Is Tinder Planning to Launch a $500 Monthly Tier?

How much are you willing to pay for a dating app? The potential answers to that are as wide-ranging as the reasons why people get on dating apps like Tinder and Hinge to begin with. For those who’ve embraced the idea of elite dating apps like The League, the monthly cost can stretch into the hundreds of dollars. And now it seems as though Tinder — which, it should be noted, shares a parent company, Match Group, with The League — is getting into a similar premium space.

In April of this year, Fast Company reported that Tinder was exploring a high-level tier dubbed Tinder Vault. (This would be significantly more costly than the dating app’s current paid tiers.) As the company’s Chief Product Officer, Mark Van Ryswyk, told Fast Company at the time, “We’re really looking at a whole range of additional value-add services to Tinder overall.”

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In a recent piece for The Guardian‘s Comment Is Free section, journalist Nancy Jo Sales revealed that Tinder Vault remains an ongoing concern for Tinder. (Prior to this, Sales has covered the world of online dating in both a recent book and a documentary.) She points to comments made by a number of Match Group executives in a quarterly earnings call earlier this month — and those comments suggest something big is in the works for Tinder.

At one point during the call, New Street Research’s Dan Salmon asked about “the Tinder super premium tier,” expected to debut in the U.S. in the fall of 2023.

In response, Match Group CEO Bernard Kim offered a few more details. “The general concept is that we are providing an experience for a small percentage of our Tinder members,” Kim said. “And the value proposition is basically give these members a better way to get high-quality matches faster and sooner and make the experience overall even more fun.”

Kim also clarified that the costs for this tier remained to be determined. “It’s really early right now, so we don’t know what the final pricing is yet,” Kim added. “But at a high level, if you actually take a small fraction of our payers at higher price points, you actually get a number that’s in the tens of millions of dollars on an annual basis. So I think that’s actually pretty impactful.”

What you make of that news will likely have a lot to do with what your thoughts are on the idea of a dating app’s “super premium tier.” For some, the idea of spending $500 per month is a bridge too far; for others, it might well be an eminently logical part of dating in the modern world.