How many peopel are on dating apps

Tinder is a dating app that matches users to others based on geographic proximity. It works through a simple interface that allows users to swipe right to ‘like’ or left to ‘pass’. If two users both like each other, it’s a ‘match’ – and they are then able to chat through the app.

Tinder users are able to view selected pictures pulled from their potential match’s Facebook account (also used for verification purposes), a short text bio, and linked Spotify and Instagram accounts if chosen.  They can also see age, and if they have any Facebook connections in common. The Tinder app is built around the idea of the double opt-in – taking out the element of embarrassment and unwanted attention. You can only talk to someone if you both like each other.

It was also intended to provide a social platform through which users can meet people that they don’t know and wouldn’t usually meet – as opposed to the traditional social media model that focuses on connecting with those with whom you are acquainted in real life.

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With its basis in physical proximity, it dispenses with the complex algorithms utilised by other mobile dating apps and simply reduces it to the simplest level that you might find in real life: physical attraction. For that reason, Tinder has gained a reputation as a ‘hook-up app’ – though with its entrenchment in the world of modern dating, it’s not uncommon for Tinder users to be looking for a deeper connection.

The app was founded in 2012 in Hatch Labs, a startup incubator run by InterActiveCorp (parent company of Match Group), by Sean Rad (former CEO and chairman) and Justin Mateen (former CMO), who had met at the University of Southern California. IAC is also responsible for dating sites Match.com, OKCupid, and Zhenai (China).

After initially being trialled in a series of US college campuses, Tinder was rolled out fully to great success, processing 350 million swipes per day by late 2013 (that’s 4,000 per second), rising to  one billion swipes per day before the end of 2014. The free-to-use app introduced a premium subscription model in 2015 with added features (Tinder Plus), and a third level in 2017 (Tinder Gold). One-off in-app purchases can also be made.

Since then, Tinder has only grown bigger to become an irreducible element in the modern dating landscape. Read on to find out just how many users Tinder has today, how they’re using it, and how much revenue Tinder’s parent company, Match Group is bringing in.

Table of Contents

Tinder User Statistics (US & UK)

International Tinder User Statistics

Tinder Users: Intentions, Interests, Inclusivity

Tinder Usage Statistics

Tinder Revenue Statistics

Key Tinder statistics

• 57 million Tinder users around the world
• 5.9 million Tinder subscribers pay for a premium Tinder Plus and Tinder Gold
• Tinder is used in 190 countries, and is available in 40 languages
• Tinder was processing one billion swipes per day by late 2014, that has now risen to 1.6 billion
• Tinder users go on one million dates per week
• Over 20 billion matches made since Tinder launched
• Over 50% of active Tinder users are active at 9pm, according to Nielson
• Active Tinder users log in on average four times a day
• Various studies show different percentages, but most find 18-24 demographic forms core of user base
• Tinder’s parent company Match Group reported $444 million of revenue in Q3 2018
• 7.5 million swipes per day in India (2016), where Tinder has established its first international office
• Around 10% of Brazilian internet users use Tinder
• 40% of US college students say “Tinder is for hookups, and Bumble is for dating”, though 54% of claim that there is no difference
• 70% of these college students have never met up with their matches…
• …and 45% say they use Tinder mostly for confidence boosting procrastination
• 95% of Tinder users meet their matches within a week (compared to 25% of online daters overall, and 15% of offline daters)
• 9% of Tinder users said it’s hard to commit to someone due to the vast array of dating options, compared to 44% of other online daters and 42% of offline daters
• 85% of Tinder users say “I love you” within the first year of dating, compared to 80% of offline daters
• Female Tinder users are more careful in their approach, with 91% reporting that they only liked profiles that they actually felt attracted to (compared to 72% of men)
• 35% of men report casually liking most Tinder profiles (with some overlap with the above)
• Researchers using a female Tinder profile and unselectively liking male profiles got 200 matches within an hour, and 600 by the 4-hour mark
• Male Tinder profiles only garnered 100 matches by the same juncture
• For men, the median time between getting a match and messaging standing at 2 minutes (63% of men message a match within 5 minutes), while the equivalent for females is 38 minutes (only 18% message within 5 minutes)
• The average Tinder message sent by a man to a woman is 12 characters long, while the other way around, the average is 122
• 72% of mobile dating app users believe Tinder is the most racially diverse dating app, with 77% of Tinder users claiming to be very open-minded when using dating apps, and 74% having gone on a date with someone of a different racial background (compared to 66% of non-Tinder users)
• One study found that 12% of male Tinder profiles identified as homosexual or bisexual, compared with 0.01% of female profiles
• Tinder revenue stood at $1.15 billion in 2019; 56% of total Match Group revenue of $2.05 billion
• Tinder revenue grew at CAGR of 123% between 2015 and 2019
• Tinder top non-game app in terms of revenue, generating $77.4 million in February 2020
• Match Group market cap $18.6 billion as of late March 2020
• Tinder is estimated to be worth $10 billion

Tinder User Statistics

It is estimated that 50 million people worldwide use Tinder, though concrete figures have not been made available. The BBC pin the figure at a slightly higher 57 million. Both of these figures data back to 2018 – no more recent figures are readily available.

