If finding love is on your New Year’s resolution list, this weekend may offer the best chance of finding a partner on dating apps. But it could cost you.
Dating platforms have dubbed the first Sunday of the year “Dating Sunday,” because traffic surges on dating apps then as love-seekers emerge during the post-holiday season.
Tinder MTCH, +0.87% is expecting messages and likes to increase by 22% and 18.2% compared to other Sundays of the year. People also respond to messages faster, about 19.4 minutes faster than average, according to the company. The same goes for Coffee Meets Bagel, a dating platform that’s dedicated to helping users find long-term relationships. It saw a 47% rise in sign-ups on Dating Sunday in 2022 compared to the 30 days before that.
But finding love comes at a cost, even before proceeding to the meeting-in-person stage for dinner and drinks. Many dating app users have to pay a monthly fee if they want to match and interact with potential love interests as much as they want.
For example, if Tinder users want to interact with other users without constraints, they have to pay at least $ 7.99 a month for a Plus account. If they want to see who has “liked” them on the app, they need to pay $ 24.99 for Tinder Gold; $ 29.99 a month for Tinder Platinum grants them the ability to prioritize among their likes. At the top end, the company has an invite-only $ 500-a-month premium subscription.
To capitalize on Dating Sunday as much as possible, an ambitious dater is looking at a potential cost of at least $ 20 a month to get started: Hinge+, the lowest level for that app’s subscription, is $ 29.99 a month. More serious Hinge daters can pay $ 50 a month to get more exposure for their profile. It’s $ 35 a month for Coffee Meets Bagel.
On Bumble BMBL, -1.06%, the price is $ 39.99 for a month and $ 19.99 for a week. Someone who wants a lifetime of dating possibilities can pay $ 229.99.
Bumble, Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel did not immediately respond to MarketWatch’s request to comment.
A Hinge spokesperson said the app has a free version and that Hinge is designed for those users who are looking for “intentional” relationships. The free version allows people to see everyone that likes the user, unlike some other apps, but also puts a cap on the number of likes the user can send each day.
About half of those who have used dating sites or apps have had positive experiences, and about 10% of adults in a relationship say they met their partner through a dating platform, according to a 2023 report from Pew Research Center. That number is even higher for people under 30 — about 20% of them said they met their partners that way. About a third of users have paid to use a dating app, and high-income earners are more likely to do so, the report found.
Though users say apps make it easier to meet people, they also express concern about safety and harassment on dating platforms, Pew found.
Some users think being able to see a user’s profile page before interacting with them is an important step, but on some apps, that’s a paid feature. A Reddit thread recently lamented the “insane cost” of dating apps, with one user lamenting, “I hate [corporations] taking advantage of people for their basic desire to meet people for the sole intention to date.”