How To Create A Dating App and How Much Does It Cost You?
How Much Does It Cost To Create A Dating App in 2021

How did you find your soulmate? When you are in a healthy relationship with someone, this is one of the most often asked questions from every second person.
But in this digitized era, the answer has shifted from matchmakers to mobile dating apps!
While emerging technologies and innovation in the mobile app development sector has been affecting every industry and pushing them to new heights, social media apps are not left untouched. In fact, they are taking the centre stage and booming at a fast pace without showing any slow down.
If you continue to have doubts, then consider that there are now 1500 dating apps or websites available for couples to find their soulmate. Though matchmaking is one of the oldest industries in existence, with the great advancement in its functionality, now these apps have their own space.
However, with the existing dating apps like Tinder, Bumble or Grinder, it seems that the market is already occupied with these market leaders and putting entrepreneurs in a dilemma whether it is worth developing a dating app in 2021?
According to the statista, the growth of online dating revenue has moved to $1 billion in 2021 in the US alone.
That’s not all, around 15% of US adults or 50 million Americans are using these dating apps.
Right from offering “Casual to Serious” dating spectrums, the leading matchmaking apps paired the potential hookups based on the mere glance and making more than 15 million matches a day, people from 18–44 aged have widely used this app.
And the impact of the pandemic has pushed the usage of dating apps to the next level.
So without any doubt, the dating app market is growing as well as the customer’s demands. Since people are looking for dating apps with new features and functionalities, therefore, this is the right time to grab the opportunity and look up to the leaders like Tinder, Bumble and more to create a successful app for your own.
How To Build a Mobile Dating App: App Functionality and Features
Developing a dating app is one of the most complex tasks as your app is going to find soulmates just based on the photos and data that you store in the app. So what techniques make it work so smoothly? What features make it so exciting to access?
Here we have covered the core techniques and features that hold an important place in the dating app development process.
So, if you want to know to build a dating app with decent functionality, then consider the following components:
Core Functionality Supporting Matching Algorithms in Mobile Dating Apps
It is one of the most important functions that make your app function and drives from a set of attributes. Since understanding and developing this functionality in your app is a challenging task, it is better to hire app developers that empower your dating app with the right matchmaking algorithms and make proper matching. So here are the few matchmaking options that you can choose from:
1. Mathematical Algorithms
Mathematically-based matches basically rely on the algorithms and analyse the information that users provide in their profiles. The major information that algorithms used to analyse in profiles are:
- Personality Characteristics (Age or gender)
- Compatibility of Interests (Hobbies, likings, dislikings, passion, music taste, reading interest)
- Physical State (Height, physique)
- Friend connections to build better trust and user safety (Using data from social networks)
Mathematically-based matchings are quite popular but it’s often imperfect. This is because, people often put fake information about themselves in profiles like they are fond of travelling, music or literature, but in reality, they have no idea about it. So to have a better view of a person’s personality, it is recommended to choose behavioural Analysis along with Geodata.
2. Advanced Match Making With AI & AR
With the availability of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and augmented reality, it becomes possible to implement advanced matching algorithms in the dating app.
Just like various leading applications like Netflix and Amazon, a dating app can also recommend the best matches based on complex data analysis. Right from facial recognition to biological data usage, it covers everything in data analysis and offering more efficient matches.
These are the few matchmaking analysis algorithms that a mobile app development company can choose to integrate into the development process to allow users to get connected with their choice of soulmates.
But to improve the experience of using a dating app, it is worth implementing a unique choice of features for advanced communication.
3. Behaviour Analysis
Behaviour analysis is far more complicated than using mathematical matching as the analysis is based on a person’s real digital footprint. In other words, dating apps access the information on social media, search history, YouTube playlist, pages visited, movie preferences place visited, pages liked and more. Behaviour analysis helps you portray the real picture of the user’s profile. But this type of analysis is only possible with Big Data solutions.
4. Using Geolocation
Using the geolocation data for matchmaking will help you sort profiles according to the location. These types of algorithms are really helpful because they enable you to find a perfect match for you in a preferred location.
Must-Have Features for the MVP Dating App
Although you strive to create a future dating app that has unique features and functionalities, being a startup you always aim to create a dating app that fits your initial budget and choose to hire a mobile app developer. Therefore developing an MVP model with all the basic features will be a sensible decision to validate the app idea and user experience. So here are the set of features that you can choose to implement:

