Snapchat Planets Order and Meaning: The Best Friends Solar System (2026)

If a friend told you they are "your Mercury" on Snapchat, they were not talking about astrology. They meant they are your number one best friend. Snapchat quietly turned the old best friends list into a solar system, where you are the sun and your eight closest friends orbit you as planets, from Mercury right out to Neptune. It has become one of the most searched Snapchat features going, usually under names like snapchat planets order, bsf list planets, or snap planets. This guide explains the full order, what every planet means, the exact colors, how to unlock the feature, and how to check which planet you are for someone else. We build social and messaging apps for a living, so we have gone deep on how the ranking actually works, not just the surface.

Quick Answer: The Snapchat Planets Order and Meaning

What it is: Snapchat Planets, officially the Friend Solar System, is a Snapchat Plus feature that shows your eight closest friends as planets orbiting you, the sun. The nearer the planet, the closer the friend.

The order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, exactly like the real solar system. Mercury is your number one best friend and Neptune is your eighth.

How to get it: subscribe to Snapchat Plus (from about $2.99 a month), then tap the Best Friends badge next to a friend to see the planet.

Key Takeaways

• You are the sun. Your eight best friends are the planets, ranked by how much you interact.
• Mercury is closest, Neptune is farthest. Mercury is your top friend, Neptune is number eight.
• It needs Snapchat Plus. Only paid subscribers can see the solar system, from about $2.99 a month.
• You cannot set it manually. Snapchat calculates the order from snaps, chats, streaks, and story engagement.
• It is one directional. You can see which planet a friend is to you, and which planet you are to them only if they have Plus. Nobody sees your full system but you.
• Each planet has its own colors and emojis, which is how you tell them apart at a glance.

Snapchat Planets in Order (Quick Reference)

Quick Facts

What Are Snapchat Planets (the Friend Solar System)?

Snapchat planets are a visual version of your best friends list. Officially the feature is called the Friend Solar System, and the idea is simple: you are the sun at the centre, and your eight closest friends are planets orbiting you, ordered exactly like the real solar system. Mercury sits closest to the sun and stands for your number one friend, and each planet after it, out to Neptune, represents the next friend down the list. It is Snapchat's playful way of turning who you talk to most into something you can actually see.

The order is not random and it is not something you choose. Snapchat works it out automatically from how much you and each friend interact, and it updates over time as those patterns change. The whole system is also tied to Snapchat Plus, the app's paid subscription, so the planets only appear for subscribers. If you have ever seen a friend post a screenshot of colourful planets around their Bitmoji, or searched phrases like "snap planets" or "bsf list planets" to work out what it all means, this is what they were looking at.

One thing that trips people up: the solar system is personal and mostly private. You can see the planets for your own best friends, and you can see which planet you are to a friend if they subscribe, but no one can pull up your full solar system and study it. It is closer to a private ranking with a couple of shared peeks than a public leaderboard.

Snapchat Planets in Order and What Each One Means

Here is every planet in the Snapchat solar system, from your closest friend to your eighth, with the exact look of each one and what it says about the friendship.

1. Mercury: Your Number One Best Friend

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, so on Snapchat it belongs to your number one best friend, the person you snap and chat with more than anyone else. You will recognise it as a red planet ringed by five red hearts circling their Bitmoji, the most heart-heavy design of all eight, which fits the top spot. If someone is your Mercury, your two-way activity is high and steady: frequent snaps both ways, regular chats, and usually a healthy streak. It is also the most volatile rank in practice, because the top of a best friends list tends to be a close race. Go quiet for a few days and your Mercury can slip to Venus while someone else moves up. In short, Mercury is Snapchat quietly telling you who your person is right now.

2. Venus: Your Second Closest Friend

Venus is the second planet out, so it marks your second best friend. Its design is a light brown planet with yellow, pink, and blue hearts orbiting the friend's Bitmoji, softer and more colourful than Mercury's solid red. Being someone's Venus means you are firmly in their inner circle, just a notch below the very top. The gap between Mercury and Venus is often small, so these two frequently swap over a week or two depending on who has been more active. If you want to move from Venus to Mercury, there is no trick or setting for it: you simply have to out-interact whoever currently holds the top spot, with more snaps, more chats, and a longer streak.

3. Earth: Your Third Best Friend

Earth sits third, and it is one of the prettiest planets in the set. It looks like the real Earth, blue and green, with a small moon, stars, and red hearts revolving around it, and it is the only planet that carries its own moon, a nice touch for the one we actually live on. As someone's Earth, you are a solid, reliable friend in their top three, even if you are not their most constant chatter. People often read Earth as the comfortable rank: close and consistent, without the week to week jostling that Mercury and Venus see. Keep your snaps and streak going and Earth holds steady.

4. Mars: Your Fourth Best Friend

Mars is the fourth planet and marks your fourth closest friend. Its design is a red planet with stars and purple and blue hearts around the Bitmoji, similar in colour to Mercury but with a cooler mix of hearts, which is an easy way to tell the two apart. Fourth place still means you are well inside someone's regular rotation, the kind of friend they snap most days without thinking about it. Mars is often where you find a close friend you talk to in bursts rather than constantly, or a group chat regular. Nudge your activity up and Mars can climb toward Earth and beyond.

