Understanding Snapchat Planets and Snap Plus Features | How Do Friend Solar Systems Work?

Understanding “Snap Planets” and Snapchat+ Features: A Complete Guide to Snapchat’s Coolest (and Most Controversial) Perks

If you’ve ever opened a friend’s profile on Snapchat and spotted a glowing gold-ringed badge with a tiny planet on it, you’ve bumped into one of the app‘s most talked-about features: the Friend Solar System — often just called “Snap Planets” by users. It’s part game, part social science experiment, and part friendship drama generator. Pair that with the rest of the Snapchat+ subscription, and you’ve got a whole ecosystem of perks that most casual users don’t even know exists.

This guide breaks down exactly what these features are, how they work, and how to use them without losing your mind over your ranking in someone’s orbit.

First Things First: What Is Snapchat+?

Snapchat+ is Snapchat’s premium subscription tier, sitting at roughly $3.99 a month in the U.S. (with cheaper pricing in some other regions), and it now unlocks over 30 exclusive perks, ranging from playful cosmetic tweaks to genuinely useful productivity tools. <cite index=”12-1″>By 2026, the feature list has grown to more than 30 exclusive perks, with new ones added periodically.</cite>

It launched back in 2022 as a way to let fans test experimental features early, but it’s since matured into something much bigger. <cite index=”14-1″>When Snapchat Plus launched in 2022, it focused mainly on testing experimental features, but by 2026 it has evolved into a mature subscription with clear benefits</cite>, and <cite index=”14-1″>it’s now widely available in more than 25 countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, India, and parts of Europe and the Middle East</cite>.

Here’s a sampler of what subscribers get:

• Story Rewatch Indicator — <cite index=”12-1″>see who rewatched your Story, showing up to the 8 most recent rewatches per Story</cite>.
• Best Friends Forever (BFF) pinning — <cite index=”15-1″>pin a favorite friend to keep them permanently at the top of your chat list, no matter how recently you’ve talked</cite>.
• Peek a Peek — <cite index=”15-1″>an eye emoji that shows up next to a chat in real time when a friend is actively viewing the conversation</cite>.
• Custom app icons and exclusive Bitmoji outfits for personalizing your look.
• AI perks — <cite index=”12-1″>features like “My AI” pinned to the top of your chat list, AI-generated selfie reimaginings called Dream Lenses, and AI-suggested Story captions</cite>.
• Story Boost and Plus-Only Stories, plus <cite index=”12-1″>early access to beta features and a lighter ad experience</cite>.
• And, the headline act: the Friend Solar System.

The Friend Solar System, Explained Like an Actual Solar System

Here’s where things get interesting. The Friend Solar System takes your closest connections on Snapchat and turns them into a literal orbiting diagram — with you as the center of your own universe.

<cite index=”1-1″>The Friend Solar System is a Snapchat+ feature that shows a planetary representation of your closest friends, similar to a real solar system, where you are the Sun and the surrounding planets represent your best friends on Snapchat</cite>. Each planet corresponds to a specific rank in your Best Friends list, and the order mirrors our actual solar system:

Planet	Rank	What It Means
Mercury	#1 Best Friend	<cite index=”7-1,4-1″>Your closest connection — you’re snapping, chatting, reacting, and calling more than anyone else</cite>
Venus	#2 Best Friend	Extremely frequent, near-daily interaction
Earth	#3 Best Friend	Strong, consistent communication
Mars	#4 Best Friend	Regular back-and-forth
Jupiter	#5 Best Friend	Frequent but slightly less constant
Saturn	#6 Best Friend	Solid, ongoing friendship activity
Uranus	#7 Best Friend	Moderate interaction
Neptune	#8 Best Friend	<cite index=”2-1″>The eighth and final planet in the ranking, and the outer edge of your top friends</cite>

Worth noting: <cite index=”3-1″>Pluto isn’t included</cite> — sorry, Pluto fans, Snapchat sided with the astronomers on this one.

How the Ranking Actually Works

This isn’t a popularity contest based on how much you like someone — it’s based on raw activity. <cite index=”5-1″>The rankings are dynamic and calculated based on your recent activity, including Snaps, chats, and calls — they measure the volume and consistency of communication, not the emotional depth or quality of the relationship</cite>. In other words, the friend who spams you with fifty random Snaps a day might outrank your childhood best friend who you have deep, meaningful, but less frequent conversations with.

<cite index=”2-1″>To become someone’s #1 best friend (their Mercury), you and that person generally need to be exchanging the most chats consistently for at least a couple of weeks</cite> — and <cite index=”2-1″>as you interact more with someone, your ranking in their Solar System improves accordingly</cite>.

