New York — Hinge Tests Cheaper Plan as Dating App Fatigue Grows

Hinge is testing a cheaper subscription tier, a move its parent company, Match Group, disclosed on its third-quarter 2026 earnings call Monday, according to TechCrunch. The pilot comes as Match Group tries to convert more free users into paying ones at a time when subscription fatigue has spread across the dating-app category.

What Will the Cheaper Hinge Plan Include?

The new tier will offer additional filters and custom location boundaries, giving users more control over who they see and where matches are drawn from, Match Group said on the call, per TechCrunch's Nov. 2, 2026 report. Chief Financial Officer Steve Bailey described the target audience directly: "It's designed for women in particular, but also for price-sensitive users." Match Group has not detailed which existing premium features, if any, would be excluded from the lower tier.

How Much Will the New Tier Cost?

Match Group did not disclose pricing for the test, according to TechCrunch, which said it had asked the company for more detail. Hinge's current subscription has been positioned at the high end of Match Group's portfolio; Bailey told investors on the Nov. 2, 2026 call that "Hinge is one of the highest-priced products we have."

Why Is Hinge Testing a Cheaper Plan Now?

Two figures from the earnings call frame the decision. Bailey said Hinge's revenue per payer runs around $30, which he called almost twice the figure at Tinder, Match Group's largest app by paid users. At the same time, Hinge's payer penetration — the share of users who convert to a paid subscription — is only slightly more than half of Tinder's, Bailey said on the call, as reported by TechCrunch. Put together, the two metrics describe an app that charges more per paying customer but converts a smaller slice of its user base into payers than its sibling app does. A lower-priced tier is a direct lever against the second number, even if it risks pressuring the first.

How Did Hinge and Tinder Perform in the Third Quarter?

The pricing test arrives while Hinge is outperforming Tinder on nearly every growth metric Match Group reported for the quarter ended in 2026. Hinge's global monthly active users rose 12% year over year, its direct revenue climbed 19%, and its paying-user count grew 23% to 2.3 million, according to Match Group's Q3 2026 results as relayed by TechCrunch. The app generated $221 million in direct revenue for the quarter, a category Match Group defines as subscription and in-app purchase income. Tinder, by comparison, produced $480 million in direct revenue — more than double Hinge's total — but that figure slipped 2% year over year. Tinder's paid-user base of 8.9 million shrank 4% from a year earlier, the same report said. The contrast underscores why Match Group is testing changes at Hinge from a position of relative strength rather than crisis: the app with the smaller revenue base is the one gaining momentum, while the larger revenue base is contracting.

What's Next for Match Group's Apps?

Hinge's pricing experiment follows a different direction than the company's 2023 move, when it introduced a more expensive tier aimed at users willing to pay extra for enhanced features, according to TechCrunch. The swing from a premium add-on to a discount option suggests Match Group is still searching for the price point that maximizes total payers rather than revenue per payer. Match Group has also pointed to non-pricing fixes for user fatigue, including Group Hangouts and Events, described in the Nov. 2, 2026 TechCrunch report as efforts to make its apps feel less like traditional one-on-one matching services.

What to watch:

• Whether Match Group confirms a price point for the new Hinge tier once the test concludes.
• Whether Hinge's payer penetration — currently about half of Tinder's, per Bailey's Nov. 2, 2026 remarks — narrows in subsequent quarters.
• Whether Tinder's 4% year-over-year drop in paid users, reported for the same quarter, continues or stabilizes.
• Whether Group Hangouts and Events show measurable retention effects in Match Group's next earnings disclosure.