In Pew’s 2022 survey, 35% of U.S. adults who had tried online dating said they had paid for a service or extra feature at least once.
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What the 35% measures
Pew Research Center found that 35% of U.S. adults who had ever used a dating site or app had paid for a service or an extra feature at least once by July 2022. The question asked about any past payment. Someone who bought one feature years before the survey remains in the paid group; someone currently using a free account can also be in it. The share is therefore an account of purchase history among past users. It is not a count of active subscriptions, paying users on a given day, or the share of all U.S. adults who pay for dating apps.
The distinction is easy to miss because 'paid user' can mean several things in a product report. Pew's survey did not publish a monthly subscriber count, revenue, or the amount each respondent spent. It also did not separate a subscription from a one-time purchase in this result. If a company reports active paying members, its figure has a different time window and may include only one service. Keep the phrase 'ever paid for a service or extra feature' when quoting the 35%. That wording carries the boundary of what Pew actually measured.
Who has paid for online dating?
The table may be wider than the screen. Focus it and use the arrow keys to reach every column.
| Past users | Ever paid | Question answered |
|---|---|---|
| All | 35% | Had paid at least once |
| Upper-income households | 45% | Had paid at least once |
| Middle-income households | 36% | Had paid at least once |
| Lower-income households | 28% | Had paid at least once |
Who got counted: Each row includes adults in that group who had tried online dating. It does not count every adult in the income group.
How to read it: A past payment could be for a service or an extra feature. Pew did not measure current subscriptions or whether paying improved outcomes.
Download the table (CSV) ↓Why the income rows need their own denominator
Among past online-dating users in Pew's 2022 survey, 45% of those in upper-income households had ever paid. The corresponding shares were 36% in middle-income households and 28% in lower-income households. Each percentage starts with the users in its own income group. The table does not say that 45% of all payments came from upper-income users, because that would require counts of users and payments by group. It also does not show how much anyone paid. A single small purchase and several years of membership both place a respondent in the same 'ever paid' category.
Pew defined income tiers relative to household size and the national median for its analysis. The groups are survey categories, not price points or rules for deciding who can afford a plan. We can say the upper-income group reported a higher rate of past payment than the lower-income group. We cannot infer that income alone caused a purchase, or that a paid product returned more value to either group. People may have used different apps, payment options, and periods. The published row gives a descriptive gap within the survey; it does not explain every choice behind that gap.
Past purchase is not proof of a better outcome
A purchase can be driven by curiosity, a short promotion, a desired filter, or a decision to keep using a service. Pew's payment question did not ask respondents to compare their dating results with and without paying. It did not randomly assign anyone to a paid plan. The 35% figure cannot tell you whether buying a feature caused more matches, dates, or committed relationships. A claim that paying 'works' would need an outcome, a time frame, and a comparison that addresses the people who choose to pay. None of those appears in this purchase-history percentage.
The same caution applies in reverse. The existence of past payers does not show that free access is ineffective. People may have moved between free and paid access, used more than one service, or stopped using online dating after meeting someone. The survey records whether they ever crossed a payment line. It does not record the sequence of every purchase and relationship. Treat the figure as a description of how common payment had been among users, then use a product's current terms to judge a purchase you are considering now.
Make a current product comparison with current terms
Pew's 2022 survey cannot supply a 2026 price or tell you which tier to choose. For a current offer, write down the feature you expect to use, its price for the full billing period, when it renews, and what changes when you cancel. Compare that with the free access the same service offers now. A feature that sounds attractive in a plan name may already have a limited free version, or may only change visibility rather than who is near you. These are product details to verify on the service's current purchase screen, not conclusions from Pew's national survey.
A simple comparison is useful even without a claimed success rate. If a plan costs a stated amount for a stated term, divide the total by the number of months only to understand its effective monthly cost. Keep the full amount due and renewal date visible; the monthly arithmetic can hide a larger upfront charge. If a one-time feature is sold separately, compare its actual price with the plan that includes it. Do not invent a typical return in dates per dollar. The survey has no evidence for that calculation, and your local pool can differ from a national sample.
For example, if an offer shows a short introductory period followed by a different renewal amount, record both amounts and the dates they apply. A national payment-history survey cannot tell you those current terms. If the offer includes a feature you only need once, compare the stated one-time option with the full subscription charge rather than comparing plan names. This is a check of the offer in front of you, not a claim that one type of payment works better. The meaningful unit is the money you would actually authorize over the period you intend to use the service.
Do not mix population and platform shares
Pew's denominator for 35% is everyone in its survey who had ever tried any dating site or app. A platform may instead report the percentage of its current users who subscribe, or the percentage of revenue from a premium tier. Those are different denominators even if each report uses the word 'users.' One person can also have used several platforms and paid on only one. Pew counted that person once in its history-of-payment question; a set of company reports could count the same person in several service populations. The two types of figure should remain separate.
The survey was conducted among 6,034 U.S. adults, with the payment result drawn from the subset with online-dating experience. That subset is smaller than the full survey. The income slices are smaller again. A national survey can show a broad pattern, while a current app's checkout screen can show the exact offer available to you. Neither source replaces the other. Use Pew to understand how many past users had paid by 2022; use current product terms to understand what a charge would mean today.
Keep a purchase decision tied to the question you have
If you are reading the 35% because you wonder whether paying is common, the answer is that about one in three past users in Pew's 2022 U.S. survey said they had paid at least once. If you wonder whether you should pay now, that share cannot decide it. Make a short record of the feature, the full cost, the billing period, the renewal rule, and what you can do without paying. The dating-spend calculator linked here can add stated costs; it cannot turn purchase history into evidence that a feature improves relationship outcomes.
It can also help to set a point at which you will review the purchase, such as the end of the stated billing period, because the survey's 'ever paid' category does not tell you whether people kept paying. Keep the price and the actual service terms in that decision. The national number belongs in the background: it tells you that payment was common enough to measure, while leaving the value of a particular offer for you to assess with current facts.
