How Much Does it Cost to Build a Dating App for Adults

Last updated on September 14th, 2023

No matter how many times we openly declare that love is a sheer waste of time, we all yearn for it. We all want to hop, twirl, hum, yodel, and yell in love. We cannot deny that it is magical. Yet, some of us are somehow deprived of this magic, this love.

To pull our heartstrings and find us ‘the one’ amidst the hullabaloo of the modern-day adulting have come the dating apps for adults. Finding someone even remotely suitable and then dating them are two entirely different tasks and require a hell of work to do.

However, dating apps, our sole saviour, have simplified both the tasks for us, a reason why dating apps have become a quintessential characteristic of the contemporary world. Therefore, if you have a dating app idea flashing in your mind, do not think and just swipe right!

Please, do not fret over the cost of developing a dating app. This blog related to Cost to Build a Dating App for Adults has been written specifically to pacify your concerns with regard to the cost of hiring a dating app development company. 

Latest Trends in Dating Mobile Apps

The general saying is to not let the facts get in the way of a good story. But here, facts are not at all ruining a good story. Rather, they are making a better one! Do not believe us? Read it for yourself. 

If you go by Statista data, it is quite evident that the online dating app market is quite in vogue. Just look at the numbers and you will clearly see that the revenue generated from dating apps has been almost US $ 3 billion as of 2023.

Statista data further reveals that the dating app revenue is gonna show a remarkable growth rate of 3.28 per cent for the next five years.

Seeing the numbers, who would not want to create a dating app? Who would not? But before you go on a full-scale hunt for a dating app development company, hold your horses. Like love is war, so is the dating app market. Rather, it is a fierce war amongst loads of dating apps for the attention of numerous single adults who are in search of love, friendship, situation-ship and much more.

Therefore, you must be armed with the latest market information in as much abundance as it can be so as to create a mobile app that outshines others. Here are some of the most recent technological trends that have been ruling the world of dating apps. Take a look – 

• Diversification – 

We all are different, so is our definition of love – the creators of dating apps have recognised this and are consistently making improvements in their applications. They are diversifying their dating apps by either creating new niche apps or adding new features to it.

• Artificial Intelligence –

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the power to revolutionise the dating world. The creators of dating apps have, therefore, harnessed it to give better profile suggestions to the users and enable the users to have a better conversation with their potential partners via the use of chatbots.

• Video and Live Streaming – 

With video and live streaming features, dating apps allow their users to video call their dates so as to ensure that there is not a risk of a catfishing case. Also, live streaming also enhances the dating app experience of the potential users and takes it to the top notch.

Key Features to Build a Dating App for Adults

Love is not the same for all – we all clearly know it. The inventors of dating applications know it too and hence, have narrowed down their entire focus towards a specific target audience. If not that, they have attempted to make their dating applications more inclusive by adding features that augment the dating experience of one set of users, without hampering it for others.

For the convenience of our readers, we will not even attempt to go into the peculiar features of dating apps. Rather, we would stick to the general features so that the fundamentals of the dating apps for adults are crystal clear in your heads. Let us get started –

• Sign-In – 

For a first-timer, dating apps can seem pretty scary. For those who do have some sort of dating app experience but it has been a terrible one, may think zillions of times before starting to use dating apps again.

To make dating a pleasant and not a disappointing experience for your users, signing-in is the first step. Make it quick and simple by integrating it with your users’ phone numbers, social media accounts, or e-mail IDs.

Believe us, your potential users will hesitate or may back off the moment they find a long registration form flashing in front of them.

• User Profile – 

It feels fantastic if someone likes us for who we really are. It is like a double booster shot of serotonin.

Now, your users’ profile is their first step to give a glimpse of their personalities to their potential dates. Therefore, you are obliged to ensure that the user profiles on your dating app do not just include basic information with regard to age and gender. It must permit your users to reveal their interests, dislikes, and peculiar personality traits.

We need not remind you that the user profile on your dating application must allow your user to upload her pictures.

• Chat Option – 

Okay, your user swiped right onto a potential partner, date, friend, situation-ship, or whatever he/she/they want to call it. Now what? Now comes the ‘getting to know you’ phase. Hi! Hey! Wassup? How are you? Short Texts. Long texts, and so on.

Obviously, an in-app chat feature is the soul of your dating app. Let the potential whatevers get into free-flowing conversation with each other through texts, photos, voice notes, or video messages.

Get creative and allow them to use artificial intelligence to help them come up with perfect ice-breakers, or cute flirtatious texts.

• Call Option- 

As your potential users slide past the talking phase, but are still hovering in the uncertainty phase, they need a more personalised dating experience to move forward.

Allow your users to call each other using your dating apps for adults. You may add another dimension to the situation-ship of your users via the video call option.

Apart from enabling your users to know people who are not local, the call option allows your users to ease into comfort with people who they want to date.

Top 10 Trending free Dating Apps for Young Adults of 2023 

No, you are not done yet. You must get to know some, if not all, of your most fierce competitors.

Before you set your foot into the dating app arena. 

Here are the top ten trending dating apps for adults in the year 2023 – 

• Tinder – 

There has been a point in the history of dating apps when Tinder and dating were almost synonymous. Tinder is truly a veteran in the dating app arena with its swipe-based feature and ‘like- super like’ culture. With time, Tinder has become all-inclusive, offering better dating experience for LGBTQ+ community.

• Bumble – 

As far as the world of dating apps is concerned, Bumble has been a pioneer. Bumble allows its women users to make their first move by being the first person to send the message to their match. On Bumble, you can also find a friend on work and outside the work using Bumble Bizz and Bumble BFF.

