Online Dating Activity Down 14% on Apps, 22% on the Web

Valentine’s Day online dating market update

Online dating services continue to attract fewer users to their apps and fewer visitors to their websites, We called it the romance recession the last time we covered online dating, and it’s only gotten deeper.

Since mobile apps are extremely important to the online dating market, this time we worked with data scientists from Similarweb research and development to create a combined monthly active users estimate for iOS and Android in the United States. It shows app usage is trending down. That is also what we see with web access to dating services.

This pattern weighs on a number of public companies, including Match Group (NASDAQ: MTCH), owner of many of the largest online dating websites and apps, for which usage of the mobile apps we tracked was down 16.5%, year over year, in January, using U.S. numbers. U.S. web traffic to Match brand websites was down 22%. Match missed Wall Street expectations in its January 31 earnings report. Bumble (NASDAQ: BMBL) is expected to report earnings on February 22. Grindr (NYSE: GRNDR), the gay dating app, last reported earnings in December after going public.

Grindr grew U.S. website traffic by 13.3% year-over-year in January, but U.S. app usage was down 9.2%

Key takeaways

• In the U.S., usage of mobile dating apps for dating was down nearly 14% in January, compared with January 2022.
• U.S. web traffic to popular online dating sites was down 22% year-over-year in January. Traffic to Match Group’s websites was down by the same amount, according to Similarweb estimates, with only Tinder.com showing a small (1.6%) increase.
• Using Android daily active users as our metric for the rest of the world, where iOS is not as big of a factor, usage is basically flat. In the U.K., the daily active user count for our sampling of apps was down 7.6%.
• Tinder remains the most popular dating app in the U.S., with 3.9 million monthly active users across iOS and Android in January, according to Similarweb estimates. However, the user count for Tinder was down 18.5% in January, year over year. The next most popular single dating app in January was Bumble app, with 2.5 million daily active users. Bumble saw a 4.5% year-over-year drop in users.
• In the U.K., Hinge has pulled ahead of Tinder in recent months. Tinder had about 297,000 daily active users on Android in January, compared with about 270,000 for Tinder. Both are Match Group brands. Our combined iOS and Android monthly active users metric for the U.S. also shows Hinge gaining monthly active users by 3.8%, year over year.

Most dating apps see usage decline

Of the apps we studied in the most depth, only Hinge showed a small increase in U.S. monthly active users.

Overall, monthly active user counts have been trending lower. The green line on the chart below reflects the combined traffic for the selected apps.

Valentine’s Day doesn’t cause a big traffic bump

We don’t yet have a good picture of how much Valentine’s Day day might boost these apps and websites – although the holiday doesn’t appear to have as big of an effect on online dating activity as you might expect, judging by daily statistics for website traffic.

Growth on the web is no better than for apps

Web-based access to online dating services is still significant, particularly with an older demographic, but the picture for the market is no more positive on the web. Tinder and some other Match brands like the OurTime dating service for seniors saw modest gains, but almost every other domain attracted less U.S. traffic than the year before in January. Visits Match-owned Plenty of Fish were down the most, 34.9%.

On the other hand, ranked by share of traffic across this competitive set, Tinder showed the greatest gain, adding 4.4 percentage points.

Hinge scores the most app usage in the U.K.

Since October, Hinge has drawn ahead of Tinder as the most popular dating app in the U.K. The metric here is the daily average users for Android.

Hinge is one of three apps that showed year-over-year growth (up 6.5%), along with Bumble (up 8.5%), and eHarmony (up 13.7%, albeit from a small base).

Tinder is the most popular dating app, worldwide

Worldwide, Tinder is the most popular dating app by a wide margin. Again, this ranking is by daily active users on Android. Tinder had 14 million in January, compared with 6.5 million for the next most popular app, Bumble.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Methodology

Disclaimer: All data, reports and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb are based on data obtained from third parties, including estimations and extrapolations based on such data. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy of the materials and shall have no liability for any decision by any third party based in whole or in part on the materials.

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".