How Many Swipes Does It Take to Find a Significant Other?

Online dating is hard work. More often than not, hours of swiping turns into nothing but ghosting or a less-than-mediocre first date. However, for many Americans whose love stories began with a glance at a witty Tinder bio and a swipe right, it is well worth the effort. 

For this study, the team at Shane Co. asked online daters how much time they spend on dating apps, whether they have met a partner from an app, and how long it took them to do so. From there, we crunched the numbers to determine how many swipes it takes to find your special someone. Read more to see what we found and where love might be waiting for you!

Key Insights

• The average American will spend about eight months on dating apps and swipe on just under 4,000 profiles before finding a partner.
• Men spend fewer hours per week but more minutes per profile, leading to a higher success rate when compared with women respondents.
• 40% of Americans dating someone they met on a dating app say they met on Tinder. Tinder is also the most successful matchmaker, with 29.6% of respondents engaged or married to a partner from the app. Bumble and Hinge trail behind at 12.9% and 5%, respectively.
• 67% of Americans say they met their current partner through a dating app.

How Long Until I Find My Love?

The results are in, and if you want to find the love of your life, you’d better get to swiping! On average, it takes 3,960 swipes to get a significant other on a dating app. The average American spends eight months and 11 days online searching for love before finding it; that’s roughly six hours per week.

Gen Zers are the quickest to fall in love, at 3,525 swipes over six months. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, are slow to open their hearts to another person, as they averaged nearly 6,200 swipes over roughly eight months. Millennials and Gen Xers both took their time combing through their prospective partners’ profiles, as they both had fewer swipes than their Boomer counterparts but took more time to find their significant others at nine and 9 1/2 months, respectively.

On average, it takes men longer than women to find a partner through a dating app; however, women typically require more swipes than men to find their Prince Charming. It takes men close to nine months to go steady with someone they met on a dating app, while many women are able to find a partner in just under eight.

To determine how long it takes the average person to match with their partner using a dating app, we surveyed couples in relationships with people they met online. We quizzed them on how many minutes they spent on each profile during their search and created a value for swipes per minute. Next, we took that value and calculated how long each respondent took to find their person based on the number of months they spent on their favorite dating app before meeting their partner.

Americans on Dating Online

Before there was Hinge, there was Match. Having been in business since 1995, Match.com has been in the game of linking up lonely hearts for over 25 years, and its user base reflects that. While younger generations turn to apps like Tinder and Bumble to meet their significant others, the older crowd stays true to the OG dating platform that started it all. Match lives up to its mature reputation, as 50% of Baby Boomers who met their current partner on apps say they met them on the site.

Many Gen Xers and elder millennials who came of age during the MySpace era sought romance through OkCupid. At the time it was founded in 2004, OkCupid doubled as a dating site and a social networking platform, giving users a chance to connect and get to know each other on a deeper level. It was also the first dating platform to launch a mobile app, making it one of the first dating platforms to leverage new technology as it was coming out. For this reason, it makes sense that many Gen Xers and elder millennials would turn to it to find love — and many of them did. Today, 31% of Gen Xers who met their current partner on apps say they met them on OkCupid, a testament to the app’s success.

Dating app users looking for everlasting love would never guess which app gives them the best chance at an engagement or marriage. Although it was primarily known for its role in hook-up culture around the time it came out in 2012, Tinder is actually the place to go if you’re looking to get hitched. According to our survey, 49% of those currently married or engaged to a partner they met on an app met their significant other on Tinder of all places. OkCupid comes in second at 34%, making it the next best app for people trying to swipe their way to eternal love.

Overall, Americans are adapting to the digital age, as many participants say they found their current partner with the help of a dating app. This could spell trouble for the hopeless romantics who are still hoping to run into their lifelong love in a bookstore or on their next coffee run, as 67% of respondents say they met their current significant other through a dating app. If you’re having a hard time feeling like love is in the air whenever you are out for a night on the town, try checking on the web before giving up completely.

Closing Thoughts

Swiping left and right on dating apps for months is a tedious task for many, but for hopeful singles all over the U.S., the grind never stops. The good news is that if you get started now, there’s a good chance you’ll be booed up before the year is over. The better news is that although many people take to Tinder and other dating apps for quick flings, there are more than enough serious suitors out there to find true love with — you just have to give your thumbs a good workout.

If your swiping days are over and you have found the one worth deleting your dating apps for, Shane Co. is here to help you with the next big step. Shop our collection of fine jewelry and engagement rings to find the perfect symbol of your love and commitment. With a wide range of styles, designs, and price points to choose from, we are confident that you will find the perfect ring to suit your style and budget. 

Methodology

To find out how many swipes it takes to find a significant other, we surveyed over 1,000 Americans who met their current partner on dating apps with questions exploring how long they spent on the apps before meeting their partner, what types of apps they used, and more. Through the survey, our team determined the average number of swipes the typical American makes in one minute. Using that metric, we then took the amount of time respondents said they spent on dating apps and calculated the total number of swipes they made during that time, and thus how many swipes were made before finding a significant other. Our survey ran for one week in December 2022.