The top three US dating apps by market share are Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge

The dating app Hinge markets itself as 'designed to be deleted'

Harvard graduate Justin McLeod started Hinge in 2011. Since then, despite competition from larger apps like Bumble and Tinder, it's grown into the third-largest dating app by market share in the US, bringing in roughly $396M in revenue as of 2023.

Dating apps adopted 'freemium' business models as the market became more saturated

As dating app user growth slowed and companies like Tinder saw increased competition from upstarts like Bumble and Hinge, the industry has pushed for subscription tier adoption due to pressure from investors for predictable profits and more.

The way dating apps make money is changing

As downloads fall across the industry, dating apps are trying to stay competitive by adding paywalls to their business models. The more than $6B dating app industry is largely dominated by Match Group, the parent company of both Tinder and Hinge. This video explores how AI and human behavior are changing the industry one right swipe at a time.

Learn how the algorithms behind Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and other dating apps work

Formerly based on the Elo rating system, which ranks chess players, the Tinder algorithm is built on user data, with more time spent on the app providing more data on user preferences from which to customize potential matches. OkCupid's match percentage algorithm relies on overlaps in users' search preferences and responses to a subset of over 4,000 questions.

Bumble's valuation peaked at roughly $13B around the time of its 2021 IPO

As of April 17, 2026, its market cap was roughly $550M. Experts attribute the decline to a multitude of factors, including slowing user growth and increased competition from Match Group-owned dating apps like Hinge.

The prototype for Tinder was created during a 2012 hackathon

By August 2012, Tinder, which was originally called Match Box, had launched on the Apple App Store. Match Group merged Tinder into its portfolio in 2017, the same year it set its sights on acquiring Hinge. Experts say that Match has not been declared a monopoly in part because monopolies are "hard to prove."

A larger share of LGBTQ+ individuals use dating apps than their straight counterparts

Roughly a quarter of LGBTQ+ adults reported using a dating app in the past year as of 2022. The trend seems to have persisted as the years have gone on, with apps like Grindr geared toward the community seeing significant revenue growth in recent quarters as of 2025.

Computer scientists first started trying to optimize dating using computers in the 1950s.

Bumble's origin story includes a Russian billionaire, a Tinder cofounder, and a private jet.

Dating app Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is considered the youngest self-made female billionaire.

Bumble went public with an IPO in 2021

That year, Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd became the youngest female CEO to ever take a company public. The company pivoted during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, focusing its marketing strategy on promoting social-distanced dating and its video chat features.

Blackstone acquired a majority stake in Bumble's former parent company in 2019 ahead of the dating app's IPO

The New York City-based investment management company paid about $3B for its stake in female-focused dating app Bumble. The app's 2021 IPO that made Bumble Founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd a billionaire at age 31 proved lucrative for Blackstone as well.

Tinder revolutionized dating when it introduced swipe-based interactions

Many dating apps today allow users to "swipe right" to match with someone and "swipe left" to opt out of the match, but Tinder did it first, introducing swipe-based interactions in 2013. The idea for swipes came from the founder's desire to gamify dating—Tinder's early interface was based on a deck of cards that users could sort.

Bumble's ill-received 2024 rebrand included ads encouraging users to stop being celibate

The ads were meant to promote a new option on the dating app that allowed men to message first in opposite-sex matches—a significant change to the app's signature "women make the first move" feature. Bumble later apologized for the ads on Instagram. Bumble shares fell 54% after the brand removed the signature feature and allowed men to message first.

Dating app Bumble laid off roughly 30% of its staff in June 2025

Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd was criticized at the time for telling staff to "calm down" during a company-wide call informing staff of the layoffs. "I see a lot of freaking-out emojis, y'all need to calm down … everyone's going to have to be adults in dealing with this," she said on the call. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Bumble was originally created under the MagicLab parent company

When Blackstone acquired MagicLab in 2019, Bumble Founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd was elevated to CEO of the entire parent company (which also owned Indian dating app Badoo). The parent company was rebranded as Bumble Inc.

