Free Love Calculator
Two names, one percentage, zero destiny — the classic game, played honestly. Free, no sign-up, no ads.
Two names
Both names stay in your browser. They are never uploaded, stored, or put into a link you share.
Put in two names to see the score.
How this is worked out
The whole rule: write both names together, list every letter they use in alphabetical order, count how often each one turns up, then add that row of digits pair by pair from the outside in until two are left. Names that reuse a few letters score high; names spread across many different letters score low. The floor is 10, the ceiling is 99, and a pencil reproduces any of it exactly.
- The rule itself
- A letter-counting game of the same family as FLAMES, which the questions below explain. Games like these have no traceable author, so we do not claim one — we picked this one because it can be done by hand. About FLAMES
- Whether anything can predict a match
- Joel, Eastwick and Finkel, "Is Romantic Desire Predictable?", Psychological Science 28(10), 2017. A hundred-plus measures of what people wanted, then real dates: the model could predict who was desirable, never who would click with whom. Paper
- What does line up with a good relationship
- Joel and colleagues, PNAS 117(32), 2020 — 11,196 couples across 43 studies. What ranks highest is how committed and appreciated you feel. A partner's own answers, and both people's personality traits, added almost nothing. Paper
So: a toy, and we would rather say it than dress it up. Two names carry no information about two people — and the work above is about couples who already know each other.
Love calculators, answered
Can two names ever score 100%?
Not with this rule. It always ends on two digits, so 99% is the ceiling and 100% is a number it simply cannot produce — we checked every score the rule can reach. A calculator that hands out 100% is either using different arithmetic or has decided the answer in advance. Ours will tell you 99% if that is what the letters say, and it will not go higher.
What about the ones that use your birthday or your star sign?
They swap one set of characters for another. A date of birth gives numbers to add up instead of letters, and a star sign sorts you into one of twelve boxes before anyone has said a word to anyone. Neither has been shown to predict how two people get on. If you enjoy them, enjoy them — just hold the result the same way you would hold this one.
What is FLAMES?
The best known version of this game. You cross out the letters two names have in common, count what is left, and use that count to walk around the word FLAMES — Friends, Lovers, Affectionate, Marriage, Enemies, Siblings — until one letter remains. It returns a relationship type rather than a percentage. Same idea as ours: an arithmetic trick played on two names.
Why do some love calculators always give the same answer?
Because some are built as pranks, with the answer fixed before you type anything. The opposite happens too: on some sites the same two names score differently on every refresh, because the number is generated at random and the names are never read at all. Either way, the tell is whether the site will tell you its rule. Ours does — which means the same two names land on the same number every single time, on screen or on paper.
More free tools
About Palaura
Palaura is an AI matchmaker who works inside iMessage. She gets to know what you are actually looking for, meets real people on your behalf, and makes the introduction when someone fits. Free to start.
Find my person