Most sugar dating numbers online are polls, estimates or a competitor's marketing, and we have removed the ones we couldn't trace. What's left falls into two groups: our own member data, which is one app and real members only, and a few figures from the FTC and Pew Research Center that name their sample and year. These are correlations, not causes, and we run the app, so read them as patterns rather than rules.
Reply rates on men's first messages
A reply means she wrote anything back in that conversation. First messages women sent to men are not in this sample. A reply that takes most of a day is normal, not a rejection.
Distance and travel
| Distance apart | First messages | Reply rate |
|---|---|---|
| Under 25 miles | 126 | 35% |
| 25–249 miles | 125 | 32% |
| 250–999 miles | 526 | 40% |
| 1,000+ miles | 1,027 | 37% |
Distance made no real difference to whether women replied. Members on Arranged often fly each other out, which is why we treat distance as a tiebreaker in matching rather than a filter.
Ages and age gaps
| Age gap (his age minus hers) | First messages | Reply rate |
|---|---|---|
| Under 5 years | 268 | 41% |
| 5–9 years | 183 | 40% |
| 10–14 years | 253 | 37% |
| 15–19 years | 294 | 36% |
| 20–24 years | 249 | 26% |
| 25+ years | 557 | 40% |
A wide age gap on its own didn't stop women replying. We don't know why the 20–24 band dips; it's a smaller group and a few heavy senders could move it, so we wouldn't read it as a rule.
Photos and likes on women's profiles
| Public photos | Profiles | Avg likes received (90 days) |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 94 | 2.3 |
| 1 | 171 | 12.1 |
| 2–3 | 228 | 13.9 |
| 4+ | 328 | 14.1 |
The big jump is from no photo to one: roughly five times the likes. After that, more photos help a little.
Most-searched cities on Arranged
| City | Location searches (30 days) |
|---|---|
| New York | 235 |
| Los Angeles | 171 |
| Miami | 169 |
| San Francisco | 90 |
| Las Vegas | 85 |
Online dating in the US
Pew Research Center, “Key findings about online dating in the U.S.” (February 2, 2023), survey of 6,034 US adults conducted July 5–17, 2022. These figures cover online dating in general, not sugar dating specifically.
Romance scam data
Sources: FTC Business Blog, “‘Love Stinks’ – when a scammer is involved” (February 13, 2024); FTC Data Spotlight, “Romance scammers' favorite lies exposed” (February 9, 2023); FTC press release, “New FTC Data Show a Big Jump in Reported Losses to Fraud to $12.5 Billion in 2024” (March 10, 2025). All figures are from Consumer Sentinel reports, which undercount because most fraud goes unreported.
The FTC's advice applies on any dating site: never send money or gift cards to someone you haven't met in person, and treat a story about why they can't meet as a warning sign. Our safety page covers how to report a profile on Arranged.
Read the full data report.
Sample sizes, how we counted, and what we'd take from each finding.
Methodology & Sources
Arranged figures:pulled from Arranged's production database on October 25, 2026. Seed profiles and test accounts are excluded from every figure. First messages are the first message a man sent to a woman between August 11 and October 25, 2026 (1,804 conversations). Distance is the straight-line distance between the two profile locations when the message was sent. The median age gap is computed over 1,864 matches. Likes cover women's profiles at least 14 days old (821 profiles) and public photos only. City searches are location searches in the 30 days to October 25, 2026. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number. Full detail is in the 2026 data report.
Outside figures: Pew Research Center (2023), FTC (2024), FTC Data Spotlight (2023) and FTC (2025). Last updated: October 2026.
Disclosure:Arranged runs a dating site for adults 18+ and published this page. Photo verification on Arranged is optional: a live selfie that is checked automatically for a face and apparent age. We don't verify income or identity.