Raw field goal percentage treats every made shot as identical, which stopped being a defensible assumption the moment the three-point line was drawn. A player shooting 45 per cent from mid-range and a player shooting 40 per cent from beyond the arc have very different field goal percentages and the second one is producing more points per shot. Effective field goal percentage fixes exactly that and nothing else: it credits a made three at one and a half made twos, because three points is one and a half times two points. This effective field goal percentage calculator applies that weighting to your own totals and shows what it changes.
Arb Digital publishes free sports calculators that show the working, so this page also reports the raw field goal percentage alongside eFG%, the points actually produced from the floor, the points per attempt, and the gap between the two percentages in percentage points. That gap is the interesting number, because it is a direct measure of how much of a player’s shooting profile sits behind the arc.
What This Effective Field Goal Percentage Calculator Does
It implements the standard published definition. The NBA stat glossary gives the formula as field goals made plus half of three-pointers made, divided by field goals attempted, and describes the statistic as field goal percentage adjusted for made three-pointers being one and a half times as valuable as made two-pointers. The Wikipedia article on effective field goal percentage states the same relation.
Alongside it the tool computes the raw field goal percentage for comparison, the total points scored from the floor, and the resulting points per field goal attempt — which is worth noting is exactly twice the eFG%, because eFG% is nothing more than points from the floor divided by twice the attempts. Seeing that identity written out is usually the moment the statistic clicks.
How to Use It
- Enter field goals made and attempted. Twos and threes together. Free throws are not field goals and belong nowhere on this form.
- Enter three-pointers made as a subset. They are already counted inside the field goals made figure; the tool does not add them again.
- Add a comparison figure if you want one. A league average or a teammate’s eFG%, entered as a percentage, gives you the difference in percentage points.
- Enter games played for a per-game sanity check. If attempts per game look implausible, the totals probably came from different date ranges.
- Read the gain over raw FG%. That figure, not eFG% itself, tells you how much of the shooting profile is three-point volume.
The Formula and How It Is Calculated
eFG% = (FGM + 0.5 × 3PM) ÷ FGA. Equivalently, eFG% = points scored from field goals ÷ (2 × FGA).
Work the default example through by hand. The player made 750 field goals from 1,600 attempts, of which 210 were threes. Half of 210 is 105, so the numerator is 750 + 105 = 855. Divide by 1,600 and you get 0.534375, which is .534 in the three-decimal convention or 53.4 per cent. The raw field goal percentage is 750 ÷ 1,600 = .469. The difference is 6.6 percentage points, and every one of those points came from three-point volume.
Check it the other way. Of the 750 makes, 210 were threes and 540 were twos, so the points from the floor are 3 × 210 + 2 × 540 = 630 + 1,080 = 1,710. Divide by twice the attempts, 3,200, and you get 0.534375 again. Points per attempt is 1,710 ÷ 1,600 = 1.069, precisely double the eFG%. The two routes agree because they are the same arithmetic written differently.
eFG% Versus True Shooting Percentage — the Boundary
These two statistics are constantly treated as interchangeable and they are not. The distinction is worth stating precisely, because using the wrong one is the most common analytical mistake in this area.
eFG% covers shots from the floor only. Its denominator is field goal attempts, and free throws are absent from both halves of the fraction. It answers one question: how efficiently did this player convert the shots they took from the field, given that some of them were worth three?
True shooting percentage includes free throws. Its numerator is total points, and its denominator is a constructed figure called true shooting attempts, which counts field goal attempts plus a fraction of free throw attempts — the NBA glossary gives that fraction as 0.44 — to approximate the number of possessions a player’s shooting actually consumed. It answers a broader question: how efficiently did this player convert scoring opportunities of every kind?
The practical consequence is that a player who draws a lot of fouls and shoots them well will have a true shooting percentage far above their eFG%, and a poor free throw shooter will have the opposite. Neither is wrong; they measure different things. If you want the free-throw-inclusive number, the true shooting percentage calculator computes it with the proper denominator, and this page deliberately does not, because a page that quietly returned both would encourage exactly the confusion described here.
What eFG% Still Cannot Tell You
Efficiency is not production and it never has been. A player taking four shots a night at a high eFG% and a player taking twenty at a slightly lower one are not comparable on this number alone, because the second is carrying an offence and the first is picking spots. Any efficiency rate has to be read against volume, which is why the attempts figure sits in the grid above rather than being hidden.
Nor does eFG% know anything about shot difficulty or context. An open corner three off a kick-out and a contested three off the dribble with two seconds left count identically. So does a dunk off a defensive breakdown and a turnaround fadeaway over a set defence. A high eFG% built almost entirely on shots created by teammates is a real skill, but it is a different skill from creating them, and this statistic cannot separate the two.
It is also blind to turnovers. A possession that ends in a steal produces no shot attempt at all, so it never enters the denominator, and a player who is highly efficient when they shoot but loses the ball frequently looks better here than they are. Broader possession-based measures exist for that reason. The basketball game score calculator implements Hollinger’s published single-game formula, which folds shooting, rebounding, assists, fouls and turnovers into one figure — a different kind of summary rather than a competing efficiency rate.