5. Jupiter: Your Fifth Best Friend

Jupiter, the biggest planet in the real solar system, sits fifth here. On Snapchat it appears as a reddish orange planet with darker orange stripes and stars, and unlike the first four planets it has no hearts, which is the visual cue that you have moved from the inner, heart-heavy ranks into the outer half of the system. Being someone's Jupiter means you are still a genuine best friend, in their top eight out of everyone they talk to, but you are in the second tier rather than the daily core. It is a perfectly good place to be, and steady snapping can pull you back inward over time.

6. Saturn: Your Sixth Best Friend

Saturn is sixth, and it is the easiest planet to spot because of its famous ring. Snapchat draws it as an orange planet with a ring and stars around the friend's Bitmoji, and like the other outer planets it has no hearts. As someone's Saturn, you are a familiar face in their orbit but toward the outer edge of the top eight. Friends at this range are often people you were closer to once and still snap regularly, or newer friends climbing the list. If your streak stays alive and your snaps pick up, Saturn can move inward toward Jupiter and Mars.

7. Uranus: Your Seventh Best Friend

Uranus is the seventh planet and marks your seventh best friend. It is shown as a plain green planet with no hearts and no ring, one of the simplest designs in the set, which suits a spot near the far edge of the system. Being someone's Uranus means you have just made it into their top eight, so the friendship is real but lighter than the inner planets, perhaps a friend you snap a few times a week rather than daily. It is also a rank that can change quickly in either direction, since the bottom of the top eight is where friends rotate in and out most often.

8. Neptune: Your Eighth Best Friend

Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet, so it belongs to your eighth best friend, the last person to make your top eight. It appears as a deep blue planet with no hearts, ring, or stars, the most stripped back design of all, fitting for the outermost orbit. Being someone's Neptune still means something: out of everyone they talk to on Snapchat, you are among their eight closest, which is not a large number. It is simply the edge of the circle. Because it is the last spot, it is also the most likely to change, so a quiet week can drop you off the system entirely, and a burst of snapping can pull you inward to Uranus and beyond.

How Snapchat Decides Your Planet Order

The planet order is built from your interaction history with each friend, and Snapchat weighs several signals rather than any single one. Based on how the best friends system has always worked, these are the factors that matter most:

• Snap frequency: how often you send and receive snaps with someone carries the most weight. This is the core signal.
• Chat activity: regular text chats back and forth add to the score on top of snaps.
• Streaks: keeping a Snapstreak going, especially a long one, is a strong sign of a close, consistent friendship.
• Story engagement: viewing, reacting to, and replying to each other's stories counts too.
• Two way activity: it has to go both ways. Snapping someone who never snaps back does far less than a genuine back and forth.
• Recency: the system leans on recent activity, so the last week or two matters more than something from months ago.

Because it is all automatic, there is no way to manually set your planet or someone else's. You cannot pay to move up, and there is no hidden switch in settings. The only real lever is behaviour: to become someone's Mercury, you have to be the person they interact with most, more than whoever holds the top spot now. Ranks shift gradually as habits change, which is why your planets are never quite fixed.

How to Get Snapchat Planets (Snapchat Plus)

The planets are a Snapchat Plus feature, so the only way to unlock them is to subscribe. Here is how:

1. Open Snapchat and tap your profile icon or Bitmoji in the top left.
2. Tap the Snapchat+ banner near the top of your profile, or open Settings and choose Snapchat+.
3. Pick a plan. Snapchat Plus costs around $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year, and a free trial is often offered to new subscribers.
4. Confirm the purchase through your App Store or Google Play account.

Once you are subscribed, the Friend Solar System turns on automatically. There is nothing else to enable. From then on you can tap the Best Friends badge next to a friend to see their planet, which we cover next. Prices vary a little by country and can change, so check the exact figure shown in the app before you buy.

How to Check Your Planet and Whose Solar System You Are In

Once you have Snapchat Plus, checking planets is quick, but there are two different questions people mean by it, so let us take them one at a time.

To see a friend's planet in your solar system: open your chat with that friend, or go to the Friends tab, and look for the badge next to their name. A gold ringed Best Friends badge means you are mutual best friends. Tap that badge and Snapchat shows the planet they are for you, along with a short line explaining the rank, for example that they are your number one friend, your Mercury.

To see which planet you are for a friend: this is the part that confuses people. You can only see the planet a friend has assigned to you if they also subscribe to Snapchat Plus, and again you tap their Best Friends badge to reveal it. If they do not have Plus, that information simply is not available to you.

What you cannot do is pull up anyone's entire solar system and see all eight of their planets at once. Snapchat keeps the full picture private to each person. You get your own planets, plus the one or two shared views that the badges allow, and that is it. There is no in app screen, and no legitimate outside tool, that reveals a person's whole list of best friends.

"Snapchat Planets Orders" Websites and BSF Lists, Explained

Because the feature sits behind a paywall and the meanings are not spelled out in the app, a whole cottage industry of explainer sites has sprung up, with names like snapchatplanetsorders.com and dozens of near identical variants. People search for these to answer one of two questions: what the planet order is, or what "bsf" means. So let us settle both.

