Honor & Ranks

Overview

On Codewars, there are two different scales you can level up by doing different things:

• Honor : This is the amount of points you can see in the top right corner of the page, when you're connected to Codewars. You gain honor points for a lot of things (completing katas, translating them, voting, from votes your comments or solutions earned, positive votes received on the katas you authored, ... See details below).

• Rank progress : This scale is the one defining your current kyu/dan badge and the percentage of progress in the stat page of your profile (overall % or % per language). You can level up your rank doing only one thing: solving katas.

Honor

Honor represents the level of respect a user has earned from the community, based on their skill and contributions. While ranks are an indication of your skill only, honor is an indication mostly of your activity and contributions.

Honor Points

You earn honor when you accomplish certain goals on Codewars.

Solving katas	Honor	Description
Completed Kata (White)	2	completion of a "beginner" level kata (8kyu and 7kyu)
Completed Kata (Yellow)	8	completion of a "novice" level kata (6kyu and 5kyu)
Completed Kata (Blue)	32	completion of a "competent" level kata (4kyu and 3kyu)
Completed Kata (Purple)	128	completion of a "proficient" level kata (2kyu and 1 kyu)
Completed Kata (Beta)	2	when the kata is approved, you get the points missing according to its actual approved rank

Achieving rank progress	Honor	Description
Reached 7 kyu	20	you have reached 7kyu (beginner)!
Reached 6 kyu	30	you have reached 6kyu (novice)!
Reached 5 kyu	45	you have reached 5kyu (novice)!
Reached 4 kyu	70	you have reached 4kyu (competent)!
Reached 3 kyu	100	you have reached 3kyu (competent)!
Reached 2 kyu	150	you have reached 2kyu (proficient)!
Reached 1 kyu	225	you have reached 1kyu (proficient)!
Reached 1 dan	450	you have reached 1dan (master)!
Reached 2 dan	900	you have reached 2dan (master)!
Reached 3 dan	1800	you have reached 3dan (master)!
Reached 4 dan	3600	you have reached 4dan (master)!

Contributing in various ways	Honor	Description
Translation Approved (White)	4
Translation Approved (Yellow)	16
Translation Approved (Blue)	64
Translation Approved (Purple)	256
Assessed Beta Kata Rank	1	after a beta kata completion
Assessed Kata Satisfaction	1	after a kata completion
Published Kumite or Fork	2	fork a solution of yours or another warrior's one, or create a new kumite
Kata Solution Up Voted	1	your solution gets a 'best practices' or 'clever' up vote
Comment Up Voted	1
Comment Down Voted	-1
Referral Signup (first 5)	3
Referral Signup (6+)	1
Added GitHub Account	1

Through authored katas	Honor	Description
Published Kata	3	creation of a new beta Kata
Kata Approved (White)	3
Kata Approved (Yellow)	15
Kata Approved (Blue)	75
Kata Approved (Purple)	375
Authored Kata Up Voted	2	a warrior who completed one of your katas up voted it

Placeholders

Name	Honor	Description
Solved Kata First	5

Ranks

Ranks are used to indicate progression and difficulty. Code Warriors complete Kata which are assigned a rank, which in turn earns them a higher rank once they complete enough of them. There are two classes of ranks, Kyu and Dan. You begin with Kyu at level 8 and work your way down to level 1. Then you progress to Dan, where you work your way up from level 1 to level 8.

Why the names Kyu and Dan? The terms are borrowed from a system in Japanese martial arts, which is in turn borrowed from the game of Go. Kyu (or Kyū) indicates the number of degrees away from master level (Dan). This is why they count downward. Once you reach master level, we count upward. Black belts in martial arts are Dan level.

Leveling Your Rank

When you visit your profile on the site, you can see that you have an Overall rank for the site as well as individual ranks for each language you have completed kata in.

https://www.codewars.com/users/USERNAME

Every time time you complete a kata, the rank score for the corresponding language of completion will increase. However, if you complete the same kata in more than one language, only the FIRST completion will improve your Overall rank score. Each rank has a percentage which represents how close you are to leveling to the next rank. For example, if your overall rank is 5 kyu / 50.0% that means you have progressed halfway to reaching a rank of 4 kyu.

The "score" used to decide your rank is not the same as honor. You can't see your score on your profile, but it is visible here in the API:

https://www.codewars.com/api/v1/users/USERNAME

There is a score for each language as well as an overall score that drive your per-language rank and your overall rank respectively. This table shows the score required for you to reach each rank. You can see each rank is progressively harder to each than the last.

User Rank	Required Score
8 kyu	0
7 kyu	20
6 kyu	76
5 kyu	229
4 kyu	643
3 kyu	1,768
2 kyu	4,829
1 kyu	13,147
1 dan	35,759
2 dan	97,225

When a kata is completed, you always received a set amount of honor points based on the level of the kata as well as an internal score that counts toward your next rank. Since every rank requires a higher score than the last, Completing an easy kata well below your current rank will result in little progress. However completing a hard kata above your current rank will give you much more progress towards leveling up. As such, completing a lot of low level katas will give you a lot of honor, but will not increase your rank very quickly. Completing more hard katas will level your rank faster.

This table shows the amount of score you gain every time you complete a kata of a given level. Remember, every kata completion counts toward the rank of that language, but only the first completion of a given kata counts toward your overall rank/score.

Kata Rank	Score Awarded
Complete an 8 kyu kata	2
Complete a 7 kyu kata	3
Complete a 6 kyu kata	8
Complete a 5 kyu kata	21
Complete a 4 kyu kata	55
Complete a 3 kyu kata	149
Complete a 2 kyu kata	404
Complete a 1 kyu kata	1,097