Love is in the air and, potentially, coming out of your pockets. While there are many ways that love can affect your finances—expensive dates, the cost of holiday gifts and weekend getaways—we decided that the cost associated with the search for love may be a good place to start.
There are countless dating apps that offer free services and the vast majority of daters are using these. However, folks who may be a bit more serious in their quest for love might opt for a premium, paid version of these apps. For this study, we looked into over 5,000 paid subscribers of some of the most popular apps—OkCupid, Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, Bumble, POF (Plenty of Fish), Coffee Meets Bagel—and we found:
Mo’ Money, Mo’ Profiles
On average, paid subscribers to these dating services are spending about $58 per year. And maybe not surprisingly, the more money these daters make, the more tend to spend—with the exception at the highest income bracket. Similarly, the better a dater’s credit score, the more they are spending on dating apps—except for those that identified themselves as having “excellent” credit.
The Myth of Cuffing Season
Cuffing season, the concept of people more eagerly looking to find a romantic partner later in the year when the weather turns cold, doesn’t exist. According to our data, it seems the attempt to find a partner, if reflected by the number paid dating app subscriptions, is relatively consistent throughout the year—except for small but notable spikes during in July and December.
Where Art Thou?
]Maybe Virginia? We sifted through the data to find the top 10 states with the highest average annual spending on dating services and Virginia tops the list at $143 per month. Virginia is followed by Pennsylvania ($108), New Jersey ($93), Massachusetts ($82), Maryland ($79), Colorado ($77), Georgia ($77), Illinois ($74), Arizona ($71) and North Carolina ($69).
Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number
Singles—young and old alike—are looking for love. However, while nearly half (46%) of people paying for dating services are between the ages of 25 and 34, older daters are dishing out just a little bit more. On average, 18 to 24-year-olds are paying about $50 per year and daters over 65 are paying close to double—$99 per year.
Methodology
- Based on Trim user transaction data from January 2018 to January 2019.
- Daters defined as those using a paid membership/subscription for the following services: OkCupid, Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, Bumble, POF (Plenty of Fish) and Coffee Meets Bagel