Dating App Statistics by Gender
I’ve always thought of dating as something that happens in real life, i.e. through friends, nightclubs, daygame, etc. The kind of chemistry you can’t compress into a profile. For a long time, that meant I was basically ignorant to what actually goes on inside dating apps day-to-day. Not just the swiping, but the unwritten rules and the weird little dynamics people don’t talk about.
Then I started paying attention to the numbers and it got weirdly fascinating. Once you look at the stats based on gender, you realise the “vibe” of an app isn’t just slick design or a catchy tagline - it’s an algorithm, at scale, shaping who gets noticed, who gets ignored and who gets exhausted.
And when the pool skews heavily male or female, the whole experience shifts: how many messages you get, how picky you can afford to be and whether the whole thing feels like flirting… or a full-time admin job.
First, a quick note about what “gender” means in the data
Before we get into the stats, I always flag one awkward reality: a lot of public datasets still squeeze people into “men” and “women”. That can erase non-binary, trans and gender non-conforming experiences. And it can also blur the picture in LGBTQ+ dating, where the “who messages whom” dynamic doesn’t follow the same script as heterosexual matching.
And it’s not just gender: when researchers do publish race-based statistics, they often reveal another layer of unevenness in who gets replies, who gets filtered out and who ends up feeling invisible.
So when you see “by gender”, read it as: this is what the data can measure, not the full truth of everyone dating online.
How many men and women use dating apps?
The UK snapshot: who’s actually visiting dating services?
As of May 2024, 10% of UK online adults visited an online dating service.
What matters just as much as that headline number is the shape of the crowd behind it. In general, more men use these platforms than women, and that imbalance quietly affects everything: how quickly you get noticed, how competitive it feels and how much effort it can take to get a conversation off the ground.
That single dynamic explains so much. If you’re dating women on a service where men significantly outnumber women, you’re not “doing badly” because you’re uniquely unloveable, you’re competing in a crowded room!
Another UK angle: self-reported usage by gender
A YouGov survey of adults in Great Britain (fieldwork 9–10 June 2025) found that:
6% of men said they were currently using a dating app vs 3% of women
27% of men said they’d used one previously (but not currently) vs 26% of women
Put those together and you get a rough “ever used” picture: about a third of men (6% + 27%) and just under three in ten women (3% + 26%) reporting current or past app use in that snapshot.
Source: YouGov
The US benchmark: men slightly more likely to have tried online dating
Pew Research Center’s US survey (July 2022) found 30% of adults had ever used an online dating site or app, with men (34%) more likely than women (27%) to have tried it.
Different country, different context, but the “men slightly ahead on adoption” pattern lines up with what we often see elsewhere too.
Source: Pew Research Center
Gender ratios by app: the pool you choose changes the game
One of my favourite practical takeaways is this: “dating apps” isn’t one market. Each app has its own gender balance and that balance can vary by country.
UK app audience by gender (measured visitors)
Ofcom’s audience composition data for May 2024 shows how different the gender split can look depending on the service. Here are a few headline examples:
| Service (UK adult visitors, May 2024) | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Hinge | 47% | 53% |
| Bumble | 59% | 41% |
| Tinder | 61% | 39% |
| Plenty of Fish | 69% | 31% |
| Badoo | 71% | 29% |
| Grindr | 98% | 2% |
| SCRUFF | 100% | 0% |
Source: Ofcom
If you’re a straight man and you keep picking the most male-skewed mainstream apps, you’re choosing the toughest odds. If you’re a straight woman and you pick an app where men heavily outnumber women, you may get attention, but not necessarily the kind you want.
Global estimates can look dramatically different
To show how much geography and measurement matter: an archived Economist piece (Aug 2024) stated that 84% of Tinder users are men and 61% of Bumble users are men.
That’s a very different picture from Ofcom’s UK visitor split for Tinder (61% men / 39% women).
So when you read a “Tinder gender ratio” stat online, always ask two questions:
Where is the data from?
Is it counting registered accounts, active users or visitors?
Those are not the same thing and they can swing the numbers wildly.
Source: The Economist
Messages, matches and why men and women experience the same app differently
This is the part where the stats start to feel… personal. If you’ve ever thought:
“I’m drowning in messages and it’s exhausting,” or
“I’m getting nothing back and it’s crushing,”
…you’re not alone. And the data shows a real gender split in how message volume feels.
Pew found that among current or recent US online daters:
54% of women said they felt overwhelmed by the number of messages they received (vs 25% of men)
64% of men said they felt insecure because of the lack of messages (vs 40% of women)
When I read that, it clicks into place: both sides can be miserable at the same time just for opposite reasons.
Source: Pew Research Center
Who usually starts the conversation?
Even when apps feel equal, initiation patterns often aren’t. A large-scale academic study analysing messaging metadata from a mobile dating app (heterosexual users) reported that men initiated 79% of conversations and that about half of initial messages were responded to.