On the order: you do not need any outside website to know it. The order is always Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, with Mercury as your number one friend, and the full meaning of each planet is in the table and sections above. A lookup site can only ever tell you the same fixed order, since it is identical for everyone.

On "bsf": bsf is simply text slang for best friend. So searches like "bsf list planets", "snap bsf planet", and "snapchat best friends list planets" all mean the same thing: the planet order of your Snapchat best friends. There is no separate bsf feature, it is just another name for the Friend Solar System.

One important safety note. Some of these third party sites ask you to log in with your Snapchat username and password, or to enter a friend's username, promising to reveal a full solar system or someone's best friends. Do not do this. No outside site can access that data, so any that asks for your login is at best useless and at worst trying to steal your account. The only safe place to see planets is inside the Snapchat app itself.

Behind the Feature: Building a Social App Like Snapchat

The Friend Solar System looks like a bit of fun, but under the hood it is a smart piece of product design: take a ranking your app already computes, the best friends list, and turn it into something visual and shareable that quietly sells a subscription. That mix of social graph, gamification, and a paid tier is exactly what founders ask us about when they want to build a social or messaging app of their own.

If that is where your head is, the same ideas show up across the space. Our walkthroughs on building an app like Clapper and a Clubhouse style social app cover the moving parts, from the social graph to real time features. And if you just want a realistic number, our team can help you scope it.

Explore ready made white label apps to launch a social product faster, or use our free app cost calculator to estimate what a custom build like this would cost.

Snapchat Planets FAQs

1. What is the order of Snapchat planets?

The Snapchat planets in order are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the same order as the real solar system. Mercury is closest to you, the sun, and represents your number one best friend, while Neptune is the farthest and represents your eighth best friend. The order is the same for every user, because it mirrors the actual planets.

2. What does each Snapchat planet mean?

Each planet stands for one of your eight closest friends, ranked by how much you interact. Mercury is your first best friend, Venus your second, Earth your third, Mars your fourth, Jupiter your fifth, Saturn your sixth, Uranus your seventh, and Neptune your eighth. The four inner planets have hearts in their design and the four outer planets do not, which is a quick way to see whether you are in someone's daily core or their wider top eight.

3. What is the Mercury planet on Snapchat?

Mercury is the top rank in the Snapchat solar system. It is a red planet surrounded by five red hearts, and it belongs to your number one best friend, the person you snap and chat with most. Because the top of the best friends list is competitive, Mercury is also the rank that changes most often, so being someone's Mercury reflects who they are closest to right now.

4. How do I get the Snapchat planets feature?

You need Snapchat Plus, the app's paid subscription. Open your profile, tap the Snapchat+ banner or find it in Settings, choose a plan, and confirm the purchase. Snapchat Plus costs around $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year, often with a free trial. Once subscribed, the Friend Solar System turns on automatically and you can tap a friend's Best Friends badge to see their planet.

5. How much does Snapchat Plus cost?

Snapchat Plus costs about $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year for the standard plan, though the exact price varies by country and can change. New subscribers are often offered a free trial. Snapchat sells other add ons too, but the standard Snapchat Plus subscription is all you need to unlock the planets and the rest of the Plus features.

6. Can you see someone else's Snapchat planets or full solar system?

No. You can see the planets for your own best friends, and you can see which single planet you are to a friend if that friend also has Snapchat Plus, by tapping their Best Friends badge. But nobody can view another person's entire solar system or full best friends list. Snapchat keeps that private, and any website claiming to reveal it is not legitimate.

7. What does "bsf" mean on Snapchat, and what are bsf planets?

Bsf is texting slang for best friend. So bsf planets, snap bsf planet, and the snapchat best friends list planets all refer to the same thing: the planet order of your Snapchat best friends in the Friend Solar System. There is no separate bsf feature. It is just another popular name people use when searching for how the planet ranking works.

8. Do I need a website like snapchatplanetsorders.com to check the order?

No. The order is fixed, Mercury through Neptune, and it is the same for everyone, so any explainer site can only repeat it. You can see your own planets directly in the Snapchat app with a Snapchat Plus subscription. Avoid any site that asks for your Snapchat login or a friend's username to reveal planets or a best friends list, because no outside tool can access that data and such requests are a common way to steal accounts.

9. Can you change your Snapchat planet order?

Not directly. There is no setting, purchase, or trick that lets you assign planets. The order is calculated automatically from your interactions, mainly snaps, chats, streaks, and story engagement, and it has to be two way. The only way to move up is to genuinely interact more with that person than whoever is currently ranked above you, and the order then shifts on its own over time.

10. Why did my Snapchat planet change or disappear?

Your planet reflects recent activity, so it moves as your interactions change. If you or your friend snapped less for a while, you may slip to a farther planet or drop out of the top eight entirely, which makes the planet disappear. It can also vanish if the Snapchat Plus subscription that shows the planets ends. Pick the snapping and chatting back up, keep any streak alive, and your planet can climb back in over time.