Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2025-11-26
How Tinder Captures More Value With Tiered Pricing and Consumables — Ravi Mehta
Ravi Mehta, former Tinder CPO, explains Tinder's monetization: free-to-play (85-90% never pay), three subscription tiers (Plus, Gold, Platinum) plus consumables (Super Likes, Boosts) to fill the demand curve, Platinum built from studying $100-250/month spenders, and hundreds of price-test SKUs by country. He contrasts Tinder's sub-two-minute onboarding (which expanded online dating's market) with Sesame Care's longer weight-loss intake that raised conversion, a TripAdvisor test where labelling personalization hurt conversion, and his NCT (narratives, commitments, tasks) alternative to OKRs.
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Numbers mentioned
| Subject | Metric | Value | Quote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tinder | share Share of users who are entirely free (10-15% pay) | 85–90% approximate | “About 85 to 90% of users are entirely free, so there's very little friction to get started.” |
| Tinder | arpu Spend of Tinder Gold subscribers heavy on microtransactions; the insight behind Tinder Platinum | USD 100–250per user /month approximate | “knowing that there were people on Tinder Gold who were purchasing a lot of micro transactions, people spending a hundred to $250 a month on Tinder.” |
| aggregateWhat heavy-spending Tinder users said they spend on dates | cost User research: a couple of dates a month costs ~$400, so $100/month on Tinder feels like a good investment | USD 400/month approximate | “if I'm going out on a couple of dates a month, that's like 400 bucks.” |
| Tinder | conversion rate Match likelihood when sending a Super Like vs a regular like | +3 x approximate | “And so when you send someone a super versus a regular, they're three times more likely to match with you.” |
| Tinder | price Tinder Plus price points tested ($7.99, $8.99, $9.99), varied further by country | USD 7.99–9.99/month | “because Tinder would test out 7 99, 8 0.9 9, 9 9 for Tinder, Tinder Plus, and then other price points for Tinder Gold” |
| Tinder | count In-app purchase SKUs live on the App Store from price testing; said to be more than any other app at the time | hundreds and hundreds approximate | “And so there were literally hundreds and hundreds of different skews available because of all the testing and then all that testing would get multiplied by different locations.” |
| Tinder | price Ultra-premium tier Tinder was experimenting with after Mehta's time; guest not familiar with it | USD 500/month approximate | “But no, I was talking about the $500 a month one that they had been experimenting with” |
| Tinder | time to milestone Time from install to swiping on Tinder, vs ~20 minutes to build an eHarmony/Match profile | 1.5–2 minutes approximate | “instead of 20 minutes, you could be in and swiping on people in a minute and a half, two minutes.” |
| Tinder | share Ads' share of Tinder revenue | small part approximate | “They are. There are ads. It's a small part of Tinder's revenue.” |
| aggregateAds' share of revenue for subscription apps Jacob Eiting has talked to | share Ads typically 10-20% of revenue, less than a quarter | 10–20% approximate | “Everybody I've talked to ads is less than a quarter. I'm sure there are exceptions to that, but it's not a huge part of the revenue mix from everybody I've talked to. But it's meaningful. I mean, 10, 20, 15% part of your revenue mix is you should do it” |
| Sesame Care | conversion rate Checkout conversion lift after moving from a 3-step to a longer intake (host's framing: 25 steps); guest says only 'higher conversion rate' | +40% approximate | “Sesame Care who moved from a three step checkout to a 25 step checkout and boosted conversion 40%.” |
| Sesame Care | count Intake questions in V2 checkout, up from three screens | 20 questions approximate | “Instead, we now have 20 different questions.” |
| Sesame Care | conversion rate Step-to-step conversion between intake questions (north of 99%) | 99% approximate | “the step to step conversion rate that we were seeing from one question to the next is north of 99%.” |
| meditation app met at App Growth Annual | growth rate After adding classes, intensives, week-long programs and Zoom calls | almost doubled revenue approximate | “I think he followed up recently with me and said he's now almost doubled revenue.” |
| meditation app met at App Growth Annual | share Share of revenue from live experiences (in-person, Zoom); the digital product is the other half | 50% approximate | “So the digital product is providing half the revenue now, and these in-person experiences Zoom calls and other things are providing the other half.” |
| Adobe | revenue Adobe Acrobat Reader iOS app (scanner/PDF), ~ $100M run rate | USD 6.3M/month estimate | “Adobe Acrobat Reader Edit, which is their big scanner app on iOS, 6.3 million a month.” |
| Riverside | price What Sub Club pays Riverside; host thinks it is undermonetized relative to value | USD 100–200/month estimate | “I think we are only paying like a hundred or $200 a month for Riverside” |