What Enneagram Type is rarest?

Do you find yourself wanting to explore the many ways of understanding personalities? Or maybe, you're a self-professed "personality type" enthusiast, who loves nothing more than trying to figure out what all the different personality types can tell us about our behaviors and relationships. If so, then have we got news for you - The Enneagram is here! As an ever-growing framework of nine recognized personality types, The Enneagram has become increasingly popular over the past few years as people everywhere turn to it as a way to really drill down into their own motivations and patterns of behavior. But with this newfound popularity has come one burning question—which among these nine personality types is the rarest?

The Enneagram is a fascinating model of personality that identifies nine distinct types, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and unique characteristics. There is some data that we can look at to determine the rarest enneagram type however it’s more complex. Tests are self-reporting, not always accurate, and we only have the data from the Enneagram Test’s that share. It’s difficult to know the true population distribution of enneagram types. 

First of all, people are self-reporting and may end up choosing attributes they wish they were rather than who they really are. This could result in mistyping or inaccurate results. Also, often tests will only focus on behavioral attributes rather than the core motivators of each type. The types are determined by your core motivations, so this can cause inaccurate results as well. 

Below is some information I was able to find that was shared by websites that have enough data to have statistically significant results. These are not my findings, rather I’m sharing what reliable information I was able to find. 

In my personal practice I’ve done upwards of 200+ typing sessions. The rarest for me is type 5 and most common would be types 4,7 and 9. This could also be attributed to type 5’s personality structure of not wanting to share information about themselves, so not engaging in the typing in the first place. 

See the visuals below for more information: