When we “gather around the fire and swap stories of the online dating wars, we usually talk about the usual suspects: Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Grindr, and sometimes more niche apps like Lex.” But since Facebook Dating launched in 2019, we’re not sure if we’ve heard any stories that started there. I know that I meet more people through Facebook meme groups than through the actual Facebook Dating product.
It turns out that my anecdotal data may be wrong. Because people actually use Facebook Dating. Meta shared user metrics for the first time on Monday, revealing that Facebook Dating has 21.5 million daily active users (DAU) in 52 countries.
Facebook Dating is a feature within Facebook rather than a standalone app, and Facebook puts its dating product front and center in the app’s main bottom navigation bar. (Even if your relationship status isn’t set to single, Facebook Dating still has a prominent place.)
But what’s most surprising is that Facebook dating seems to be slowly gaining popularity among young people. The platform has 1.77 million users between the ages of 18 and 29 in the U.S., which isn’t quite the Usual Suspects yet, but it’s getting closer. App analytics firm Sensor Tower estimated that Tinder had 7.3 million active users of all ages in the U.S. as of this summer. Hinge had 4.4 million. Bumble had 3.6 million users. and Grindr had 2.2 million people.
Facebook has publicly addressed the fact that it’s struggling to keep Gen Z and younger Millennials on its platform, but last year the company announced a 24% jump in daily conversations on Facebook Dating among 18- to 29-year-olds.
The best feature of Facebook Dating isn’t what Facebook Dating actively does, but rather what Facebook Dating doesn’t do. Unlike Hinge, you don’t have to pay to “unlock” your most desirable matches or purchase other premium features that you think will get you closer to finding “the one.”
Hinge debuted its “Standouts” feature in December 2020, and it became emblematic of everything wrong with dating apps. Hinge’s algorithm finds the people you’re most likely to be interested in and places them in their own elite tab in the app. The only way to swipe right on these people is to give them a “rose.” Users can get a free rose once a week. But unless you buy more roses at $4 each, it’s a little embarrassing for your future husband to know you used his precious roses, even if you do. Therefore, some users are devising increasingly complex plans to trick the Hinge algorithm and release these people from the “prison of roses”, just like in the situation of true lovers of fate.
tech crunch event
san francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
In comparison, Facebook Dating’s free model looks pretty good. It’s not that Mark Zuckerberg is Silicon Valley’s benevolent Cupid. Meta already makes money from you by relentlessly collecting your data, so there’s no need to buy you roses. But as users grow dissatisfied with their regular app rotation, Facebook Dating may no longer be such an abomination.
