Two-body bound states can be described by the homogeneous Bethe-Salpeter equation. Analogously, three-body bound states can be described by a homogeneous integral equation for the bound state amplitudes. In ladder truncation, one can solve this three-body bound state equation, without any further approximations. I will show result for explicitly covariant calculations of bound states of three scalar particles and of bound states of two scalars and one fermion. My results show significantly stronger binding than the corresponding relativistic three-body bound state equation in lightfront dynamics. I also compare my results to a commonly used approximation to the Faddeev equation.
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