Tinder is a dating app with over 50 million active users. The app has been downloaded over 100 million times which makes it the most popular dating app in the world. So what’s all the fuss about is it worth downloading or should you stick to the no strings attached dating website?
Who’s on Tinder?
Like all dating apps Tinder has demographics which are well-studied.
Users by age
An April 2020 survey of Tinder users found that:
- 19% of users are aged 33 to 44
- 15% of users are aged 18 to 29
- 8% of users are aged 45 to 54
- 6% of users are aged 55 to 64
- Less than 2% of users on Tinder are aged over 65
What do these figures tell us? They tell us that Tinder is mostly used by younger people with nearly 2.5x as many people on the platform aged 18 to 44 as there are people aged 45 to 64.
Users by gender
A July 2020 survey of Tinder users found that:
- 72% of users are male
- 28% of users are female
These stats are pretty self-explanatory: more men use Tinder than women.
How does it work?
Tinder is available online or (more popularly) as an app. You can sign up for Tinder using Facebook, Google or your phone number. You need to verify your account before making a profile, which can be done via text or email.
The steps go like this:
- Download the Tinder app or start online
- Select a login method
- Enter and verify your phone number
- Set up your profile
- Allow Tinder access to all required permissions
- Start browsing people’s profiles
Once you get going, using Tinder is a piece of cake. The way it works is you ‘swipe’ left or right on your smartphone or tablet. You swipe left to say you’re not interested and right to say you are interested. This saves the person’s profile.
The user experience is simple but easy and rather addictive. Its simplicity is what makes it so good. It automatically finds people for you and all you need to do is swipe. It’s incredibly easy to use and this has been key to its success.
Payment and subscription model
Tinder has four subscription tiers:
- Tinder
- Tinder+
- Tinder Gold
- Tinder Platinum
Here’s a table detailing the different features:
Tinder subscription pricing is somewhat mysterious because they don’t publish prices on their website (or we can’t find them at least). You need to download the app. We did this for you, so here are the prices as of February 2021:
- Tinder Plus – £4.99 for one month
- Tinder Gold – £7.49 for one month
- Tinder Platinum – £14.32 for one month
Tinder also offers an ongoing payment plan for each subscription.
Chatting with people
Tinder lets you chat for free. However, you can only chat with someone if they swipe right on your profile too. This way, both people have shown mutual interest. You can’t chat with people who have not swiped right on your profile.
The chat dialogue box is as easy to use as Messenger or Whatsapp. It’s basically instant messaging with emojis and GIFs. You can’t attach photos to messages, but you can include links to photos on Dropbox or another cloud service.
Finding a match
Tinder calls results ‘matches’ and there are several filters you can use to narrow down your matches. These include location, distance, age and gender identity.
The quality of matches is the biggest downfall of Tinder. It uses a bulk volume approach by sending whatever it likes as matches. These are normally a mix of people. It’s normal to only find 1 match in 10 or even 1 match in 20.
However, this isn’t a problem because the app is so fast to use. Dismissing people is as simple as swiping left. You can easily cycle through 100 matches in 2 minutes because you’ll see their profile picture. Yes or no is a fast decision.
Overall
Tinder is to dating what Twitter is to social media. It’s an easy way to start dating on a smartphone, but it’s definitely best for younger people.
For NSA dating, it can work, but many people on Tinder aren’t looking to just have sex. This is where our dating platform is better.
Overall, we recommend giving Tinder a go. It’s free (up to a point) and it has the most active number of users of any dating app in the world.