Stop interviewing.
Start flirting.
You should not have to audit a stranger to find out whether the evening is worth having. The five things you will not move on are settled before anyone says hello, so the conversation can be about something else.
The quiz needs no account and prices your five in people, which is the number nobody else shows you. Or read the argument, or log in.
Get the app
There is nothing to download.
Bearing runs in your browser and installs to your home screen in about ten seconds — its own icon, its own window, no address bar, notifications and all. There is no App Store version and there is not going to be (here is why).
Sent this link by somebody, or scanned a code? You are already there. This page is the app — the two buttons above open it, and the steps below keep it on your home screen so you do not have to find the link again.
Then put it on your home screen
On an iPhone or iPad
It has to be Safari. Add to Home Screen is a Safari feature on iOS, so Chrome, Firefox and Edge on an iPhone cannot do it — and neither can the browser inside Instagram, Messenger or TikTok. If you tapped a link in one of those, open the menu in the corner and choose Open in Safari first.
- Tap Share at the bottom of the screen.
- Scroll down the sheet and tap Add to Home Screen.
- Tap Add. Bearing is on your home screen with its own icon.
On an Android phone
Chrome, Edge, Samsung Internet and Firefox can all do this. Chrome usually offers it on its own; if it has not, the menu always works.
- Tap the menu at the top right of the browser.
- Tap Install app, or Add to Home screen if that is what your browser calls it.
- Confirm Install. It lands in your app drawer like anything else.
On a computer
Worth doing if you read on a laptop: it opens in its own window with no tabs and no address bar.
- Chrome or Edge: click the install icon at the right-hand end of the address bar, or the browser menu, then Install Bearing.
- Safari on a Mac: the File menu, then Add to Dock.
- Firefox does not install web apps. Bearing works normally in it; there is just no icon to add.
The whole idea
Two degrees
Two degrees off doesn’t look like anything at the dock. A mile out it’s a few boat-lengths. A hundred miles out you are in the wrong country, and the correction costs more than the trip did.
That is the real problem with dating apps, and it is not simply that you find out late. It is that the cost of finding out grows with the distance you have travelled. On date one, a fundamental difference is a slightly awkward evening. In year three it is the whole thing — and by then the correction may not be possible at all.
So every app hands you two bad options. Confirm the bearing before you leave: interrogate someone you have never met about abortion and vaccines, over text, and poison the trip before it starts. Or be charming, be warm, enjoy it — and hope you have not gone too far off course by the time it feels safe to roll out the chart.
Neither is necessary, because both charts were already on the table.
And here is the part that actually sells it. You get to stop auditing. You should not have to wonder whether the person you are flirting with has a fundamental difference from you — and if you knew they did, you would not be spending the evening with them at all.
So flirt. That is the entire point.
How it works
Three mechanics, and that is the whole product
Nothing here is a growth loop. Each one exists because the story above needs it to be true.
Five reds
DealbreakerYou get five dealbreakers. Not six. Choosing the fifth means giving one up, and the app tells you what each one costs you in people before you spend it. Scarcity is the point: five forces a ranking, and a ranking is honest in a way an unlimited filter list never is.
Find your fiveThe chart
MutualAfter a match, either of you can roll out the chart. The other has to agree. Then it opens for both at once, and it is drawn below.
See the chartThe ballot
One member, one voteMembers write the question bank. Propose a question, get it seconded, take it to a vote. Every proposal that ever existed stays published, including the ones that failed. Five rules sit in a charter that a vote cannot override.
See open ballotsThe one chart in the product
Both answers, both ranks, one row at a time
Either of you can ask to roll it out and the other has to agree. Then it opens for both of you at the same moment, or not at all — every topic you have both answered, with what each of you said it was worth.
Two people who do not exist, and 4 invented rows between them. Every number underneath is the count of the rows you can see — there is no population here, no average and no score, because Bearing does not publish an aggregate over a handful of people and will not illustrate one either.
Before you both agree
Nothing. Not a row, not a count, not a teaser saying how close you are. Either of you can ask; the other has to say yes. Until then neither of you has seen a thing.
The instant you both agree
- Raising children in a faithAligned
YouAgainstYour dealbreaker
ThemAgainstStrong
- Joint bank accountsAligned
YouIn favourFlexible
ThemIn favourFlexible
- Nuclear powerClose
YouIn favourStrong
ThemDon't care either wayFlexible
- Sports bettingApart
YouStrongly againstStrong
ThemIn favourFlexible
Counts, never percentages. Those three add up to the 4 rows above them, which is the entire arithmetic — a number you cannot check is a number you should not trust.
- Where you stand
- Where they stand
- Same rung is aligned, one rung apart is close, two or more is apart
There is no score out of a hundred here and there never will be. A percentage invites two people to argue about a formula instead of about the four rows that actually matter, and a number you cannot check is a number you should not trust. Every row is two answers and two ranks, so you can check the arithmetic yourself.
Ranks are the part nobody else shows you. Two people can give the same answer and mean entirely different things by it — one of them spent a dealbreaker on it, the other shrugged. That is a different conversation from disagreeing, and it is on the row.
Every price we will ever charge
The ladder is published before you pay anything
The price rises with the size of the pool, because that is what you are actually buying. It stops at $20. Forever.
- $1
Founding
First 10,000 membersFounder’s rateYou're paying for a pool that barely exists yet. That's the honest price for it.
- $5
Early
10,000 – 75,000There are enough people here now that the filter actually has something to filter.
- $10
Standard
75,000 – 400,000Roughly half of what Hinge charges.
- $20
Mature
400,000+Half of what the incumbents charge for a premium tier. That is where we stop.
The ceiling
$20 is the top. Forever. The first 10,000 members keep $1 a month for as long as they stay subscribed — the founder’s rate, and it does not expire while you are paying it. A published ceiling is the other half of a published ladder; without it, the ladder is just a warning about future increases.
Where it works
Everywhere, from the day you sign up
There is no city gate and no waitlist. What a small town gets instead is a radius that reaches the nearest cities, and a feed that tells the truth about how many people are in it.