Can You See Your Own Solar System — or Everyone Else’s?

This is where it gets personal (in a good way, mostly). <cite index=”1-1″>Your Solar System is unique to you — not even your friends or your own best friend can see it</cite>. You can’t browse anyone’s full ranking either. <cite index=”1-1″>You can’t check anyone else’s Solar System or their entire best friends list</cite>.

What you can do is check where you land in someone else’s orbit:

1. <cite index=”1-1″>Launch Snapchat and open your friend’s profile</cite>.
2. Look for a Best Friends or Friends badge with a gold ring around it — <cite index=”2-1″>this badge appears once you have a Snapchat+ subscription</cite>.
3. Tap the badge, and <cite index=”4-1″>you’ll see yourself represented as a planet in their digital orbit</cite>.

<cite index=”5-1″>Your friend isn’t notified of their specific position unless you choose to share it with them yourself</cite> — so no, nobody gets a push notification saying “You’ve been demoted to Neptune.”

Turning It On (It’s Off by Default — On Purpose)

Unlike most premium features that are switched on automatically, the Solar System requires a manual opt-in. <cite index=”5-1″>Because it’s an optional, private feature, it’s turned off by default for new Snapchat+ subscribers</cite>. To activate it:

1. Open Snapchat and tap your profile icon.
2. Select Snapchat+.
3. Find and toggle on Solar System.

<cite index=”7-1″>It’s also only available on mobile — Android and iOS — not on desktop</cite>.

Why It’s Off by Default: A Quick Origin Story

The Solar System feature has a bit of a redemption arc. When it first rolled out in 2022, <cite index=”9-1″>Snapchat+ subscribers were automatically enrolled in it</cite>. But it didn’t take long for problems to surface.

<cite index=”8-1″>Snapchat ended up walking back the friend-ranking feature after reports that it was fueling teen anxiety</cite>, as users became fixated on exactly how close (or not) they were to specific friends. In its own statement, the company was candid about the tension: <cite index=”6-1″>Snap acknowledged that while it can feel good to know you’re close to someone, it can also feel bad to realize you aren’t as close to a friend as you’d like — and they understood the Solar System could make that feeling worse</cite>.

So the company changed course. <cite index=”9-1″>Snapchat+ subscribers are no longer automatically enrolled in the ranking mechanism — anyone who wants it now has to turn it on manually</cite>. As Snap put it, <cite index=”9-1″>the goal was to strike a balance between offering a feature many people genuinely enjoy while not upsetting the people who’d rather not engage with it at all</cite>. For context on just how niche (if beloved) the feature is: <cite index=”6-1″>Snap has reported that the Solar System is used by less than 0.25% of its community on any given day, on average</cite>.

It’s a good reminder for the rest of us, too: a drop from Mercury to Saturn in someone’s orbit almost never means the friendship is ending — <cite index=”5-1″>it typically just reflects a shift in how much you two have been messaging lately, not the strength of the actual relationship</cite>.

A Quick Word on “Snap Planet”

If you’ve heard the term “Snap Planet” floating around, it’s really just shorthand people use for this same Friend Solar System / planet-ranking feature — there isn’t a separate, standalone app or tool by that exact name. Some fan sites and social posts use “Snap Planets” interchangeably with “Solar System,” so if you go looking for it in Snapchat’s settings, search for Solar System under your Snapchat+ menu rather than “Snap Planet.”

Should You Turn It On?

A few honest questions worth asking yourself first:

• Do you tend to overthink social rankings? If seeing a friend downgrade to Saturn would genuinely bother you, it might be worth skipping this one.
• Are you curious in a lighthearted way? For a lot of subscribers, it’s just a fun, private peek at digital habits — a mirror, not a judgment.
• Do you want the rest of Snapchat+ regardless? You don’t have to enable the Solar System just because you’re subscribed. It’s entirely optional and can be toggled off at any time.

If you do decide to try it, keep the bigger picture in mind: it’s a snapshot of recent chat frequency, not a scoreboard of who loves you most. Treat it the way you’d treat a fun personality quiz — mildly interesting, not something to lose sleep over.

The Bottom Line

Snapchat+ has grown from a small experimental add-on into a genuinely feature-packed subscription, and the Friend Solar System is its most distinctive (and most emotionally loaded) perk. Used casually, it’s a playful way to visualize your closest digital friendships. Used obsessively, it can turn into exactly the kind of comparison trap Snapchat itself tried to walk back. Know how it works, decide if it’s for you, and either way — enjoy the rest of the orbit.

---

[custom-twitter-feeds feed=2]