Tinder · B2C · dating app
Put a toggle in the top bar that opens a new paid tier
About $50M in revenue from one small A/B test
Workedpaywallexperimentation
What they did
In 2018 Tinder A/B tested a toggle in the app's top navigation bar that let users enter a new subscription tier directly. Treated as a small-to-medium 'throwaway' test on the experiment roadmap; the design team opposed adding the top nav. Result was read off the daily revenue dashboard. Guest's broader advice: audit where users can reach premium features and add more prominent paywall entry points; don't bury them in the nav.
What happened
Generated about $50M in revenue; the guest cautions it may not transfer to lower-intent apps like meditation.
- Stage
- Scale (scale (~50M MAU))
- Effort
- One A/B test, sized small-to-medium
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How a Single Paywall Experiment Generated $50M – Jeff Morris, Chapter One, Ex-Tinder“So probably in 2018, it was actually a really fortunate surprise, tested a toggle on the top of the application where you could enter a new subscription tier from the top nav bar.”
“It was kind of a throwaway AB test. And you wake up and you look at the dashboard I was talking about and you're like, wow, crap, this thing is really working.”
“But the point is you should constantly be thinking about where users can access your premium features, where the paywalls are placed.”
Related topics
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More from Tinder
All 22 Tinder tactics- 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
- Keep dating free for most users so there are plenty of people to match85-90% never pay; the 10-15% who do fund the business
- Sell a paid 'super like' that stands out from a normal likeSuper Likes are 3x more likely to get a match
- 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
- 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
More from this episode
- Tinder: Limit free swipes per day and charge for moreStopped mass-swiping and auto-swipers; turned into a strong revenue driver (no numbers)
- Tinder: 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
- Tinder: Offer several paid tiers, from cheap starter to big spenders at $50K a yearGuest's biggest revenue unlock at Tinder; no numbers given
- Tinder: Set different prices by country, starting with fast-growing markets like India
- Tinder: Polish the paywall like a core feature, e.g. add a gold shimmerGuest says it showed users they cared; no numbers
- Tinder: Ask for payment only after a user gets a match and starts chatting
- Tinder: Build engagement and retention first; push monetization only years laterReached 30-40M monthly users before revenue became a focus in years 4-5
- Tinder: Create a revenue team with its own iOS and Android engineersGrew from 6 engineers in 2016 to 40+
- Flighty: Give the first flight free with every pro feature, then lock some
- Make free users pay before they can fix their buggy first buildFrustrated users complained publicly on Twitter
- Supabase: Ship a new feature every single dayBecame the default database for most major website builders