How attractive am I?

The honest way to find out how attractive you are

Attractiveness isn't a fact stored somewhere in your face. It's how people react when they see you. So the only real way to answer "how attractive am I" is to ask people, and to ask enough of them that no single person's taste decides the result.

The best judges are strangers who see only your photo and have no reason to be polite. One stranger is one opinion, but many strangers rating the same photo give you a pattern. The usual alternatives are each biased in their own way:

• Friends and family like you, know your voice and your jokes, and don't want to hurt you. Their answer is about you, not your photo.
• The mirror shows you flipped, up close and every single day, which makes you the worst judge of your own face.
• An AI face scanner turns measurements into a number, but nobody actually looked at you and reacted.
• A "how attractive am I" quiz adds up your own answers about yourself, so it mostly tells you what you already believe.

How RATE gets you an honest answer

On RATE you post a photo of yourself, and real people rate it from 1 to 10 when it comes up in their feed. Ratings are anonymous, and there are no likes or comments to perform for, so people simply react to what they see.

Your score only appears once enough people have rated the post, so one or two opinions never decide it. It also counts the people you choose to match with. If you match with women, your score is what women think of the photo, which keeps the answer about the people whose opinion you actually care about.

No algorithm scores your face. Every rating comes from a real person, and every photo is checked before it goes live, so the feed is real people rating real people.

How attractive am I on a scale of 1 to 10?

Your score is an average of many separate opinions, and the same average can hide very different stories. A 6.8 might mean nearly everyone gave you a 6 or a 7. It might also mean some people gave you 9s and others gave you 4s, because the photo is a strong match for some tastes and not for others. Both are worth knowing.

A few habits make the number easier to read:

• Check how many people rated. An average from a large group is steadier than one from a small group.
• Expect a spread. Taste varies, so almost nobody gets the same number from everyone.
• Compare your posts with each other. Your best post against your weakest tells you more than your number against someone else's.
• Read the breakdowns. Age group, gender, country and cultural background show who a photo works best with.
• Remember what was rated: one photo, taken on one day. Change the light or the expression and the same face can score quite differently.

How to take a fair photo for the test

Aim for a photo that looks like you on a normal good day: not your most flattering angle ever, and not a bad snapshot either. That way the score describes you, not a lucky or unlucky frame.

Here is a simple setup that works in almost any home:

• Light: stand facing a window in daytime. Soft light from the front evens out skin and shows your eyes. A single bulb straight overhead puts shadows under them.
• Angle: camera at eye level, or a little above. From below, your jaw and neck take over the frame.
• Distance: ask someone to take it from a couple of meters away, or prop the phone up and use the timer.
• Expression: a relaxed face or a small real smile. Think of something that actually amuses you instead of saying "cheese".
• Recent: taken this year, with your current hair and style. An old photo answers an old question.
• No filters or face-editing apps. Smoothing and reshaping get you a score for a face that isn't quite yours.
• Just you: no group shots, no sunglasses, nothing covering your face. RATE only accepts photos that clearly show a real person's face anyway.

Why you can't judge your own face

You've seen your face in the mirror thousands of times, and the mirror shows it flipped. People tend to like what's familiar (psychologists call this the mere-exposure effect), so most of us prefer our mirror image. A true photo then looks slightly off to you, even though it's exactly the version everyone else sees.

The front camera adds its own distortion. Held at arm's length or closer, it enlarges whatever is nearest the lens: your nose looks bigger, your face looks narrower and your ears can disappear behind your cheeks. A photo taken from a couple of meters away shows your proportions much closer to how people see you in person.

You also judge yourself by your worst moments: harsh bathroom light first thing in the morning, the blurry photo someone tagged you in. Strangers rating a photo have none of that history. They react to one picture with fresh eyes, which is exactly why their numbers are worth having.