• Hinge –

Focussed on offering an authentic dating app experience, Hinge has been showing impressive performance as a dating platform for LGBTQIA+ community. Hinge suggests its users the ten most compatible matches and allows them to send a ‘Rose’ to stand out amongst other potential matches.

• Happn – 

As a dating app for young adults, Happn is simply spectacular. It strategically leverages geo-locational APIs and enables its users to date people who have happened to pass him/her/them. Other than that, you can also block those set of people with whom you do not want to cross paths.

• Feels – 

Feels attempts to offer to its users a dating experience that is devoid of any society-imposed labels. For the sake of convenience of its users, Feels dating app has been integrated with social networking apps, such as Facebook and Snapchat. It allows the users to send SuperFeels to the ones you want to love.

• Clover – 

Clover is not just a dating app for adults. It is also a networking platform that allows users to post glimpses of their lives through videos, pictures, etc. It permits the users to connect with the people of their tribe, the ones with whom they share similar interests, via the feature of group chats.

• Coffee Meets Bagel – 

One of the best platforms for anyone who is ready to enter a serious relationship, Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB) is simply superb. Daily at noon, it creates a list of compatible matches for its users to help them avoid endless swiping. It asks its users a set of questions (called bagels) to get to know what you would like in your partner.

• OkCupid – 

OkCupid is a dynamic dating app platform that opens inclusive dating space to 22 gender identities and 13 sexual orientations. In order to kickstart a fulfilling conversation amongst its users, OkCupid furnishes them with a whole set of deal breaker questions. Due to such features, OkCupid is the most competent modern dating app.

• eharmony –

When you say forever, you say eharmony. eharmony is the most trusted dating space for the ones who desire to enter a committed relationship. The app’s commitment towards helping its users to find their soulmates can be reflected in the fact that it uses a set of deep-seated questions to its users for achieving greater levels of compatibility.

• Thursday – 

Free on Thursdays? If yes, then Thursday is for you! Thursday is a digital dating space for those who are bored of the regular dating space. The users of Thursday can do all the swiping, matching, and dating only and only on Thursdays. The users can use Thursday and get their dating life sorted.

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Dating App for Adults?

Now, when you know which dating apps are ruling the dating world, you are kinda ready to get to know the cost that goes into the making of a dating app for adults.

It is obvious that the cost of making a dating app is not fixed. It is directly affected by a number of factors that you must know so that you can closely know the cost of developing a dating application and tweak the factors accordingly to keep the cost within your budget.

The major factors that influence the cost of building a dating app for adults are listed below – 

• The features you decide for your app will have an ultimate influence on the app development cost. Obviously, the more the number and complexity of the features, the more the cost of building it and vice-versa.

• The tech stack you use for the development of your dating app will affect the cost of making it. If you choose native development for your dating app on two separate platforms, the cost will be higher than the cost of choosing cross-platform app development for your dating app.

• It is important to carefully determine who will create your dating app because it will significantly factor in the app development cost. An in-house team can be expensive in terms of cost, time, and efforts that you have to put in, while the freelance services are although cheaper money-wise, but very less credible. Outsourcing the development of your dating app to an app development company is thereby a very sane choice.

• Do not dare to exclude the location of your app development team when determining the cost of development of your dating app for adults. While Asian countries and countries like Ukraine have a low cost of app development, the same is not the case with developed countries like the USA, Canada, UK, etc.

We will now exhibit the cost breakdown of the development of your dating app according to the diverse stages of app development. Take a look at the table below –

The time and cost of the development of the dating app given above is a general representation and will obviously be influenced by the end number of major and minor variable factors, such as app size, dating app category, third-party integrations, app development platform, etc. 

To enable you to make better cost-related decisions, we have presented below the cost of development of different dating app categories. Take a look – 

• Muslim dating app cost – 

If you are aspiring to build a Muslim dating app, keep an average budget of $ 190000 aside.

• Lesbian dating app cost – 

The average cost of developing a lesbian dating app can come out to be $ 80000.

• Christian dating app cost

When you want to develop a Christian dating app, you would have to spend an average of $ 150000.

• Gay dating app cost – 

Make it a point that the cost of development of a gay dating app will be an average of $75000

• LGBTQ dating app cost –

The cost of development of an LQBTQ app can come out to be around $ 40000

How to make revenue from dating apps?

You are clearly going to earn loads of money with your dating app for adults only and only if you monetise it optimally. We have mentioned a dating app revenue model below which can help you do so easily – 

• Basic Subscription – 

If you want to prevent your dating app to become a hotbed of catfishing cases, you would have to charge some basic subscription fee to keep fake profiles at bay

• Premium Subscription – 

Voice calls, video calls, Super Likes, and other premium features as such must be made available to your customers at a monthly, quarterly, or yearly premium subscription

• Advertisements – 

You can display ads for dating related products on your dating app in exchange of bulky amount of advertisement fee

• Third-Party Fee – 

Make restaurant reservations or book concert tickets for your users in exchange of a reasonable commission fee

Looking for a dating app development company?

When Cost to Build a Dating App for Adults is concerned, iTechnolabs has to be your go-to dating app development company. The developers at iTechnolabs know the dating app development like the back of their hands. They have built very successful digital dating spaces with intuitive designs and impressive functionalities.

Apart from the zest to take innovation to greater heights in the dating app arena, iTechnolabs possess one of the most advanced technology infrastructure that can add progressive functionalities to your dating app solutions. Reach out to the developers of iTechnolabs today and get started with the ultimate dating app development experience.