Reading the Gain Over Raw Field Goal Percentage
The difference between eFG% and FG% is not a quality measure. It is a volume measure, and specifically it is a fixed function of what share of a player’s makes were threes. The gap equals half the three-pointers made divided by the attempts, so it grows purely with three-point volume relative to total shooting, regardless of how well anyone shot.
That makes it a useful profile marker. A traditional interior player will show a gap near zero because almost none of their makes are threes. A high-volume perimeter shooter can show ten percentage points or more. Two players with identical eFG% and very different gaps are getting to the same efficiency by completely different routes, and knowing which route matters far more for team-building than the headline number does.
It also explains why eFG% rose across professional basketball as three-point volume rose, without anyone necessarily shooting better. Comparing a modern eFG% to one from a low-volume three-point era compares two different offensive environments, and the honest comparison is against the league average of the same season. That is what the optional comparison field is for, and the same discipline is why the percentage calculator is worth reaching for when you want to express one figure as a share of another rather than eyeballing it.
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Browse All Free Tools Talk to Arb DigitalCommon Mistakes to Avoid
- Adding three-pointers made on top of field goals made — threes are already inside the field goal total, and double-counting them inflates eFG% badly.
- Including free throws — free throws are not field goals. If you want them counted, the statistic you want is true shooting percentage, not this one.
- Confusing eFG% with true shooting percentage — they use different numerators and different denominators and will not agree for any player who shoots free throws.
- Reading efficiency without volume — a high eFG% on four attempts a game and a slightly lower one on twenty are not the same achievement.
- Comparing across eras without a league baseline — eFG% drifts upward as three-point volume rises, so the meaningful comparison is against the same season’s average.
Related Free Tools From Arb Digital
For the free-throw-inclusive version use the true shooting percentage calculator, and for a single-game all-round summary the basketball game score calculator. General rate work lives in the percentage calculator and the ratio calculator, and team standings arithmetic in the winning percentage calculator. Everything is on the free online tools hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
They measure different things. Effective field goal percentage covers shots from the floor only, with field goal attempts as the denominator and free throws absent entirely. True shooting percentage includes free throws: its numerator is total points and its denominator is field goal attempts plus a fraction of free throw attempts, published by the NBA as 0.44, which approximates the possessions the shooting consumed. A good free throw shooter who draws fouls will show a true shooting percentage well above their eFG%.
Because three points is one and a half times two points, and that is the entire justification. The weighting is not a fitted coefficient or an estimate of anything; it simply restates the scoring rules. Half a made three is added to the numerator so that a player who makes ten threes from twenty attempts is credited the same as one who makes fifteen twos from twenty, which is correct, since both produced thirty points from twenty shots.
No, and doing so is the most frequent input error with this statistic. Three-pointers made are a subset of field goals made, not a separate category. If a player made 750 field goals in a season and 210 of them were threes, the correct entries are 750 and 210. Entering 960 as the field goals made would count every three twice and produce an eFG% far above anything possible.
Yes, in principle, and it happens in small samples. A player who takes three shots and makes all three as three-pointers has a numerator of 3 plus 1.5, which is 4.5, over 3 attempts, giving 150 per cent. That is not an error in the formula; it reflects that the player scored nine points on three shots. Over a season the figure settles well below 100 because no one shoots exclusively threes and makes all of them.
It is a measure of three-point volume rather than of shooting quality. The gap works out to half the three-pointers made divided by field goal attempts, so it grows with how much of a player's shooting comes from behind the arc and does not depend on how well they shot. An interior player will show almost no gap; a high-volume perimeter shooter can show ten percentage points or more, and two players with the same eFG% and different gaps are reaching it by different routes.
No, and comparing across eras without a baseline is misleading. As three-point attempt volume rose across professional basketball, league-average eFG% rose with it, so a figure that would have led the league in a low-volume era is unremarkable in a high-volume one. The meaningful comparison is always against the league average for the same season, which is why this tool takes a comparison figure as an input rather than hard-coding one.
No to both. A possession that ends in a turnover produces no field goal attempt, so it never enters the denominator, and a player who is efficient when they shoot but loses the ball often looks better on this number than their overall contribution warrants. Shot difficulty is invisible too: an uncontested corner three and a contested step-back count identically, as do a dunk off a broken defence and a fadeaway over a set one.
Yes. The formula is indifferent to whose totals you enter, so team season totals produce a team eFG%, and it is one of the standard four factors used to describe team offensive performance. The same cautions apply: it excludes free throws entirely, it says nothing about turnovers or offensive rebounding, and a team eFG% only means something when read against the league average for that season.
This tool is provided for educational use. It reproduces the published effective field goal percentage formula from figures you enter and does not source, verify or supply any player or team statistics. Published figures may differ slightly between sources because of rounding and data conventions.
