millennials — coined by Howe and Strauss for the cohort coming of age around 2000
- Generation Z — simply the letter after Y
- Generation Alpha — the alphabet ran out
- Generation Beta — the second Greek letter
If you are on a boundary
The contested windows are roughly 1995–1999, 2008–2013 and 2023–2026. If you were born in one of those, different sources will genuinely disagree about you.
It is worth remembering what these labels are for. Generational boundaries are useful for describing populations of hundreds of millions — cohort sizes, workforce entry years, education planning. They are close to useless for describing an individual.
A person born in December 2024 and a person born in January 2025 are in different generations and will be indistinguishable in every way that matters.
The one number worth carrying
If you remember nothing else: Generation Alpha is 2010–2024 and Generation Beta is 2025–2039. Between them they are more than a third of everyone alive, and the live counter will tell you exactly how many there are right now.
Everything else on this page is a naming convention with a history attached.