The Data on Dating Apps: Most Used Dating Apps by Country

Since the cost of living significantly increased across the globe over the last months, many singles have found their budgets bruised and are more concerned with the growing costs of dates compared to last year. However, even with singles suffering from this disposable income squeeze, the dating app vertical has proven far more resilient than other app verticals in terms of consumer spending. According to data.ai, dating apps brought in just under six billion US dollars’ of consumer spend in 2022 – of which Tinder made up around 13 percent.

While love must be lucrative for dating app publishers to reach their revenue goals, their users are only monetizable if they’re investing time in the app and not churning. So, let’s look at user behavior in dating apps and investigate love across different latitudes: the US, Germany, France, the UK, and Brazil. Which are the most popular dating apps by country?

Romance Rankings: Most Used Dating Apps by Country

Our team at adjoe decided to further investigate global dating app behavior from late 2022 and early 2023, using our first-party app usage data from our users’ Android phones. 

With the number of dating apps available for download worldwide, singles are spoiled for choice when it comes to finding their supposed soulmate. But on which dating apps do singles tend to swipe for the longest? Here are adjoe’s top-ranked dating apps by daily time spent.

1. Tinder Secures Top Placement for Time Spent

For the second year running, Tinder received the most impressive placements overall as the most used app. The dating app giant made it to the very top of the table for the US, UK, Germany, and Brazil for app usage and secured second place in the French dating app market. Recognized as one of the highest-grossing dating apps globally, Tinder harnesses multiple user engagement mechanisms for its nonpaying and paying users – besides enabling deeper user engagement with its interactive gamified events.

But Badoo and Bumble – both part of Bumble Inc. – also fare well in the rankings. Like Tinder, Bumble also leverages user engagement strategies beyond the norm of swiping and super-liking by offering in-person events as part of its user experience. However, Bumble users can build connections in all areas of life – with Bumble Date, Bumble Biz, and Bumble BFF – ensuring that the app’s user base is far broader than that of other dating apps. Finally, we might be talking about session durations in these rankings, but note that Bumble seeks to extend user engagement with its brand far beyond screen time with the Bumble Baby Collection and Wedding & Celebrations Collection.

2. Dating Apps Seek to Become Super Relevant

Beyond the big renowned names in dating, our index shows us that there are plenty more apps in the sea. Many breakout dating apps are emerging as smaller but significant players and claim to be engaging users on a deeper level by playing the exclusivity card – inviting only specific demographics, based on religion, sexuality, lifestyle, and wealth. 

“With a goal of helping users find love at its core, BLK has built a community and space where Black love in all its forms and expressions can happen every day.”

BLK Dating

In contrast to Bumble’s broad user base, various apps in our index, such as Muzz and BLK Dating, ROMEO, and GayRoyal, bring smaller communities together and drive engaged sessions by being highly relevant and exclusive to a small number of singles. But what more can these apps promise that the bigger players like Bumble and Tinder can’t? A more personalized in-app experience with which users can enjoy greater value. Take Muzz. The Muslim dating app that has reached the top ten in both the UK and France for time spent allows users to filter Muslims in their area by sect, ethnicity, and how much they pray. 

3. In-App Experience Is an Enigma

“At OkCupid, we’re dedicated to helping people find love and happiness through meaningful connections. Our one-of-a-kind algorithm matches you on what actually matters.”

OkCupid

When it comes to pandemic trends, you keep some; you lose some. Many individuals – not just singles – craved human conversation and community during months of social isolation between 2020 and 2022. During this time, app features enabling genuine human connection, such as video chats and voice messaging, were novel and drove high engagement from singles. Many of the most used dating apps featured in these postpandemic rankings, such as Hinge, Popcorn, Bumble, and Badoo, have integrated these engagement mechanisms into their apps and claim these to be among their USPs.

So, as the app market normalizes again after almost three years of social restrictions, it’s evident that this trend of valuing meaningful connections is here to stay.  But it’s not quite as straightforward as that. There appears to be a stronger appetite in some GEOs, such as Germany and Brazil, for dating apps that offer anonymous human interaction and more casual flings as opposed to romantic connections. These include ROMEO – which even ranked second in Germany – RandoChat, Galaxy, and AntiLand.

Your Lowdown on Engagement (without the Ring)

We’re all curious to see how the most successful dating apps have navigated the pandemic – the apps that forced singles to seek more distanced ways of interacting with other singles. As with any app out there, though, it has never just been about engaging these users. It has also been about monetizing these users to remain profitable over the long term. Above all, dating app publishers will need to figure out how to best monetize these singles – especially, the nonpaying users – under recessionary pressures.

We’ve seen more and more dating app publishers tapping into hybrid monetization models – much like the rest of the mobile app ecosystem. From subscription tiers and in-app ads to in-app purchases, dating apps are using all tricks in the book to monetize their app. Although consumer spending hasn’t cooled as much as with other app verticals, the saturation of the dating app market means that publishers must seek ways to drive even longer sessions and higher engagement in their apps to maximize revenue. This will play a key role in determining which dating apps come out on top over the next few years.