Digital Dating App Use Down 22.7% in February, Despite Valentine’s Day

Market update finds engagement down 13% on the web, 22.7% on apps

Engagement with dating apps was down significantly in February despite (or maybe because of?) the impact of Valentine’s Day. Match, the dominant player in online dating, saw nearly unrelenting decreases across its many brands.

Key takeaways

• US web traffic to Match brand websites was down in February, by 18.6% year-over-year for match.com, 7.3% for Tinder, 31.8% for Plenty of Fish, and 26.6% for other brands in the company’s portfolio, according to Similarweb estimates. In fact, traffic was down for all competitors with the exception of Bumble, which saw a 6.7% year-over-year increase.
• The pattern was similar for dating apps, judging by the engagement of Android users from within the US For example, Monthly Active Users were down 20.9% for the Tinder app, 26.9% for Plenty of Fish, and 42.7% for OurTime. Match itself, which tends to be stronger on the web than as an app, saw monthly users increase by 3.2%.
• On average, dating user engagement was down 13% as measured by web visits and 22.7% on apps, as measured by US monthly active users for Android.
• Although this review focuses on traffic and app engagement stats from within the US, the pattern was not dramatically better internationally. For example, the global web traffic was down 21.6% year-over-year for Match, 8.8% for Tinder, and 33.8% for Plenty of Fish. On the other hand, Bumble’s performance looks even better internationally, with a 12.9% gain. The gay dating app Grindr saw an even better 23.7% year-over-year gain.

Traffic dropped from February 2022

On a year-over-year basis, traffic was down for all the players we studied, with the exception of Bumble (+6.7%).

We saw a similar pattern looking at engagement with mobile apps for dating. In this case, Match was the one exception with a small gain (up 3.2%, year-over-year).

Valentine’s Day doesn’t seem to provide a big boost

In the context of dating websites, we can see there is no particular surge in traffic around February 14 – maybe because it’s more of a holiday for those who already have a steady date than for those wanting to find one.

Traffic was also down compared with January

Not only was traffic to dating sites down from a year ago, but it was weaker than it was in January – uniformly so.

Bumble gained share, while most Match brands lost it

Match’s Tinder brand gained more than 2.3 percentage points of the share of traffic within this competitive set, and Bumble gained 1.5. At the same time, most other Match brands were down, with Plenty of Fish losing 3 points of share.

As of February, Match was attracting 23.6% of the traffic within this competitive set, with Tinder netting another 18.4% and other Match brands collectively attracting 18.6%.

The romance recession continues

The market for online dating seems to be receding overall, and an event like Valentine’s Day is no help.

Public companies referenced in this report include Match Group Inc. (NASDAQ: MTCH), Grindr Inc. (NYSE: GRND), and Bumble Inc. (NASDAQ: BMBL). Also Zoosk owner Spark Networks SE (NASDAQ: LOV).

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

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Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

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".