We have a clearer picture of paid Tinder users. As of Q4 2019, Match Group reported average 5.9 million Tinder subscribers.

These are spread over 190 countries, with the Tinder app available in over 40 languages.

Tinder subscriber growth, thousands of users

Source: Statista

Online dating penetration runs deep in key markets. According to 2020 Pew Research Center statistics, 30% of US adults have used a dating app – up from 11% in 2013 – with 23% going on a date and 12% finding a long-term relationship as a consequence.

As of mid-March 2020, Tinder ranked 179 in the Google Play Store, though as recently as late February it was as high as 123, at which point it ranked fourth among lifestyle apps. By mid-March it had fallen to seventh.

Tinder Google Play download rank, US

Source: SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb’s usage rank, which looks at daily active users rather than installs, places Tinder in 79 as of mid-March 2020, falling from 62 roughly a month prior. We might speculate that the coronavirus pandemic may have played a part in this, with apps other than dating apps presumably of more appeal under these conditions.

In the lifestyle category Tjnder remains in top-10, though has fallen from fourth to sixth.

Tinder Google Play usage rank, US

Source: SimilarWeb

By way of comparison, as of mid-March 2020, Tinder’s usage rank was 38 in Canada, 41 in the UK, 59 in France, and 61 in Germany.

On the Apple App Store, Tinder’s download rank has been a bit more up and down over this period, with an opening rank of 81, and a closing rank of 70 – via a low of 107 in late February and a high of 46 in early March.

In lifestyle it remains in second place, at the beginning and end of the period.

Tinder Apple App Store download rank, US

Source: SimilarWeb

It ranks a bit higher in international markets; 53^rd in Germany, 55^th in Canada, and 61^st in the UK (mid-March 2020).

Who uses Tinder?

In 2017, GlobalWebIndex  attracted the ire of Tinder, by claiming that only 38% of users were aged 16-24, with a further 45% aged 25-34. Tinder on the other hand argued that over half their user base was aged 18-24 (though the two nearly tarry up if we extend the range to 34, with Tinder’s 85% not hugely different to GlobalWebIndex’s 83%).

The GlobalWebIndex survey also shows that 76% of Tinder users were based in an urban setting, while 17% were rural and 7% rural. As has been found in other sources (see below), men outnumber women by 2:1 according to this particular analysis.

Tinder demographics worldwide

Source: GlobalWebIndex

Tinder does not reveal its own demographic data, except to say that half of its users belonged to Generation Z – that is those born from around the mid-90s, making the oldest in their mid-20s at this point.

In the US, Tinder users skew heavily male. As of December 2019 it was estimated that 78.1% of Tinder users were male, compared to 21.9% female, according to stats published on Statista.

In the UK, it was estimated by Ogury that 85% of the online dating market was male, as of April 2019. This imbalance was even more pronounced among Tinder users, for which the ratio was 9:1 in favour of male users.

Pew Research Center data from October 2019, published in February 2020, investigated what percentage of various demographics used dating apps. While this looks at dating apps collectively, we might assume that Tinder – as comfortably the most popular dating app in the US – accounts for no small percentage of these.

Here we see that the single highest demographic for Tinder usage is among LBG users, the majority of whom (55%) have used dating apps. They are also the most likely to have entered into a serious relationship as a consequence, with 21% doing so.

The next highest results comes from slicing the results by age, with 48% of those aged 18-29 using dating apps, joined by 38% of 30-49-year-olds; 17% and 16% entering into serious relationships with someone they met online.

Aside from sexuality and age, education is the only other decisive indicator, with usage far more concentrated among those who have attended college – even if it was only for a short period.

More men (32%) had used dating apps than female (28%), but not by a huge distance – although these figures refer to those who have ever used dating apps, so doesn’t take into account how often or active usage is.

US dating app user demographics

Source: Pew Research Center

We Are Flint carried out surveys in early 2018 to map the demographics of various popular apps.

In the US, it was found that twice as many men use Tinder than women. In terms of age group, we still see the highest levels of usage among younger users. Over a third of those aged 18-24, and a quarter of those aged 25-34 use Tinder, as well as one in five in the 35-44 bracket. There’s a small spike in Tinder usage among over 75s as compared with the immediately younger bracket. Notably the GlobalWebIndex stats cited above mention that 3% of the Tinder user base were widows or widowers.

