Your Kink Web is the core of how KinkWeb understands compatibility. Here's exactly how it works — no black boxes, no mystery algorithms. You deserve to know what's under the hood.
Most platforms reduce you to a checklist: dom or sub, top or bottom, vanilla or kinky. KinkWeb maps who you are across 22 dimensions of connection, organized into 6 clusters:
| Cluster | What It Measures |
|---|---|
| Power | How you relate to control, exchange, and authority |
| Sensation | Your relationship with intensity, pain, impact, and edge play |
| Bondage | Physical restraint, physicality, and body-centric dynamics |
| Social | How you engage with groups, visibility, sharing, and jealousy |
| Emotional | Depth of connection, nurturing, aftercare, and commitment |
| Identity | Communication style, creativity, curiosity, and roleplay |
Each axis runs from one pole to another. There's no "right" score — a 0 isn't worse than a 2. The system measures where you fall and how confident it is about that placement.
Your web is never "done." It evolves as you answer more questions, and you can re-answer old ones if you've changed. The more questions you answer, the more accurate your compatibility scores become.
When you see a compatibility percentage, here's what went into it:
For most axes, we check whether you and the other person score in the same direction. If you both value deep emotional connection (high on Emotional Depth) or both prefer casual dynamics (low on Emotional Depth), that's alignment.
Direction isn't everything. Someone who scores 2.0 on Sensation (intense edge play) and someone who scores 0.5 (mild sensuality) both scored "positive" — but they want very different things. We factor in the magnitude difference between your scores, not just the direction.
Some axes aren't about being the same — they're about fitting together. Power Exchange, Sensation, Bondage, and several others have role preferences: giving, receiving, both, or either.
When both users have role preferences on these axes, the system checks for complementarity:
This is backed by research: Dryer & Horowitz (1997) found that complementarity in dominance and submission predicts relationship satisfaction better than similarity does.
Not all scores are created equal. An axis where you've answered 20 questions and they've answered 15 carries more weight than one where you've both answered the minimum 5. We weight each axis by the lower of both users' confidence scores — the comparison is only as strong as its weakest link.
Beyond the web axes, your kink tags add another layer:
| Your Stance | Their Stance | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Must Have | Into / Must Have | Strong match boost |
| Must Have | Curious | Moderate boost |
| Must Have | Hard No | Significant penalty + conflict flag |
| Into | Hard No | Mild penalty |
| Hard No | Into | Mild penalty |
The percentage you see isn't one-sided. We check compatibility in both directions — your satisfaction with their profile AND their likely satisfaction with yours. A 50/50 mutual match scores higher than a 0/100 one-sided attraction. This approach, inspired by OkCupid's published methodology, ensures the score reflects genuine mutual potential.
| Score | What It Means |
|---|---|
| 85-100% | Rare alignment — your webs overlap significantly across many axes |
| 70-84% | Strong compatibility — well-aligned on the axes that matter most |
| 50-69% | Moderate — some alignment, some divergence. Worth exploring |
| 30-49% | Low — significant differences, but differences can be interesting |
| Below 30% | Not shown — too little data or too little overlap to be meaningful |
We built this system on established research, not vibes:
We also took seriously the findings of Finkel et al. (2012, Psychological Science in the Public Interest), who concluded that no matching algorithm has been proven to predict relationship outcomes. We agree. That's why we designed the system to be a conversation starter, not a verdict — and why we show you the full radar comparison, not just a number.