Report 009· Spicer Research · Oct 2026

Vibrators during sex: 66.4% of couples both say yes

Among 386,271 couples who each answered privately, two in three reached mutual yes on using vibrators together — and men said yes slightly more often than women, at 79.4% versus 75.7%. The idea that one partner, usually imagined as the man, resists the toy does not appear in these numbers.

Spicer Research Team Published Oct 26, 2026 Sample: 386,271 couples Reading time: 7 min

Abstract

This report analyzes how 386,271 couples answered the English-language question “Use vibrators while having sex” through Spicer’s private Yes/No/Maybe matching. 66.4% of couples (256,622) both answered yes; only 3.4% both answered no — the least common of the six outcomes. 86.1% of couples recorded no explicit no: both partners answered yes or maybe. Men answered yes at 79.4% and women at 75.7%, a 3.7-percentage-point gap in the opposite direction from the common assumption that men feel threatened by toys — a pattern consistent with nationally representative research finding vibrator use common among both women and men and associated with positive sexual function^[1]^[2]. A maybe indicates openness or uncertainty, not agreement — nothing in these figures is consent.

Key findings

66.4% of couples both said yes — 256,622 of 386,271 couples reached mutual yes on using vibrators during sex, roughly two in three.
Men said yes more often than women — 79.4% versus 75.7%, a 3.7-percentage-point gap. The “toy as rival” narrative runs the other way from what the data shows.
Shared refusal is the rarest outcome. 3.4% of couples (13,075) both answered no — the smallest of the six cells in the matrix.
86.1% of couples recorded no explicit no — both partners answered yes or maybe. A maybe indicates openness or uncertainty, not agreement.
Where hesitation exists, it skews slightly female: 15.8% of women answered maybe versus 12.2% of men — a 3.6-point gap — while the two groups’ displayed no rates are the same, 8.4% each.

Couple-level finding

66.4%

of couples both say yes to using vibrators during sex.

Based on 386,271 couples (772,542 individual partner answers) who each answered the English-language question privately inside Spicer. Mutual yes is the strictest outcome in the matrix below; a further 16.0% of couples pair one yes with one maybe. A maybe indicates openness or uncertainty, not agreement — it is not consent.

Two in three couples, one answer

Every Spicer question is answered by each partner privately — yes, no, or maybe — and only mutual yes or maybe answers ever surface to the couple, so the data captures where two people actually stand rather than what they say out loud. In total, this question has collected 1,371,590 individual answers; the couple-level analysis below draws on the 772,542 answers belonging to the 386,271 couples in which both partners answered. At the individual level the answer is lopsided: 76.8% yes, 13.2% maybe, 10.0% no. At the couple level, that consensus compounds: in two of every three couples, both partners independently said yes.

How 386,271 couples answered, together

All six possible couple outcomes for “Use vibrators while having sex.” Each couple appears exactly once.

Both yes66.4%256,622

One yes, one maybe16.0%61,663

Both maybe3.7%14,149

One yes, one no6.8%26,208

One maybe, one no3.8%14,554

Both no3.4%13,075

Cell percentages are rounded to one decimal and may not sum to exactly 100% (here they sum to 100.1%). Grouped shares elsewhere on this page are computed from exact values before rounding. n = 386,271 couples.

Couple outcomes — data table
Outcome	Couples	Share
Both yes	256,622	66.4%
One yes, one maybe	61,663	16.0%
Both maybe	14,149	3.7%
One yes, one no	26,208	6.8%
One maybe, one no	14,554	3.8%
Both no	13,075	3.4%
All couples	386,271	100%

Three groupings summarize the matrix:

Mutual yes — 66.4% of couples (256,622) both answered yes.
No explicit no — 86.1% of couples. This groups mutual yes (66.4%), one yes with one maybe (16.0%), and mutual maybe (3.7%); the grouped share is computed from exact values before rounding. A maybe is not equivalent to consent — it indicates openness or uncertainty, not agreement.
Disagreement involving a no — 10.6% of couples: one yes with one no (6.8%) plus one maybe with one no (3.8%).

Mutual no stands outside the groupings at 3.4% — 13,075 couples, the smallest cell in the matrix. When this question divides a couple, it far more often divides them between a yes and a no than unites them in refusal.

The gender story runs opposite to the myth

The durable cultural script says the vibrator is a threat — that men, in particular, read a partner’s toy as competition. In this data, men are the slightly more enthusiastic group: 79.4% of men answered yes versus 75.7% of women, a 3.7-percentage-point gap, modest but consistent across every measure in the row. The two groups’ displayed no rates are the same — 8.4% each — so the gap is made of hesitation, not refusal: 15.8% of women answered maybe versus 12.2% of men, a 3.6-point difference. The direction matches the peer-reviewed record. In nationally representative US studies, vibrator use was common among both women and men, and among men it was associated with a wide array of positive sexual health characteristics — not with feeling displaced^[2].

Who answered yes to “Use vibrators while having sex”

Men

79.4%

Women

75.7%

Everyone

76.8%

Share of individual answers that were yes, among answers with stated gender (men n = 472,513; women n = 449,239). 32.8% of answers carried no stated gender; they are excluded from gender comparisons but included in all couple-level figures. At these sample sizes the 3.7-point yes gap and the 3.6-point maybe gap are highly statistically significant, though modest in practical terms; the displayed no rates round to the same figure, 8.4%.

In this data, the toy is not a point of conflict. The rarest thing two partners do with this question is both say no.