Hulu debuted a movie about Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2025.

Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd sued Tinder for sexual discrimination and harassment

Wolfe Herd, who cofounded Tinder and was its VP of marketing, left the company in April 2014 after dating a Tinder cofounder who became "verbally controlling and abusive." In September of that year, she received a more than $1M settlement from her lawsuit against the company.

Facebook dominated US social ad spend in the first half of 2024

This data visualization shows the social media platforms where advertisers spent the most money in the first six months of 2024, with Facebook leading the pack taking home 36.3% of US social ad spend.

Whitney Wolfe Herd's return as CEO boosted Bumble's declining stock price

While the uptick didn't last, when Bumble announced Founder Wolfe Herd's return in 2025, shares rose in premarket trading and later that day. Investors likely hoped that her strategy could restabilize the business.

Bumble debuted its 'Bumble BFF' feature in 2016

Rather than helping users find romantic matches, Bumble BFF helps people make platonic, friendship introductions. The feature now operates as a standalone app, "Bumble for Friends," built on top of Geneva, a company that Bumble acquired in 2024.

Roughly 62% of US adults under 30 say they use TikTok

A Pew Research Center publication reports that most members of Gen Z use the app. That's significantly more than other age groups: 39% for those ages 30 to 49, 24% for those 50 to 64, and 10% for those 65 and older.

Many dating app users are beginning to suffer from 'dating app burnout'

For younger generations, dating apps have become a primary avenue for creating romantic connections—leaving some users fatigued and contributing to increased feelings of loneliness.

See a visualization of the most popular e-commerce companies in America

Amazon’s app sees more users than the next four most popular e-commerce apps (like Temu, Walmart, and others) combined.

The share of the immigrant population in the US peaked at nearly 16% in January 2025

In January 2025, the US reached a historic high of 53.3 million immigrants—nearly 16% of the population. By June of that year, the number had fallen by more than a million, ending 50 years of continuous growth in the immigrant population.

The dating app industry's average customer acquisition cost exceeds $40 per user

This relatively high cost of customer acquisition (according to 2022 data from saturated markets) makes profitable growth increasingly difficult for dating apps, which is why many have pivoted to focusing on their subscription tiers for reliable revenue.

See a real-time list of the most shorted stocks in the US

Every two weeks, the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange release the stocks with the most short positions. Some of the companies with the highest short positions as of early 2026 were Hims & Hers and Groupon.

TikTok boasts nearly 1.8B monthly users

The app has surged in popularity recently, with usage surging during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those users have generated high revenues, too, with over $23B in 2024.

Less than half of TikTok's US users have posted a video

Like most platforms, content is driven by a small number of active users—in TikTok's case, 25% of accounts are responsible for an estimated 98% of content posted.

Many of the top companies in the US by market cap began as tech startups

Combined, the top seven companies by market cap in the US as of December 2024—Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla—were worth more than $16T at the time.

57% of men who have dated online say their experiences have been positive

However, 51% of female users say that their experiences on dating apps have been negative. LGBTQ+ users are more likely to report positive experiences on dating apps than non-LGBTQ+ users.

The business model for many dating apps is paradoxical

While these apps are designed to help people create romantic relationships, dating apps lose money when people find a monogamous relationship and stop using the app as a result. Some call it the dating app paradox.

Machu Picchu, sacred backdrop for your dating app pic

Anyone who’s been on Tinder or Hinge in the last decade has noticed it: the obligatory Machu Picchu selfie, almost as ubiquitous as those photos of men posing with a fresh-caught fish. How did Machu Picchu, of all places, become a dating-app cliche? This satirical essay from McSweeney’s doesn’t answer that question, but has a great time poking fun at it.

Visa, the first credit card network, still dominates competitors with a roughly 52% market share by purchase volume.

Among the major credit card companies in the US, Mastercard had about 25% of the market share in 2025. American Express had roughly 20%, and Discover had the smallest market share of about 4%.

