How often should you get tested for STIs?
The short answer
For most people the anchor is once a year while sexually active, and again with each new partner. Sexually active women under 25 are advised to test annually for chlamydia and gonorrhoea, and everyone aged 13 to 64 should have at least one HIV test. The more important point is that the majority of these infections produce no symptoms, so how you feel is not evidence either way.
What readers think
Have you and a partner ever been tested together at the start of a relationship?
Anonymous. One vote per reader.
Most people arrive at this question at one of two moments: a new relationship is starting, or something has happened and they want to know whether to worry. The two moments call for different answers, and conflating them is why the advice people find is so often useless to them.
There is also a piece of information that changes the shape of the question entirely, and it is not widely enough known. The majority of the common curable infections cause no noticeable symptoms in the people who have them. That single fact means the reasoning almost everyone applies, that you would know if something were wrong, is not just unreliable but close to worthless. Testing is not confirmation of a suspicion. It is the only way the information exists at all.
The baseline schedule
Guideline bodies converge on a fairly simple structure, with the detail varying by circumstance rather than by preference.
Sexually active women under 25 are advised to be screened for chlamydia and gonorrhoea every year. The age cutoff is not arbitrary: prevalence in that group is high enough that annual screening finds enough infections to be worth doing at population scale. Women 25 and over are advised to screen annually if they have a new partner, more than one partner, or a partner who has an infection or has other partners[1].
Everyone between 13 and 64 is advised to be tested for HIV at least once as part of routine care, with repeat testing depending on circumstances. Syphilis screening is guided by local prevalence and by individual circumstances rather than applied uniformly[1].
For men in heterosexual relationships the routine screening guidance is thinner, largely because the population-level case for universal screening has been harder to establish, not because infection is less likely or less consequential. Testing when starting a new relationship, or after a partner tests positive, is standard advice regardless.
Why feeling fine is not information
This is the part worth internalising even if you remember nothing else.
The World Health Organization estimates more than a million curable infections are acquired every day among people aged 15 to 49, and describes the majority as producing no symptoms[2]. A systematic review and meta-analysis of women in low and middle income countries found roughly 61 percent of chlamydia infections, 53 percent of gonorrhoea infections and 57 percent of trichomoniasis infections were asymptomatic[3].
So an absence of symptoms is close to uninformative. It does not mean you are clear, and it does not mean your partner is. This is also why the common arrangement where two people decide they do not need testing because neither has noticed anything is not a decision based on evidence. It is a decision based on the absence of a signal that mostly does not appear.
The practical consequence is that testing at the start of a relationship is not an accusation and does not imply anyone suspects anything. It is the only way to convert an assumption into a fact.
The window period, and why testing too early misleads
The most common practical mistake is testing at the wrong time rather than not testing at all.
Every test has a window period: an interval after exposure during which an infection is present but not yet detectable. Test inside that window and you get a negative result that means nothing, and the false reassurance it produces is arguably worse than not having tested, because people act on it.
Window periods differ by infection and by the type of test used, from around one to two weeks for some bacterial infections detected by nucleic acid tests, to considerably longer for antibody-based testing. Because the specifics depend on which test a clinic actually runs, the reliable move is not to memorise a number but to ask directly: given when the exposure was, is it too early for this test to be meaningful, and when should I return.
This is also why a single test after a specific incident is often not sufficient on its own, and why clinics will sometimes ask someone to come back rather than treating one negative as the end of it.
Screening and testing are different activities
Two things get called getting tested and they follow different logic.
Screening is routine checking in the absence of any symptoms or known exposure. It runs on a schedule, it is preventive, and the annual figures above describe it.
Testing is what happens when there is a reason: symptoms, a partner who has tested positive, a condom failure, or a specific incident. That is not governed by an annual schedule at all. It is prompt, it is guided by the timing of the exposure, and waiting for a scheduled screening to come round is the wrong response to it.
Mixing these up produces both of the common errors. People with a specific reason to test wait months because they think testing is an annual thing. People with no particular reason skip screening because nothing has happened. The schedule is a floor for the first situation and irrelevant to the second.
It depends, on what?
What changes the answer
The right frequency for a specific person depends on things a general schedule cannot see.
The number of partners and whether relationships overlap matters more than any other single factor, and someone with several partners in a year is reasonably advised to test more often than annually.
Monogamy changes the calculation, but only from the point at which both people have tested. Two people who commit to each other and never test have not established anything; they have agreed to share whatever either of them arrived with. Testing once, together, at the start converts that into actual knowledge, after which the ongoing frequency for a genuinely closed pair is low.
Pregnancy changes it too. Screening in pregnancy is recommended on its own schedule because several of these infections affect the pregnancy and the newborn rather than only the adult, and some of that screening is routine antenatal care in most systems.