Additional Features For Dating App Development
Once you create the MVP version of your dating app, surely you look forward to scaling it up with additional features after creating a stable audience. So it’s time to think about implementing new features that can broaden functionality horizons and offer a modern user experience.
- Profile Verification: It is always good to know that the person you are chatting with is real and genuine. Many famous dating apps have proper verification procedures that require sending separate photos to moderators that tell you that person is verified. Since it’s a complicated feature to customize, though you can choose to hire an app development company.
- Video Calls: Why restrict the users with the simple boring in-app text chatting. Once matches get to know each other well, they can arrange video call sessions to chat in person. Besides that, it’s a really great feature for cross-river matches that can’t meet up in person really soon.
- AI-Powered Chatbots: Now gone are those days when you have that much patience to call customer support for assistance. AI-powered chatbots are everywhere as their main purpose is to help people with instant support. They will pick the first line to start a conversation with and make a comfortable chat environment.
How Much Does It Cost to Make a Full-Fledged Dating App
Once you have an idea about the functionality and features of developing a chatting app, of course, you will be curious to know how much money you will need to invest in the development process.
But, unfortunately, there is no straightforward answer to this question as there are a number of factors that affect the final cost of the dating app development. This section has covered everything concerning the price.
- App Complexity: The complexity of the app is defined by the features and functionalities you choose to implement in the app. It can be categorised into three versions such as simple, moderate and complex versions. The average cost to develop a basic app or MVP model with the above mentioned features and single platform can cost in between $12,000 to $15,000 and can go to any expensive price to $50,000+.
- Choice of App Platform: Android and iOS are the most popular platforms to launch your dating app as they have the majority of users. But the cost of developing two Native Android and iOS apps can increase your app development budget as both platforms use dedicated programming languages to write codes.
The simple way to save on cost is to look for a cross-platform app development company that can help you build an app that runs on multiple platforms using the same code base.
Developing a cross-platform app has become a popular choice as it is a quick way to launch your app and save a cost on dating app development. Developing two different native apps will cost you 40% higher than creating a hybrid app.
- Resources Required For App Development: Are you really impressed with a dating app like Tinder? Looking forward to building a dating app like Tinder or Bumble? You need the right team of developers that is consist of:

- Developing an Amazing UI/UX Design: The interface of the app should be interactive, engaging and catchy, so users will feel positive when they start accessing your app. So instead of inclining towards creating a fancy yet complicated interface of the app by hiring an app developer, it is worth it to keep up with a simple yet unique design. All your users want is to deal with a clear UX/UI that won’t make them confused. As for UI, bright colours and clear buttons will surely be a good choice. According to the studies, designing an app will take from 50 to 150 hours and 250+ hours, depending upon the complexity of the app.
- Tech Stack Required: The Technologies you use for dating app development can bring a great variation in the app development cost. The more complex your app structure will be supported by high-end technologies, though you need to hire a mobile app developer with a higher level of experience and expertise.
But here we are mentioning the best choice of technologies that you can use to build dating apps.

- Geolocation of the App Developers: The cost of the app-dating app development can greatly vary depending upon the location or country of the app developer. So before you hire a dating app development company, make sure you have an idea about the hourly rate of developers of that specific location:

These are the few important parameters that can greatly impact the app development cost of dating apps. Before you sign a contract with any software development company, you need to have a deep understanding of these parameters to reliable estimation of app development cost.
How Much Money Your Mobile Dating App Can Make?
Those were the outdated trends when applications come up with expensive price tags. Nowadays, almost every app is free to download and allows you to cover a large audience base. So how would you make money from your dating app is the biggest concern of the businesses?
So after reviewing the market strategies and knowing what are the best widely accepted monetizing strategies by the savvy app creators, we have made a shortlist of monetizing methods.
- Boost The Account of users: You can charge a monthly or quarterly fee from the users to boost their profile and make them appear first in the search list for a limited period of time.
- Smart Swipe: This feature is pretty rare and the only app on the market that uses this feature is Tinder. All you can do is integrate Machine Learning algorithms to change the way users can see your photos. The order of your photos will be completely changed depending upon the interest of the users who browses your profile.
- Unlimited Profile Swipes: In the free app version, users have limited access to profile swipes. So people can use a premium app for an unlimited number of right swipes.
Conclusion: The Bottom Line of How To Create a Dating App?
Finding a soulmate has never been an easy task. But with technology-driven dating apps, getting closer to the future is just becoming a task of a few swipes.
So if you are planning to create a dating app, then it is worth hiring a mobile app development company that can help you transform your app idea into a perfect solution is the perfect option. You can have a talk with the app developers that enables you to bring the best dating product to the market.
This blog has covered all the major parameters related to dating app development; but still, if you have any doubt about how to get started with your own dating app or having an idea of a dating app that you want to transform into the application, then you can Contact Us or drop a query below!
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