TikTok explained: how the app became a global phenomenon

Since 2018, the short-form, video-sharing app TikTok has gone from launching in the US to becoming a habit-forming cultural force that’s signed up more than half of the country's population as users.

Listen to a 2026 interview where Bumble's CEO said its stock is down 96% since its IPO 'for no reason'

CEO and Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd said the company is still performing very well. She added that the business makes $1B per year and referred to it as profitable. She went on to say "who knows what people trade stock on?" and that she believes the stock market has written Bumble off as if it were debt

View the countries with the most internet users, including 94% of those in high-income nations

As of 2025, the four most populous nations—China, India, the US, and Indonesia—are also the ones with the most internet users, collectively accounting for almost half of the 6.04 billion internet users worldwide. This suggests that population size, rather than adoption rate, is a better predictor of online activity.

Listen to a podcast episode that explains how the Chinese discount e-commerce retailer Temu became one of the most downloaded apps in the US.

How TikTok ate the internet

TikTok is now deeply integrated into American culture, thanks to the app’s powerful algorithm and focus on entertainment which have influenced popular trends and social media content consumption in the US. This immersive piece highlights TikTok’s role in helping shape everything from music to fashion and even politics in the US—while its connection to China has also drawn scrutiny and raised national security concerns.

Landmark study pinpoints what makes a good relationship

Whether you’re finding a potential partner by swiping right on an app, or thumbing through stacks of biodata a la Netflix’s “Indian Matchmaking,” there may be some wisdom for you in the researchers’ findings.

As of 2025, about 9 in 10 Americans use the internet daily

Polling finds that while most Americans have home broadband and smartphones, digital divides persist. Young adults, Hispanic adults, and lower-income households are significantly less likely to subscribe to home broadband and more likely to rely on smartphones as their primary means of internet access.

Three ways the US population will change over the next decade

This article lists the top three ways the US population will change over the next decade. Using population data from the US Census Bureau and the UN Population Division, the piece explores what America might look like 10 years from now, which...

TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms of all time

Centered around user-generated short videos, the platform was created by the Chinese technology company ByteDance Ltd. With over 1.8 billion users, the app has become a global force.

As of 2025, about 16% of US adults are 'smartphone-only' internet users

Demographically, smartphone dependency is greatest among those below 30, Hispanics, Blacks, economically disadvantaged individuals, and those with less formal education. Home broadband adoption is at 78%, with rates highest among suburban residents.

As of 2025, about 16% of US adults are 'smartphone-only' internet users

Demographically, smartphone dependency is greatest among those below 30, Hispanics, Blacks, economically disadvantaged individuals, and those with less formal education. Home broadband adoption is at 78%, with rates highest among suburban residents.

As of 2022, the US accounted for nearly one-fifth of global oil production

By 2022, the US had cemented its position as the world’s top oil producer with close to 18 million barrels per day. This eclipsed Saudi Arabia and Russia.

See a visual of the largest airlines in the US by market share.

Top Ethereum dApps

Thousands of decentralized apps (dApps) run on Ethereum, including marketplaces, financial platforms, and social networks. Top apps include Uniswap, a decentralized exchange for buying and selling cryptocurrency, and OpenSea, the biggest marketplace for buying and selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs). New apps are built on Ethereum all the time, facilitating billions of dollars worth of transactions. Explore the biggest ones here.

In 2025, ByteDance agreed to sell the app's US branch

In 2024, US lawmakers passed a requirement for parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the country, which the company challenged in court. After several extensions granted by President Trump, ByteDance agreed to sell the company's US branch to a group of US investors, including Oracle, which will oversee the app's security and cloud computing.

Apple Pay is activated on more than 78% of US iPhones

As a result, some banks worry they could be losing ground to the tech company. As consumers continue to use Apple Pay instead of pulling out their physical debit card to pay for everyday items, some banks are fighting back in the digital wallet war.