2024 was a rough year for the big dating apps. That's what it looked like a few months ago, at least. The rise of niche dating apps like The League and Raya has stolen some demand away from bigwigs Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge.
But now that we have the entire year in our rearview mirror, things aren't as bad as they once seemed. For two out of the three, at least. For one of those, it's pretty bad.
I charted consumer spending on Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge - the three biggest dating apps in the US in terms of revenue. There are a few other dating apps making money, but none early as much as those three so I didn't look at them.
Between January and December of 2024, the trio saw $2.8B of gross revenue, according to our App Intelligence. Billion, with a capital B! Apple and Google kept about $400M of that. That's a pretty nice payday, but not surprising considering all three aren't just at the top of their category but also at the top of the overall charts.
This haul also marks a healthy rise in revenue when compared to 2023. Our estimates show an increase of 8.8% or roughly $225M of pre-fee revenue. To put things in perspective, only 227 apps made more than $50M in all of 2024 according to Explorer - the "difference" in year-over-year revenue for these dating powerhouses.
But not all three had the same journey.
Tinder is big, so even single-digit growth means big money. Our estimates show Tinder's revenue rose a tad over 10% in 2024. That amounts to a plus of more than $143M in gross revenue. Hinge, which is the smallest of the three, saw revenue rise even more than Tinder. Our estimates show a 28% increase for a little more than $106M of gross revenue.
But not Bumble. Bumble's revenue dropped in 2024 by 3.4% for a loss of roughly $25M in gross revenue.
What's pushing revenue? An increase in subscription cost and a shift towards weekly subscriptions across the board have made the value of a paying user considerably higher in 2024. We've seen this trend of subscription revenue maximization across a variety of verticals, but dating apps seem to get away with even more egregious increases. I don't expect that to change in 2025.
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