If you've ever looked at your global WhatPulse rank and calculated how many years it would take to catch the person at the top, you'll understand why I built Leagues. More than two decades of keys and clicks make for some impressive lifetime totals. They also make for a rather long head start.
WhatPulse Leagues are here. Your everyday computer activity now gives you a weekly competition: a small group of opponents, a promotion line to aim for, and a fresh round every Monday. Keep using WhatPulse and pulsing normally. Your keys and clicks do the rest.
A leaderboard for this week
The global rankings tell the story of your time with WhatPulse. Leagues give you something more immediate to follow. The person just above you, the gap to promotion, the question of whether you'll hold your position through the weekend.
Each round runs from Monday through Sunday. You're placed in a group of roughly 50 active users within your division, with recent activity used to balance the groups. That group lasts for one week. Next Monday brings new opponents and scores starting at zero.
Your account's lifetime totals don't give you a points advantage. What matters is the activity recorded during the round.
Start in Bronze and work your way up
For the public launch, we're resetting the League ladder: everyone starts in Bronze, including the private-beta competitors. From there, there are eight divisions to work through:
Bronze → Silver → Gold → Platinum → Diamond → Master → Champion → Legend
Your finishing position decides what happens next:
- Promotion zone: move up one division.
- Safe zone: stay in your current division.
- Relegation zone: move down one division.
The standings mark these zones for your group, so you can see exactly where you need to finish. Bronze has no relegation, and at the top of the ladder, Legend's top finishers earn a Legend win.
Your division carries over between weeks. Your weekly score starts fresh. Reaching Gold gives you a new set of opponents to get acquainted with, one pulse at a time.
Your normal keys and clicks count
League ranking uses Pulse Score, calculated as:
Pulse Score = keys + (clicks × 3)
Every key earns one point; every click earns three. The weighting gives mouse activity more influence alongside the naturally higher volume of keystrokes. Uptime, network traffic, scrolls, and mouse distance don't contribute to your League score.
Whether you're writing code, working through a spreadsheet, or spending an evening gaming, the keyboard and mouse activity WhatPulse already records counts. There's no extra timer to start or session to log. Keep the app running and pulse regularly, just as you normally would. Standings update about once an hour.
Friday brings the final sprint
At 18:00 on Friday, Central European local time, Leagues enter the final sprint. Rivals' exact Pulse Scores and the point gaps between competitors are hidden until the round ends.
You can still see your own score, your current rank, and the promotion and relegation zones. Positions continue updating, and everyone's activity keeps counting throughout the weekend.
So you might know you're just inside the promotion zone, but you won't know whether the person behind you is ten points away or ten thousand. That comfortable lead from Thursday suddenly feels a little less comfortable.
Monday reveals the result and starts the next round
After Sunday ends, the final standings are revealed and promotions, holds, and relegations are settled. On Monday, new groups are created and every round score returns to zero.
With League updates enabled, your Monday email combines the result with your new division and group. There's also a shareable result card, and your dashboard keeps a history of finishes, promotions, and your highest division. This is WhatPulse; of course there are more stats to look back on.
Built with the beta crew
A couple of hundred WhatPulse users helped test Leagues in private beta and shared their feedback. Thank you for helping get it ready for everyone else.
The Founding Competitor badge recognises qualifying members from that early-access period. It's a little piece of League history for the people who were there at the beginning.
See your League
Open Dashboard → Leaderboards and select Leagues. Placement is automatic for eligible users with a public profile, public rankings enabled, and activity in the previous week. If you've been away, keep pulsing; an active week gets you ready for the next eligible round. The Leagues tab explains any settings keeping you out.
Here's the walkthrough:
I wanted the competitive side of WhatPulse to give you a reason to check back next week, whether you've been here since 2003 or only recently started counting. Take a look at your group, keep pulsing normally, and see where the week takes you.
See you in Bronze.