Unsurprisingly, usage is much higher among urban populations, as there just aren’t as many matches in rural areas. Usage among higher income brackets is fairly consistent at 20%, while those in lower brackets tend to use it a little less. Curiously, the data doesn’t represent a straight line, with the lowest prevalence found among those in the $60,000-$70,000 group.

Source: We are Flint

In the UK, while more men still use Tinder, we’re far closer to parity than. Usage is still more pronounced among younger users, though a greater proportion of 25-34 year olds can be found on Tinder than 18-24 years olds here. As we go up the age groups, usage declines abruptly.

We see the same disparity between urban and rural users as in the US, and the same curious dip in usage among a lower income bracket (here occurring at a lower point than in the US). The UK results also break the users into social grade – based on the type of the work carried out by respondents. We see that Tinder usage is far more prevalent among white collar/skilled workers, with over three times the usage reported by manual/unskilled workers.

UK Tinder demographics

Source: We are Flint

A study carried out by researchers at Queen University Mary University London, Sapienza University of Rome, and the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group analysed 500,000 Tinder users (in London) in 2016 to glean more about Tinder demographics and how Tinder users were using the app.

The study looked at the age distribution of the profiles they came across, finding a median age of 25.2 for women, and 25.7 for men – this is different to other mobile dating apps in which the female user base tends to skew older. There are various cultural reasons for this, the research group posits. According to Tinder statistics, 40% of Tinder users rank age as one their top two most-important characteristics.

Age distribution of London Tinder users

Data source: A First Look at User Activity on Tinder

SurveyMonkey Intelligence break down the geographical distribution of the users of various mobile dating apps in US. The greatest preponderance of Tinder users are to be found in the west and the south of the US, while the smallest number can be found in the Midwest.

This is roughly in line with the overall population of the US, so perhaps the takeaway from this graphic is that Tinder users are fairly evenly distributed among the US population.

Geographical distribution of US dating app users

Source: SurveyMonkey Intelligence

According to Tinder statistics published by SurveyMonkey, only Bumble has a higher proportion of users aged between 18-29. Just over half of Tinder users fall into this bracket according to this analysis.

How old are mobile dating app users?

Source: SurveyMonkey Intelligence

An analysis by Wandera compared the most-used mobile dating apps in the US and the UK. Tinder comes first in the latter, and second in the former, behind Match group stablemate Match.com

Most-popular mobile dating apps US and UK

Source: Wandera

Another set of US Tinder statistics published by SimpleTexting again found Tinder well out in front for the 18-24 demographic – with over three times as many users as its nearest rival Bumble. Tinder usage level by age describe a simple line, declining as we go up the age groups. Only Coffee Meets Bagel shows a similar trend, albeit with a far small sample. Bumble, OkCupid and Hinge are all most popular with 25-34 year olds.

US online dating age demographics

Source: SimpleTexting

Top Tinder neighbourhoods in major US cities

Elite Daily published a series of maps which ranked the neighbourhoods of major US cities according to where users swiped right (aka liked) the most.

As we might expect, Tinder users in affluent Downtown Manhattan and Uptown Manhattan were swiping right more than any others, followed by Brooklyn.

Best Tinder neighbourhoods New York

Source: Elite Daily

Before it was all about the tech, San Francisco was known for its diversity. Fittingly, then, the most swiped right neighbourhood in San Francisco is the Castro – which is notable for being one the first gay districts in the US.

Best Tinder neighbourhoods San Francisco

Source: Elite Daily

Tinder users in Chicago’s wealthy Lincoln Park neighbourhood swipe right the most – with right swiping concentrated in a small cluster around the city’s Old Town.

Best Tinder neighbourhoods Chicago

Source: Elite Daily

Boston’s historic South End comes out in front in the hometown of Rocky and Cheers (and MIT and Harvard). Indeed, South End can boast more right swipes than any other neighbourhood in the entire US.

Best Tinder neighbourhoods Boston

Source: Elite Daily

The accolade of most swiped right neighbourhood in Los Angeles goes to West Hollywood, which edges out Beverly Hills (which finishes in third behind Siverlake). Much like San Francisco’s number one Tinder neighbourhood the Castro, West Hollywood is noted for being a gay village.

Best Tinder neighbourhoods Los Angeles

Source: Elite Daily

International Tinder User Statistics

Brazil is reportedly the world’s third-biggest Tinder market, after the US and UK. Around 10% of Brazilian internet users use Tinder according to a survey by eMarketer, making it the most-used mobile dating app in the country (as of June 2017).

Percentage of Brazilian internet users who use mobile dating apps