Access is a real constraint rather than an excuse. Where testing is expensive, or where seeking it is socially costly, the honest advice is to prioritise: testing at the start of a new relationship, and testing after a specific exposure, carry far more value than adhering to an annual rhythm.
Where people disagree
Both sides of it
Reasonable people land in different places on this. Here is the strongest version of each case, not a straw man of the one we disagree with.
The case for yes
- Annual screening is a low-cost, low-effort baseline that catches infections which by definition give no other warning, and most of the common ones are straightforwardly curable once found.
- Untreated infections carry consequences well beyond the immediate: chlamydia and gonorrhoea are established causes of pelvic inflammatory disease and of tubal factor infertility, and those outcomes are largely preventable by detection.
- Testing at the start of a relationship removes an entire category of ambiguity from it, and does so at a point when it costs a conversation rather than a crisis.
The case for no
- A fixed annual rhythm is a population-level instrument and fits individuals poorly. Someone in a long closed relationship who has both tested gains very little from repeating it every year.
- Testing produces anxiety and occasional false positives, and repeated screening of very low-risk people generates more distress and follow-up investigation than infections found.
- Cost and access are genuine limits. Where testing is paid for out of pocket, an annual habit competes with other health spending, and a schedule that ignores this simply goes unfollowed.
Evidence
What the research says
- Strong evidence
National clinical guidelines recommend annual chlamydia and gonorrhoea screening for sexually active women under 25, annual screening for older women with a new partner, multiple partners, or a partner with an infection, and at least one HIV test for everyone aged 13 to 64, with syphilis screening guided by local prevalence and individual circumstances.
Workowski, K. A., Bachmann, L. H., Chan, P. A., Johnston, C. M., Muzny, C. A., Park, I., Reno, H., Zenilman, J. M., & Bolan, G. A., Sexually Transmitted Infections Treatment Guidelines, 2021 (2021)(opens in a new tab)What this does not show
These are consensus clinical recommendations rather than the output of a single trial, and they are calibrated to disease prevalence and health system capacity in the United States. Prevalence and screening infrastructure differ substantially elsewhere, so the specific ages and intervals do not transfer unchanged to every country. Guidelines are also periodically revised, and the recommendation for any individual is properly made by a clinician who knows their circumstances.
- Strong evidence
More than one million curable sexually transmitted infections are acquired each day worldwide among people aged 15 to 49, and the majority produce no symptoms. An estimated 374 million new infections with chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis or trichomoniasis occurred in 2020 in that age group.
World Health Organization, Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) fact sheet (2024)(opens in a new tab)What this does not show
These are global modelled estimates built from surveillance systems that vary widely in completeness, so the confidence intervals around them are wide and undercounting is likely in regions with weaker surveillance. Global figures also obscure very large regional variation, and a global rate is not the rate facing any particular person.
- Moderate evidencePooled across multiple studies of women in low and middle income countries
A systematic review and meta-analysis of women in low and middle income countries found that approximately 61 percent of chlamydia infections, 53 percent of gonorrhoea infections and 57 percent of trichomoniasis infections were asymptomatic.
Fortas, C., et al., Asymptomatic infections with Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and Trichomonas vaginalis among women in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis (2024)(opens in a new tab)What this does not show
Restricted to women in low and middle income countries, so the proportions may differ elsewhere and the review does not speak to men. Pooled estimates across heterogeneous studies carry substantial variation between the included samples, and how symptoms were ascertained differed between studies, which affects what counts as asymptomatic.
How we rate evidence strength
- Strong evidence
- Multiple independent studies, including replications or meta-analyses, point the same way.
- Moderate evidence
- Several studies support this, but samples are limited or findings vary by population.
- Limited evidence
- Early, small, or single-study evidence. Treat this as a reasonable hypothesis, not a settled fact.
- Contested
- Credible researchers disagree, or the evidence points in conflicting directions.
Comparative view
Different perspectives
Traditions and disciplines answer this differently. We describe what each one teaches. We are not telling you which is right, and no tradition speaks with a single voice.
Why the Guidelines Target Some Groups and Not Others
Screening recommendations often read as though they are statements about who is at risk, and they are not. They are statements about where screening a whole population produces more benefit than harm, which is a different calculation and depends heavily on how common an infection is in that group.
When prevalence is low, even an accurate test produces a large share of false positives among those who test positive, simply because there are so many more uninfected people being tested. That leads to unnecessary treatment, unnecessary anxiety and unnecessary follow-up. This is the main reason universal screening is recommended for some groups and not others, and it is why the recommendation for younger women is firmer than for older ones.
It follows that an individual is not outside the guidelines because they are safe. They may simply be in a group where blanket screening does not pay off at population scale, while their own circumstances still make testing clearly worthwhile. Guidelines set a floor for public health programmes. They are not a ceiling on what an individual should reasonably do.