That doesn’t mean women “should” or “shouldn’t” message first, but it does explain why so many men experience dating apps as a job application process, while so many women experience it as inbox triage.
Source: Oxford Internet Institute
Paying for dating apps: men are more likely to spend
If you’ve ever wondered why dating apps feel like they’re constantly nudging you to upgrade, this is part of the reason. Pew found that among US online dating users:
35% said they had ever paid for extra features
men (41%) were more likely than women (29%) to have paid
When I connect that to the message-volume stats, it makes a certain (slightly depressing) sense: if you’re a man getting fewer matches, you’re more tempted to pay to increase visibility; if you’re a woman getting too many messages, paying for “more attention” isn’t exactly the dream.
Source: Pew Research Center
Safety, harassment and unwanted behaviour
Here’s where the numbers stop being abstract and start being uncomfortable.
Pew reported that women under 50 who have used dating sites or apps were especially likely to report unwanted experiences, including:
56% receiving an unsolicited sexually explicit message or image
43% having someone continue contacting them after they said they weren’t interested
37% being called an offensive name
11% receiving threats of physical harm
Across all online dating users (not just women under 50), Pew reported:
38% received unsolicited sexually explicit messages/images
30% experienced continued unwanted contact
24% were called an offensive name
6% were threatened physically
If you’re a woman reading those numbers and thinking, “Yes, and that’s why I’m picky,” I get it. And if you’re a man reading them and thinking, “I didn’t realise it was that common,” this is exactly why gendered statistics matter: they reveal the reality that different people are navigating.
Pew also found women were more likely than men to say online dating is not very or not at all safe.
Source: Pew Research Center
Scams and fake profiles: not as gendered as you might assume
People often talk about scams as something that disproportionately targets women, but the stats paint to a more mixed picture.
In a YouGov poll of current dating app users in Great Britain (Dec 2023), 61% said they frequently encounter profiles they suspect are fake, and men were more likely than women to say so:
71% of men vs 47% of women
Meanwhile, Pew found that 52% of US online daters said they’d come across someone they thought was trying to scam them, with men under 50 especially likely to report that experience (63%).
My read on this is simple: scams follow opportunity. If you’re active, messaging and visible, you’re more exposed and that doesn’t map neatly onto one gender.
Sources: YouGov, Pew Research Center
What these dating app statistics by gender mean for you
Stats are only helpful if they change what you do next. Here’s how I’d translate them into real-life decisions, without turning dating into a spreadsheet.
If you’re dating women and you feel ignored
I’d stop treating “no matches” as a verdict on your attractiveness and start treating it as feedback from a crowded market. If an app’s audience skews heavily male, you need either:
a stronger profile (photos + prompts that actually say something), or
a different pool (an app with a more balanced gender split in your country), or
a different approach (fewer swipes, better messages more intentional matches).
Even in the UK, the measured split differs by service. Hinge visitors skew slightly female, while others skew male.
If you’re dating men and you feel overwhelmed
Your experience is also “the maths”. If you’re in a pool where men outnumber women, you’ll get volume but volume is not quality. So I’d give you permission (yes, permission) to:
use filters unapologetically,
unmatch quickly when the tone is off,
keep your messaging standards high,
and prioritise safety features and public-first dates.
The harassment and unwanted-contact stats are not trivial, and you’re not “too picky” for reacting to patterns that the data shows are common.
If you’re tired of the whole thing
Honestly, I never liked dating apps myself. And the most reassuring part of gender-based stats is that they normalise the fatigue: men can be burnt out from silence; women can be burnt out from noise. The emotions look different, but the drain is shared.
Sometimes the best strategy is a behavioural one: fewer apps, fewer swipes, and try to meet people in real life!
How I sanity-check any “gender stats” headline before believing it
When I see a viral stat, I run through this checklist:
Is it about “users”, “active users” or “visitors”?
Those are different populations, and they produce different gender ratios.Which country or region is it describing?
Even the same app can look dramatically different depending on where you are.Is it heterosexual-only data?
Some of the biggest messaging studies focus on heterosexual users, which matters when you generalise.Does the study measure experience, behaviour or preference?
“Men message more” (behaviour) is not the same as “men enjoy apps more” (experience) or “men want X” (preference). Pew, for example, splits these apart.
The bottom line
Dating apps can feel intensely personal, like every match (or lack of one) is a commentary on you. But dating app statistics based on gender are a reminder that you’re also moving through a system: a marketplace with imbalances, incentives and very different risks depending on who you are.
When I keep that in mind, I’m kinder to myself, and I make better choices. And if you take one thing from the numbers, I hope it’s this:
Sometimes the most empowering move isn’t changing yourself. It’s changing your strategy, your app or your expectations to fit the reality of the pool you’re actually in.
