8values has been the open-source benchmark for political quizzes since its GitHub release in 2017. Four axes (Economic, Diplomatic, Civil, Societal), 70 slider statements, 26 ideology buckets, full source code public, and a clean result page that names the ideology you matched and shows your position on each axis. For a politically curious reader who wanted more than the 2D Political Compass grid but did not want to read a textbook, 8values was the obvious next step, and it largely remains so.
Votely is doing the same kind of work at higher resolution. 39 axes instead of 8, 81 ideology buckets instead of 26, 3D cube visualization instead of four bar charts, and an optional in-depth report on the tradition you matched. The two quizzes are clearly in the same family; the question this page tries to answer is which family member fits your goal.
TL;DR
Pick 8values if you want a well-respected, open-source quiz with a four-axis frame that is small enough to think about all at once, and you do not care that the project has been mostly static for years. Pick Votely if you want more axes, more ideology options, and an optional in-depth writeup of your matched tradition.
Side-by-side
| Feature | Votely | 8values |
|---|---|---|
| Axes | 39 (3 macro, 36 sub) | 8 (4 axes, 2 poles each) |
| Ideology buckets | 81 | 26 |
| Visualization | 3D cube | Four 2-pole bars |
| Sign-up required | No | No |
| Free | Quiz yes, in-depth report $6 | Yes |
| Time investment | 2-10 min | ~5-10 min |
| Open source | No | Yes (MIT-licensed) |
| Active development | Yes | Largely static |
| Question format | Multi-choice | 5-option slider (strongly agree to strongly disagree) |
Where 8values is honestly better
Open source matters here. The full question set, axis weighting, and ideology assignment logic are published in the GitHub repository, which means anyone can fork it (and several people have), embed it on their own site, translate it, or audit the scoring. For users who care about that kind of transparency, 8values is the canonical choice and Votely cannot match it. The MIT license is also generous; you can do almost anything with the code as long as you preserve the notice.
The simplicity of the four-axis frame is also a real advantage. Four axes are small enough to hold in your head while answering questions; 39 axes are not. If you want to understand why you got the result you got, working backward from four scored axes is straightforward. Working backward from 39 is harder. The 26 ideologies are also broad enough to be familiar (most takers have heard of social democracy, state capitalism, anarcho-communism), where some of Votely's 81 are specialised. There is a real virtue in landing in a label your friends will recognise.
Where Votely is better
Resolution and writeup. 8 values cannot separate positions that pull apart only on a fifth or sixth axis. A market-friendly social democrat who is cosmopolitan on diplomacy and traditionalist on culture is hard to distinguish, on 8values, from a market-friendly social democrat who is nationalist on diplomacy and progressive on culture; they both land in social democracy. Votely's 39 axes (3 macro: economic, authority, social; 36 sub-axes underneath) are designed to separate exactly these cases. Whether you want that resolution or find it overfit is the real question.
The other gap is what happens after the result. 8values gives you a label and four axis scores, and the result page assumes you know what to do with that. Votely's free result page also gives you a label and a position, but the optional $6 in-depth report covers the history of your matched tradition, the strongest critiques of it, and a reading list. 8values has no equivalent because, as an open-source project from 2017, that was never the goal. If you want the quiz to be the start of reading rather than the end of the activity, the writeup matters.
Who should pick which
Pick 8values if you value open source, you want a well-known result label your friends will recognise, and you trust a four-axis model to capture enough of your politics. The project's status as the canonical successor to the Political Compass for the more-than-2-axes crowd is well earned, the methodology is fully public, and the result is fast and clean. The slight staleness of the canonical site is a real cost only if you want active maintenance.
Pick Votely if you want more granular placement, you are interested in the writeup more than the diagram, and you do not need open source to trust the result. The 39-axis structure separates traditions that 8values lumps, the 81 ideology buckets are large enough to name a real philosophical tradition rather than a generic position, and the optional in-depth report is for readers who want the next step. The choice between these two is genuinely close; many readers will be well served by taking 8values first (free, fast, recognisable) and Votely after (more granular, more readable, $6 if you want the deep version).