Raising It Without It Becoming a Fight
Clinicians who work with couples note that the difficulty here is almost never informational. Both people usually understand why testing makes sense. What makes it hard is that the request can be heard as an accusation, and the person hearing it that way then defends themselves rather than answering.
The framing that tends to work is the one that does not single anybody out. Proposing that both of you go, as a normal thing people do at this stage, changes what is being asked. It stops being a question about the other person's history and becomes a shared piece of housekeeping. Practitioners generally suggest raising it outside the bedroom and outside a moment of conflict, where it is far more likely to be received as intended.
The reaction is also worth noticing on its own account. Discomfort and embarrassment are ordinary. Anger, or sustained pressure to drop the subject, is a different thing, and it tends to be informative about how disagreement in general will go in that relationship.
Practical steps
What you can actually do
Treat a new partner as the trigger rather than the calendar. Testing before or early in a new sexual relationship is worth more than any annual rhythm, because it is the point at which the information actually changes something.
Ask the clinic what the window period is for the specific test they are running, given when your last exposure was. A negative result from inside the window is not reassurance and it is a common source of false confidence.
Ask what you are actually being tested for. A standard panel does not automatically include everything, and people routinely assume a broader screen than they received. Herpes in particular is often not included unless requested.
If you are in a new relationship, test together rather than one of you presenting results to the other. It makes the whole thing a shared piece of admin rather than a demand, and it is much easier to raise that way.
Keep your own record of what you were tested for and when. Nobody else is tracking it, and a year later you will not remember which panel it was.
Worth unlearning
Common misconceptions
That you would know if you had one. The majority of common curable infections produce no symptoms, and in women roughly 53 to 61 percent of chlamydia, gonorrhoea and trichomoniasis infections were asymptomatic in a systematic review.
That a negative test shortly after an exposure clears you. Every test has a window period during which an infection is present but undetectable, and testing inside it produces a negative that carries no information.
That a standard panel covers everything. Panels vary between clinics and several infections, herpes most commonly, are frequently excluded unless specifically requested.
That being in a committed relationship removes the need. Commitment establishes nothing about what either person had beforehand, which is what testing once, together, at the start is for.
That asking a partner to test implies you suspect them. Given how rarely these infections announce themselves, testing is how anybody knows anything, including about themselves.
The short version
Key takeaways
Sexually active women under 25 are advised to screen annually for chlamydia and gonorrhoea, and everyone aged 13 to 64 to test for HIV at least once.
Clinical consensusA new partner is a stronger trigger to test than any annual schedule, because it is the moment the result changes a decision.
Clinical consensusThe majority of common curable infections are asymptomatic, so having no symptoms is not evidence of being clear.
ResearchTesting inside a test's window period yields a negative that means nothing, which makes timing as important as the decision to test.
Clinical consensus
Worth saying
When to get professional help
See a clinician promptly rather than waiting for a scheduled screen if you have unusual discharge, pain when urinating, pelvic or testicular pain, sores, unexplained rashes, or bleeding between periods. Go promptly too if a partner tells you they have tested positive, even if you feel completely well, because that is exactly the situation where symptoms are least reliable. If you are pregnant or think you might be, raise it at your first antenatal appointment rather than waiting, since the schedule and the stakes are different. And if a partner responds to a request for testing with anger or pressure to drop it, that is worth paying attention to as information about the relationship, separately from the health question.
Still wondering
Related questions people ask
Yes, and this is the situation where testing carries the most information rather than the least. The majority of these infections produce no symptoms, so an absence of symptoms in either of you is close to uninformative. Two people concluding they are both fine because nothing has been noticed have not established anything.
Community
What other people say
These are readers describing their own relationships, not professionals. Take them as experience, not advice, and please do not name anyone.
No one has shared their experience yet. If you have been here, you would be the first, and probably the most useful thing on this page.
Check our work
Sources
- [1]Sexually Transmitted Infections Treatment Guidelines, 2021(opens in a new tab)
Workowski, K. A., Bachmann, L. H., Chan, P. A., Johnston, C. M., Muzny, C. A., Park, I., Reno, H., Zenilman, J. M., & Bolan, G. A. · MMWR Recommendations and Reports, 70(4), 1-187 · 2021
- [2]Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) fact sheet(opens in a new tab)
World Health Organization · World Health Organization · 2024
- [3]Asymptomatic infections with Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and Trichomonas vaginalis among women in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis(opens in a new tab)
Fortas, C., et al. · PLOS Global Public Health, 4, e0003226 · 2024
- [4]Clinical Guidance for Sexually Transmitted Infections(opens in a new tab)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention · Centers for Disease Control and Prevention · 2024