How we rate compatibility
Every pairing on this site carries one of five words: excellent, strong, good, moderate or challenging. This page says where that word comes from, in enough detail that a reader can work it out and disagree with it.
What goes in
Two four-letter codes. That is the entire input. Not the answers behind them, not an age, not how long the two people have known each other, not anything either of them has ever done. The two codes are compared letter by letter, and the whole comparison is four yes-or-no questions: do they share the first letter, the second, the third, the fourth.
How four answers become a word
Each context starts from a base number. Every letter the two codes share, or do not share, adds a fixed amount to it. The total is held between 35 and 95, and the band is whichever range it lands in.
The four contexts use different weights, which is why one pairing can read strong for work and moderate for romance. Sharing the second letter counts for most everywhere: two people who take in information the same way tend to describe talking to each other as easy, and that is the thing this framework is least bad at.
| Context | Starting points | Same letter | Different letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 55 | E/I -2, S/N +18, T/F +8, J/P +8 | E/I +6, S/N 0, T/F 0, J/P 0 |
| Romance | 50 | E/I +4, S/N +18, T/F +5, J/P +8 | E/I +12, S/N 0, T/F +12, J/P +4 |
| Friendship | 55 | E/I +4, S/N +16, T/F +14, J/P +8 | E/I 0, S/N 0, T/F 0, J/P 0 |
| Work | 55 | E/I 0, S/N +12, T/F +8, J/P +14 | E/I +6, S/N 0, T/F 0, J/P 0 |
The cut-offs
The score is read off this table.
| Rating band | Total score |
|---|---|
| Excellent match | 85 and above |
| Strong match | 75 and above |
| Good match | 65 and above |
| Moderate match | 55 and above |
| Challenging match | below 55 |
The numbers were chosen, not measured
This is the part most sites leave out. Every number on this page was picked by hand when the site was built. None of it is fitted to a data set, none of it comes from a study, and nobody has checked whether it predicts anything at all about two real people.
There are reasons behind the ordering. A shared second letter is weighted heaviest because agreement about what is worth paying attention to is what people describe when they say someone is easy to talk to. Work leans on the fourth letter because deadlines are where planners and improvisers actually collide. Romance rewards differing on the third letter because one person who leads with logic and one who leads with values often cover for each other. Those are arguments, not evidence, and an argument does not become a finding by being turned into a number.
The site used to print a percentage instead. Eighty-seven per cent reads like a measurement of a couple, and four letters cannot carry two digits of precision. A word can be read literally without claiming more than it has.
What it is not
It is a rule of thumb about two labels, not a forecast about two people. A challenging band is not a warning and an excellent one is not a recommendation. The four letters leave out everything that actually decides how two people get on, so treat the band as a conversation starter and nothing heavier.
If you think a band is wrong, tell us why: support@onlinembtitest.com