Dating App Revenue Grows 29% in Q3

Ariel Ariel
9/24/21

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #80 - No Way Down. Check out the full article for more insights.


Last for this week is a trend I've been talking about for a while now that we can see across a whole bunch of industries. If you've been following the newsletter for a while you know where I'm going with this...

Apps are now becoming the place where things start.

An easy way to visualize this trend is to look at something that had to move virtually during lockdown—Dating. Even as things have reopened and people are out and about, dating app revenue is growing faster than ever before.

According to our estimates, the top 5 dating apps in the U.S. saw net revenue grow by 29% in Q3, with a collective haul of $321M in the U.S. And that's after they handed over roughly $90M in fees to Apple and Google—mostly Apple.

That's up from Q2's combined net revenue of $250M in the U.S. across the App Store and Google Play, and that was 12% higher than Q1 of this year for the group, which includes Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and Match.

Going deeper, we can see the majority of growth in Q3 came in August and September. Yes, I know, September isn't over so I used a forecast to ensure I don't underestimate the month. In August, the group hit a new milestone, crossing $100M in net revenue (in the U.S.), according to our app intelligence. We expect September to bring in $129M of net revenue from the U.S.

We're heading into the cold season, and that's been great for growth in previous years. Given the trend the sector is already on, I expect double-digit growth to continue.

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The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.


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