Tinder · B2C · swipe dating app
Keep dating free for most users so there are plenty of people to match
85-90% never pay; the 10-15% who do fund the business
Workedpricingproduct-virality
What they did
Unlike paid-only Match and eHarmony, Tinder is free-to-play: no friction to join, so the network is large. Free matters most for in-demand users (mostly women, who get many right-swipes) so they have no reason not to be there; paid products target users who get fewer swipes (mostly men) with Boosts and Super Likes. Ads monetize free users a little.
What happened
85-90% of users are entirely free; 10-15% pay for subscriptions and microtransactions.
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How Tinder Captures More Value With Tiered Pricing and Consumables — Ravi Mehta“Tinder came in and said, okay, we're going to do the same thing. We're going to have a free to play product.”
“it's important to be free so that the people who are in demand, the people that others want to swipe right on are incentivized to come into the product and don't have to pay to be there”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from Tinder
All 22 Tinder tactics- Put a toggle in the top bar that opens a new paid tierAbout $50M in revenue from one small A/B test
- Use a prediction model to show each user just the one plan they'll likely buyEstimated multimillion-dollar yearly revenue gain in an A/B test
- Raise the price of the standalone feature so it stops stealing subscriptionsFewer lost subscriptions, slightly lower conversion, higher total revenue
- Price the 7-day feature pass the same as a 7-day subscription, shown side by sideLess cannibalization and more revenue, but still not good enough
- Give each paid feature its own paywall and check its sales every morningShowed 2-3 features drive most new subs; weak ones were made free
- Sell the travel feature on its own for 1 day, 3 days or a weekConversion jumped, but it pulled buyers away from the cheapest subscription
More from this episode
- Tinder: Offer three subscription levels and sell extra boosts on topFormer CPO calls it one of the best ways to price consumer apps; no revenue split given
- Tinder: Interview users spending $100-250 a month, then build a top plan for themLed to Tinder Platinum; no results shared
- Tinder: Test many prices for each plan and add-on, country by countryHundreds of price SKUs live at once; no test results shared
- Tinder: Sell a paid 'super like' that stands out from a normal likeSuper Likes are 3x more likely to get a match
- Tinder: Let people start swiping in two minutes using Facebook login and photosOnboarding cut from ~20 minutes to under 2; brought younger people into online dating
- Sesame Care: Replace a 3-screen checkout with a 20-question intake before paymentConversion up (host says 40%); 99%+ of people answer each next question
- TripAdvisor: Sort hotels by each traveler's past behavior without calling it 'just for you'Unlabelled version converted better; labelling it 'just for you' dropped conversion
- Tinder: Show ads to free users to cover their costSmall share of revenue; ads worth far less than a subscriber
- Start at $20-30 a month; if nobody pays, fix the product, not the price
- Wispr Flow: Give a short free trial that builds a daily habit, then chargeGuest converted without hesitation; a free-tier rival he uses daily never got paid
- Sell live classes, Zoom sessions and week-long intensives to your most engaged usersRevenue almost doubled; live offers now half of revenue
- Calm: Play rain sounds the moment the app opens, and in 15-second ads
- TripAdvisor: Set quarterly goals as a short why, 3-5 commitments, and a task listGuest says teams that adopted it found it works better than OKRs; no numbers