What dating apps actually cost in 2026

Here's the strangest thing about dating app pricing: officially, most of it doesn't exist. Tinder lists its tiers without dollar amounts. Hinge shows the price at checkout. Bumble says costs "vary" by tier, duration and pack. eharmony reveals its price after you finish the quiz. The number you'll pay is generated for you, once the app knows who's asking.

So this page does two honest things: it collects the commonly reported 2026 figures — clearly labeled as snapshots, not quotes — and then explains why your price may differ from every number below.

The sticker prices, such as they are

Those third-party figures come from 2026 buyer guides rather than the companies, because the companies won't say. Treat every number as a range with a confidence interval, and every “starting at” as doing heavy lifting.

Why your price isn't your friend's price

In 2022, Mozilla and Consumers International mystery-shopped Tinder Plus across six countries. They found up to 31 different prices in a single country for the identical product, with older users quoted as much as five times more — and nobody told what determined their number. The full report is worth the read. Tinder phased out age-based pricing after publication; the broader opacity stayed.

Length of commitment moves the number most — twelve months of eharmony costs roughly half the monthly rate of six. Platform matters too: app store checkouts and web checkouts can carry different fees. The price isn't printed on the box, because the box knows who's asking.

What people actually pay

The most reliable number in this whole category comes from an unlikely place: investor reports. Match Group told shareholders its average payer spent $20.09 a month across 2025 — across Tinder, Hinge, Match and the rest of its portfolio. Half the sticker price of the top tiers. Most payers evidently buy the cheapest tier, a short promo, or a discounted bundle.

Total dating spend is murkier. The most-quoted survey — LendingTree's, from 2020 — put it near $700 a year, but that covered dinners and drinks, not subscriptions, and nobody has repeated it with a subscription-only breakout since. The data here is thin, and we'd rather tell you that than invent a precise-sounding number.

How to pay less and get more

Where Bean fits (disclosure: this is our app)

Bean is free at three real swipes a day. Bean Plus is $3.99 a month for thirteen, and a one-off $2 top-up adds ten swipes that never expire. That's the entire price list — published, flat, identical for every member, payments handled by Stripe, cancelable in the app in two taps. A flat public price is a design decision: an app about honest intentions shouldn't have a secret number for yours.