Important medical disclaimer
Educational tools only — not medical care
Migraine Trail is not a healthcare provider, medical service, or medical device. These tools use information you enter and simplified educational rules. They may be incomplete or wrong and cannot examine you.
- Results do not diagnose, rule out, confirm, or predict any disease, headache type, trigger, emergency, or personal medical risk.
- Do not start, stop, combine, delay, or change a medicine or treatment—and do not delay professional care—because of a result.
- Labels such as “pattern,” “alignment,” “score,” “threshold,” “risk,” or “urgency” are educational summaries, not clinical findings or probabilities.
Discuss symptoms and decisions with a licensed healthcare professional who knows your history. For a child, involve a parent or guardian and an appropriate pediatric clinician.
If symptoms may be an emergency, stop using this site. Call your local emergency number or seek emergency care now. Never wait for or rely on a tool result.
Free three-month frequency check
Episodic vs Chronic Migraine Frequency Checker
Compare your total headache days and migraine-feature days with the recognized chronic migraine frequency thresholds.
Total headache days
Count every calendar day affected by any headache for any part of the day, including milder or tension-type-like pain.
Migraine-feature days
Count the subset with your usual migraine symptoms or aura, or headache believed to be migraine that improved with a triptan or ergot.
How the thresholds work
ICHD-3 describes chronic migraine as headache on 15 or more days/month for more than three months. On at least 8 days/month, the headache must have qualifying migraine features, aura, or a migraine-specific treatment response described in the criteria.
The criteria also require a history of at least five prior migraine attacks and that another diagnosis does not better explain the pattern. Below 15 headache days/month is commonly described as an episodic frequency range, but attacks can still cause substantial disability.
Frequently asked questions
How many headache days count as chronic migraine?
The frequency portion requires at least 15 headache days per month, with migraine features on at least 8 days, for more than three months.
What is a headache day?
Any calendar day affected by headache for part or all of the day. The headache does not need to be severe or have full migraine features to count toward the total.
Can this checker diagnose chronic migraine?
No. It checks frequency and a small part of the history. A healthcare professional must confirm the headache characteristics and exclude other explanations.
Make every headache day count
Log migraine and lower-intensity headache days as they happen with Migraine Trail.