10 Most Popular Sex Positions [Statistics]

Curious about the most popular sex positions? Our statistical analysis, “10 Most Popular Sex Positions [Statistics],” reveals the favorites for women, men, and various sexual orientations. We explore preferences by US state and country, the positions people want to try the most, and popular props, toys, and settings. Dive in to uncover the secrets of bedroom preferences worldwide!

Table of contents:

• The most popular sexual position
• Women’s favorite sex positions
• Men’s favorite sex positions
• By sexual orientation
• By US State
• By Country
• What positions do people want to try the most?
• Favorite props, toys, and settings during sex

Key Results

• The most common sexual position is Doggy Style (35% report it as their favorite they use most often).
• 22.5% report using the missionary sex position most often, while 19.4% use cowgirl most frequently.
• 69’er is the most popular and searched-for sexual position with 1.8M yearly searches in the US alone.
• For women, cowgirl (#3) is less preferred and popular than missionary (#2), while doggy style (#1) is still the most common.
  • The most common lesbian sex position is oral, followed by 69’er, and missionary.
• For men, the biggest favorite is doggy style (#1), followed by cowgirl (#2), and missionary (#3).
  • The most common gay sex position is Anal doggy style and Oral.
• Doggy style is the most common sexual position in the US, UK, Germany, France, and Spain.
• Missionary is the most common sexual position in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway.
• When asked, what new sex position people wanted to try, most answered the tabletop sex position (20%), and 16% wanted to try 69’er standing up.

The most popular sexual position

There are multiple ways to find out, what the most popular sexual position is. In the following, we used two different methods to determine it.

On the one hand, we used a representative survey of 4,547 respondents from the US and EU.

Secondly, we used the search term frequency on Google for each position name – this was done to determine the search interest in each type of sexual position.

Determining the most popular positions based on the survey we find the following distribution in answers from respondents:

Based on the survey results we find that:

• The most popular sex position is Doggy Style with 35% of people voting it, as their favorite.
• The second most popular sexual position is missionary, which gathered almost 23% of the votes.
• The third favorite position among adults is the cowgirl voted so by 19% of respondents.

Overall the results therefore showed that:

1. Doggy style is the most common sexual position, with 35.1% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.
2. Missionary is the second most common sexual position, with 22.5% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.
3. Cowgirl is the third most common sexual position, with 19.4% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.
4. Holding their legs up is the fourth most common sexual position, with 4.3% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.
5. 69 is the fifth most common sexual position, with 4.3% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.
6. Spooning is the sixth most common sexual position, with 4.1% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.
7. Reverse cowgirl is the seventh most common sexual position, with 3.9% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.
8. Oral is the 8th common sexual position, with 3.2% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.
9. Anal is the 9th common sexual position, with 2.1% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.
10. Tabletop is the 10th most common sexual position, with 1.2% reporting it as their favorite sexual position.

Based on the Google search volumes for different sexual positions the results vary.

This is likely due to the fact, that Google search volumes are a better indicator of what sexual positions users are interested in learning more about, rather than what their favorite positions are. Hence, search volumes are unlikely to make a good predictor of what the most frequently used sexual position in the population is.

Women’s favorite sex positions

Although women’s favorite sexual positions do not differ significantly from men’s favorites, it is slightly different – at least when it comes to which ones are the second and third most popular positions.

Women’s reported top 10 most popular sex positions:

1. Doggy style
2. Missionary
3. Cowgirl
4. Holding legs up
5. Spooning
6. 69
7. Oral
8. Reverse Cowgirl
9. Kneeling Wheelbarrow
10. Tabletop

Men’s favorite sex positions

Men in general are more a fan of the cowgirl position (second most popular after doggy style) over the missionary (which is women’s favorite). While missionaries are women’s second favorite position it is only men’s third most popular choice.

Similarly, the reverse cowgirl position is very popular among men – making it as the fourth most popular position – compared to women who rank it as their 8th most popular overall.

1. Doggy style
2. Cowgirl
3. Missionary
4. Reverse cowgirl
5. 69
6. Spooning
7. Oral
8. Holding legs up
9. Anal
10. Tabletop

By Sexual Orientation

In the following, we have provided a table showcasing the 5 most popular sex positions for each sexual orientation (in gender categories).

It is no wonder that the overall results for all men and women are similar to the results we find in the population amongst heterosexual men and women (due to the large part of the population identifying as such).

Therefore, the most interesting findings were the following:

• All sexual orientations have doggy style in their top 5 favorite sex positions except for lesbians.
• Gay men prefer Anal and oral over any missionary position.
• Both homosexual men and women have oral sex as one of their top 5 favorites, while this is not the case for heterosexual or bisexual men and women.

By US State

In the following, we used localized online search data to identify the favorite sex positions for each US state.

By Country

We found that across countries, Doggy style was the most common sex position to be the favorite – being picked as the favorite by 7 of 17 countries on the list.

What positions do people want to try the most?

In addition to finding out what sexual positions people used the most, and searched for the most we also wanted to answer the luring question: “What sexual positions do people want to try?”.

Below are the answers respondents provided to that question:

• 19.9% of respondents wanted to try the Tabletop sex position the most.
• 16.1% of respondents wanted to try the 69 standing-up sex position the most.
• 13.4% of respondents wanted to try the Kneeling wheelbarrow sex position the most.
• 12.1% of respondents wanted to try the Anal sex position the most.
• 9% of respondents wanted to try the Reverse cowgirl sex position the most.
• 8.7% of respondents wanted to try the Standing sex position the most.
• 6.4% of respondents wanted to try the doggy-style sex position the most.
• 5.3% of respondents wanted to try the 69 sex position the most.
• 5% of respondents wanted to try the Holding legs up sex position the most.
• 4.2% of respondents wanted to try the Spooning sex position the most.

Favorite props, toys, and settings during sex

• 37% of couples prefer to use a vibrator over other props during different sex positions.
• 14% prefer to use a dildo during sex over other props for sex positions.
• Only 2.3% prefer to use a sex swing over any other sex position props.