What this finding suggests

A 66.4% mutual-yes rate means that for most couples who use Spicer, the vibrator question is not a negotiation — it is a confirmation. That tracks the national picture: in Herbenick and colleagues’ nationally representative study of 2,056 US women aged 18–60, 52.5% had used a vibrator, and use was associated with health-promoting behaviors and positive sexual function, with side effects rare^[1]. The companion study of US men found use common there too — much of it during partnered sex — and likewise associated with positive sexual health characteristics^[2]. What remains for the minority of couples is not usually opposition but an unspoken assumption: one partner privately willing, the other privately unsure, and neither aware the question is this easy to raise.

In context

In nationally representative US research, 52.5% of women aged 18–60 reported having used a vibrator^[1], and use among men was common as well^[2]. Inside Spicer — a self-selected population that chose an intimacy app — willingness runs higher still: 76.8% of individual answers to this question were yes.

What this suggests couples can do

Ask the question you probably already agree on

With 66.4% of couples at mutual yes and only 3.4% at mutual no, the odds strongly favor agreement — the risk most people weigh before raising the topic is smaller than it feels. If the answer that comes back is a maybe, treat it as what it is: openness with conditions attached, and an invitation to ask what those conditions are. Research on vibrator use consistently frames it as an ordinary, function-positive part of partnered sex, not a verdict on anyone’s adequacy^[2].

Choose it together

For couples where one partner sits at maybe, the lowest-stakes move is to make the decision — not the act — the shared step: browsing or choosing together turns the toy from one partner’s import into a joint experiment. In a national US study of more than 38,000 partnered adults, sexual variety — trying new things together — was among the behaviors most strongly associated with sexual satisfaction in long-term relationships^[3]. The association favors novelty both partners chose.

Limitations — how to read these numbers

A self-selected sample

These couples chose to use an intimacy app and to answer this question. They are likely more open to exploring intimacy than the general population — the gap between Spicer’s 76.8% individual yes rate and the 52.5% lifetime-use figure in representative research^[1] illustrates exactly this — and the figures should not be generalized beyond couples who use a tool like Spicer.

Stated willingness, not behavior

An answer records openness to an idea at the moment of answering — not what a couple has done or will do. Yes rates are not usage rates.

One language version

This report analyzes the English-language version of the question. The same question exists separately in German, Russian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, each with its own identifier answered by speakers of that language. Findings describe respondents answering in English and should not be generalized to other linguistic or cultural contexts. Equivalent versions in other languages exist as separate data and may be analyzed and compared in future reports.

A snapshot in time

Figures reflect all answers accumulated up to the October 2026 data snapshot. Individual couples’ answers can change over time; this report does not track change.

Missing gender data and aggregate-only reporting

32.8% of answers carried no stated gender and are excluded from gender comparisons, though included in couple-level figures. All figures are population-level aggregates; nothing here describes, or could identify, any individual couple.

How the population figures reconcile

The question collected 1,371,590 individual answers. Of these, 1,130,753 came from users linked with a partner; the remaining 240,837 came from users whose partner was not linked at answer time and are excluded from couple-level analysis. Within the linked group, 386,271 couples had both partners answer — 772,542 individual partner responses, a pairing rate of 68.3% (772,542 ÷ 1,130,753). Gender comparisons draw on the 921,752 answers with stated gender (472,513 men, 449,239 women); 449,838 answers (32.8%) carried no stated gender.

References

Herbenick, D., Reece, M., Sanders, S., Dodge, B., Ghassemi, A., & Fortenberry, J. D. (2009). Prevalence and characteristics of vibrator use by women in the United States: Results from a nationally representative study. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 6(7), 1857–1866. doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01318.x
Reece, M., Herbenick, D., Sanders, S. A., Dodge, B., Ghassemi, A., & Fortenberry, J. D. (2009). Prevalence and characteristics of vibrator use by men in the United States. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 6(7), 1867–1874. doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01290.x
Frederick, D. A., Lever, J., Gillespie, B. J., & Garcia, J. R. (2017). What keeps passion alive? Sexual satisfaction is associated with sexual communication, mood setting, sexual variety, oral sex, orgasm, and sex frequency in a national U.S. study. The Journal of Sex Research, 54(2), 186–201. doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2015.1137854

Methodology & data ethics

Spicer presents both partners in a couple with the same question, answered privately as Yes, No, or Maybe; only mutual yes or maybe answers ever become visible to the couple, and an answer of no stays hidden forever. This report analyzes the English-language version of the question “Use vibrators while having sex” as of the October 2026 data snapshot: 386,271 couples in which both partners answered — 772,542 individual partner responses. The same question exists separately in German, Russian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, each answered by speakers of that language as its own dataset. All figures are anonymized, population-level aggregates; Spicer publishes no result drawn from fewer than 1,000 couples and nothing that could identify an individual or a couple. Full method notes: How Spicer Research works.

Common questions

How many couples does this report cover?

386,271 couples who both answered the English-language question inside Spicer — 772,542 individual partner answers.

What share of couples both said yes to vibrators?

66.4% — 256,622 of 386,271 couples. Only 3.4% both said no, the rarest of the six outcomes.

Do men or women say yes more often?

Men, slightly: 79.4% versus 75.7% for women — a 3.7-percentage-point gap. The displayed no rates are the same for both, 8.4%.

Is a maybe a yes?

No. In Spicer’s method a maybe signals openness or uncertainty and an invitation to keep talking. It never stands in for consent.

What does “no explicit no” mean?

It groups mutual yes, one-yes-one-maybe, and mutual maybe — 86.1% of couples here. A maybe indicates openness, not consent.

How common is vibrator use outside Spicer?

In nationally representative US research, 52.5% of women aged 18–60 reported having used a vibrator, and use among men was common as well — both associated with positive sexual function.