We Counted 6,388 Likes. Here's How Many Came Back.

The standard story about dating apps is that men like everything indiscriminately and get almost nothing back, while women are deluged and can afford to be selective. It is repeated so often that it has stopped sounding like a claim and started sounding like physics.

On our platform it is not what happens. We counted every like that passed between two real members and checked which ones came back.

The numbers

Men sent 2,549 likes to women. 408 were returned. That is 16.0%, or roughly one match for every six likes.

Women sent 3,839 likes to men. 408 were returned. That is 10.6%, or roughly one match for every nine and a half.

The 408 is the same number in both rows, which is not a coincidence and is worth pausing on: a mutual like is one like from each side, so every match contributes exactly one to each total. What differs is the denominator. Women sent about 50% more likes than men did for the same number of matches.

Across everything, 6,388 likes produced 418 matches between real members.

Why it goes this way

Not because the men are writing better profiles. The mechanism is supply.

Our membership runs about two women to every man. When a man sends a like, it lands in the inbox of someone who has a lot of options and is triaging. When a woman sends a like, it lands on someone scarcer, who is looking at a shorter list. The scarcer side's attention is worth more per unit, so the scarcer side's likes convert better. That is the whole explanation.

It follows that none of this is a compliment or an insult to anybody. Change the ratio and the numbers swap. On a platform with two men per woman, the women's likes would be the ones coming back at 16%, and the same people would be writing confident articles about why.

This is the part of dating app statistics that gets dressed up as insight into human desire when it is mostly arithmetic about who showed up.

The selectivity twist

Here is where it gets genuinely counter-intuitive. The men are not being more selective to earn that 16%. They are being considerably less selective.

97 men sent 3,825 likes between them, an average of 39.4 each. 295 women sent 5,537 likes, an average of 18.8 each.

So the men are liking twice as many people per head and still getting a better return rate. Every folk theory that explains match rates through restraint or standards runs aground here. Being choosier did not help the women, and spraying did not hurt the men, because neither behaviour is what is driving the result.

If you want to feel better about your own hit rate, that is the number to hold onto. Your return rate is mostly a fact about the room you are standing in.

What to do with this

Calibrate your expectations to your side of the ratio. If you are on the plentiful side of whatever platform you are on, a one in ten return is normal and not a sign that something is wrong with you. Planning around ten likes per match is realistic. Planning around two is a recipe for taking it personally.

Do not read restraint as a strategy. Our most selective members did not get better rates. There is no evidence here that holding back your likes makes them count for more, and there is decent evidence it just means fewer chances.

The like is the cheap part. A match is not an outcome, it is permission to send a message, and that is where the real attrition is. We counted every conversation on the platform and 77% of them died at the first message. Getting matched is the easy half.

Give people something to match with. Members with three or more photos got replies at 11% against 7% for one or two, and members with none got nothing at all. That finding came out of reading 482 opening messages, and it is the one lever in all of this that is entirely in your hands.

On ratios generally

Every dating platform has a ratio and almost none of them publish it. It is the single most useful thing you could know before joining one, because it determines your return rate more than anything you will ever write in a bio.

Ours is roughly two women to one man, which is unusual for the category and is the reason the numbers above look the way they do. We have written up the full age and side breakdown for anyone who wants the rest of it, including the bracket where the ratio inverts.

When you see a platform advertising how many members it has, the number to ask for is the split. A large app with a bad ratio for you is worse than a small one with a good one.

What we cannot see

Why anybody liked anybody. We have a timestamp and two profile ids. Whether a like was considered or reflexive, whether it followed a careful read or a thumb moving down a list, is invisible to us and would change the interpretation of everything above.

We also cannot see the likes people did not send. A member who looks at forty profiles and likes two has made thirty-eight decisions we have no record of, and those decisions are arguably the more interesting dataset.

And the usual caveat. This is one platform, six thousand odd likes, at a size where the headline gap between 16% and 10.6% is solid but the second decimal place is not.

Frequently asked questions

How many likes does it take to get a match?

On our platform, about six for men and about nine or ten for women. Both numbers depend far more on the ratio of the platform than on the person.

Do men really like everyone on dating apps?

They like more people than women do. Our men averaged 39.4 likes each against 18.8 for women. What is not true is that this earns them a worse return rate, at least where men are the scarcer side.

Is it better to be selective with likes?

We found no evidence for it. The more selective side had the lower return rate, which suggests selectivity is not what determines whether a like comes back.

What is a good match rate?

Anything in the range of one in six to one in ten is ordinary. If you are on the more plentiful side of a platform, expect the lower end and do not treat it as feedback.

Why do some apps feel so much worse than others?

Usually the ratio. A platform where your side outnumbers the other two to one will feel unresponsive no matter how good your profile is, because everyone on the other side is triaging.

Does a match mean anything on its own?

Less than people think. It is permission to send a message, and most messages are never answered. The conversation is the real filter.