The Spilling Continues! Tea Crosses 6M Downloads

Tea, a type of a social network to protect women who date online, went from being an unknown 3-year-old app with just a handful of downloads to the hottest app in the US App Store over the summer. For a short bit it even managed to dethrone ChatGPT as the #1 app!

A massive security stumble threatened to end its run early, but it apparently didn't.

The concept worked so well that a male-focused competitor, TeaOnHer, quickly emerged and caught traction.

I thought the pairs would fade as quickly as it rose. Instead, both managed to stabilize, recover, create a new niche, and get a lot of downloads.

According to Appfigures Intelligence, Tea crossed a big milestone a few days ago: 6M downloads.

Although the app has been around since 2023, downloads started climbing quickly in May and really exploded in July as the app was mentioned on TikTok. Our estimates show that since July, Tea has seen an average of 50K new daily downloads from the App Store and Google Play - but mostly from the App Store.

Rival TeaOnHer, the same concept but for men, came out just three months ago and has already accumulated 2.1M downloads, according to our estimates. It also stumbled with its security, but with a similar average daily downloads of 43K, that seems to be old news.

Tea, which gets all its downloads from the US, ranks #7 in the US App Store right now while TeaOnHer, which is more international, ranks #51 in the US.

What's driving the pair's success? Scarcity.

There's nothing like Tea or TeaOnHer for online daters. The thing is, if you've ever used a dating app you probably wanted what these two offer. Their execution might not be the best, and security stumbled are concerning, but until a formidable competitor comes along, these two are the only game in town.

I don't know how long this tea party will go on for, but if I were either I'd make sure to capitalize on the scarcity. It won't last long.