Points, stats & passkey

Three things tie together to track your contribution: a username (and optional team), a passkey that proves the work is really yours, and the points system that scores the work you complete. This page covers all three.

How do my username and team work?

When you install Folding@home, you pick a username and optionally a team number. These appear on the public stats leaderboards.

Username rules. Stick to letters, numbers, and underscores. Don't use spaces; use _ instead. Don't use #, ^, ~, or | — these are reserved. Usernames are case-sensitive: Dave, dave, and dAVE are different users. If you use an email address as your username, only the part before the @ is shown on stats pages.

Anonymous folding. You can set the username to anonymous if you don't want a personal name on the leaderboards.

Teams. To join an existing team, enter its team number during setup. To start a new team, use the Create-a-Team page linked from the stats page. Multiple machines can fold under the same username and team — their points add together.

Changing your username. You can change it any time in your client's identity settings. Work units already returned stay credited to the old name; new ones credit the new name.

What is a passkey and why should I use one?

Don't confuse a passkey with a passphrase. A passphrase is the password for your Folding@home Account (covered below) — it lets you sign into Web Control. A passkey is the points-integrity token described here. They're different strings used for different purposes; the client and Web Control both make the distinction explicit.

A passkey is a unique token that ties your work units to you, not just to anyone using your username. Without a passkey, two people picking the same username can't be distinguished — and if one of them cheats, both get penalized. With a passkey, only the actual offender is affected.

The more important reason to use one: the Quick Return Bonus (QRB), described below, is only awarded to donors with a passkey.

Getting a passkey. Request one at apps.foldingathome.org/passkey/create. The form asks for your username and email; the passkey is sent to that email rather than displayed on the page, so nobody else can claim a passkey in your name.

Entering it. Paste your passkey into the Username / Team / Passkey fields. With a Folding@home Account, these live in Account Settings and apply to every machine you've signed in. Without an account, set them in each machine's Machine Settings. Always copy-paste — never type a passkey by hand. Use the same passkey on every machine you fold on; that's how a single donor identity is built up across hardware.

Keep it private. Don't post your passkey on the forum, Discord, or anywhere public. The only places it should ever go are the client itself and Folding@home's own websites.

Lost it? Re-request a passkey from the same page using the same username and email — you'll get the same one back. If you've lost access to that email, request from a new email and you'll get a fresh passkey (and lose linkage to the old one).

How do points work?

Points reflect how much science your computer contributed. Each project is benchmarked on a reference machine; the base credit for a work unit is proportional to how long the reference machine takes to run it. Larger or more complex simulations are worth more.

You won't see points immediately. Stats are updated hourly, on the hour, and your username only appears in the leaderboards after your first work unit is returned. A brand-new team appears right away.

Why points vary between work units. Different research projects involve different proteins and methods. Some study small fast-folding systems; others study large complexes. The benchmark machine evens out a lot of this, but variation between WUs and between donor machines is unavoidable — the goal is fairness across projects, not exact agreement with any one machine.

What is the Quick Return Bonus (QRB)?

Fast turnaround matters: many F@h projects iterate on results, so a WU returned in a day is more useful than the same WU returned in a week. The QRB, introduced in 2010, gives extra points for fast and reliable completion.

To qualify for the QRB you must:

• Use a passkey.
• Have successfully returned at least 10 bonus-eligible work units.
• Have an overall return rate of at least 80% on assigned WUs.
• Return the WU before its timeout.

Bonus points aren't awarded for partial returns.

How are points and PPD calculated?

For a returned work unit, total points are:

final_points = base_points × max(1, sqrt(k × deadline_length / elapsed_time))

The max(1, …) keeps you from ever earning less than the base. deadline_length is the WU's final deadline and elapsed_time is from assignment to upload (including transit). Both are in days to one decimal place. The k factor defaults to 0.75 but varies by project — more scientifically valuable projects can have a higher k.

Points-per-day (PPD), the headline number on stats pages, is:

PPD = 14.4 × base_points × max(1, sqrt(14.4 × k × Expiration / TPF)) / TPF

where TPF is time-per-frame, in minutes.

How do deadlines and timeouts work?

Every work unit has a timeout (after which the unit is reassigned to someone else) and a deadline (after which no credit is given). Both are derived from how long the WU took on the benchmark machine:

timeout = 20 × daysPerWU + 2
deadline = max(30 × daysPerWU + 2, 10)

The +2 buffer absorbs short server outages. Ten days is the minimum deadline. Some projects use shorter or longer deadlines than this formula gives — tight-deadline projects (e.g. some replica-exchange runs) need fast turnaround to do anything useful; loose-deadline projects (e.g. some pathway-sampling runs) don't.

The assignment server takes your hardware speed into account when handing out WUs, so a slower machine won't be given a project it has no chance of finishing in time.

What is a Folding@home Account?

An account is a separate, optional layer above usernames and passkeys. It lets you control every machine you fold on from a single login — useful if you have more than one folding rig, or want to check on a home machine from your phone.

Registering. Open Web Control, click Register, and provide an email address and a passphrase. The passphrase is a password (you can let Web Control generate a four-word one for you); it is not a passkey. Confirm the email link, and any machine you sign in on becomes part of your account.

Cause preference. Once you're signed in, you can pick a preferred Cause in Account Settings — cancer, infectious disease, neurological disease, etc. The assignment server will try to send you work matching your preference, though it's not guaranteed.

Connecting headless machines. Servers or other machines without a browser connect via the account token shown in your Account Settings. Write it (and an optional machine-name) into /etc/fah-client/config.xml and restart the client. Rotate the token in Account Settings afterwards so the same token can't be reused by anyone else.

Award certificates. The stats page inside Web Control includes downloadable certificates for milestone contributions — nice for sharing on social media or a CV.

Where can I get raw stats data?

Daily snapshots of the full leaderboards are at:

• daily_user_summary.txt — every donor's totals
• daily_team_summary.txt — every team's totals

These are updated every few hours. Please do not run scrapers or crawlers against the live stats web pages — download these files instead. Crawling will get your IP permanently banned.