perfectns performs dynamic nested sampling and standard nested sampling for spherically symmetric likelihoods and priors, and analyses the samples produced. The spherical symmetry allows the nested sampling algorithm to be followed “perfectly” - i.e. without implementation-specific errors correlations between samples. It is intended for use in research into the statistical properties of nested sampling, and to provide a benchmark for testing the performance of nested sampling software packages used for practical problems - which rely on numerical techniques to produce approximately uncorrelated samples.