Gen Z Loves the Hinge Dating App. Why Match Earnings Are All About Tinder.

Match Group reports second-quarter earnings Tuesday. (Photo Illustration by Barron’s; Dreamstime)

Key Points

• Investors are focusing on the turnaround of Match Group’s Tinder app ahead of the parent company’s earnings report on Tuesday.
• Tinder contributes more than 50% of Match Group’s overall revenue, making its growth a high-stakes matter for Wall Street.
• In 2025, Hinge’s monthly active users grew nearly 50%, while Tinder’s monthly active users declined 9%.

The dating app Hinge has been getting all the love from younger users lately. But Wall Street only seems to care about its struggling sister app, Tinder.

When the apps’ parent company Match Group reports earnings on Tuesday, investors’ main focus will be the status of Tinder’s turnaround—and not Hinge’s highflying growth. Tinder has lost users and revenue growth has stalled in recent years, as younger singles grapple with dating app fatigue and search for more meaningful connections elsewhere, including on Hinge.

In 2025, Hinge’s monthly active users skyrocketed nearly 50% and its paying users grew 18% from the previous year. In comparison, Tinder saw declines of 9% and 7% for its MAU and paying users, respectively, last year.

Hinge’s boom highlights Tinder’s challenges with a generation of users who are tiring of the traditional swipe model.

Tinder “had not evolved as quickly to meet what today’s daters, especially Gen Z, are looking for,” Steven Bailey, chief financial officer of Match Group, told Barron’s in an email.

Investors want indications this week that Match Group is steadily turning things around at its highest-profile app and able to draw in younger users.

“The number-one metric the investment community is looking at is Tinder growth,” says Andrew Marok, an analyst at Raymond James.

That’s because Tinder’s large size makes it too big to fail. While the company’s portfolio includes 45 apps, nearly 14-year-old Tinder contributes more than 50% of overall revenue, making its growth a high-stakes matter on Wall Street.

In comparison, Hinge’s direct revenue is less than half the size of Tinder’s. That means it is too small to offset issues with the older app, Marok says. Hinge’s uninterrupted growth, too, is broadly taken as a given among investors, he added, making it a lower-stakes issue for the coming results.

The company warned in late February that Tinder’s revenue is expected to decrease again in 2026, at a similar rate to 2025’s decline, as they continue its turnaround strategy and test new products. In the first three months of 2026, however, Tinder’s top line grew by 2% from the year-ago quarter.

Still, Tinder in the earnings spotlight doesn’t mean that Match Group is giving Hinge the cold shoulder.

“We are not choosing between the two apps,” Bailey adds. “We are investing in each in ways that reflect where the business is today and what will best strengthen its position with its core users.”

Instead, the company is learning from Hinge’s success, especially among Gen Z singles, and applying some of those lessons to Tinder.

The younger generation is indeed dating differently than millennials did, in part driven by the pandemic, and individuals are increasingly ditching scrolling for alternative ways to meet new people—like running clubs and book clubs. Match Group data found that 80% of Gen Z singles want a meaningful relationship—a higher rate than in any previous generation, while some studies show Gen Z has lower sexual activity rates than other generations.

Shelby Clark, a sociologist at the University of Arkansas, added that many in the younger generation have stigmatized Tinder as an app solely for hooking up, rather than for finding long-term relationships.

To address some of these trends, Tinder has introduced “Double Date” options to curate more in-real-life dates and sponsored in-person events. The company also introduced an app mode where users can connect based on their zodiac compatibility.

“Gen Z wants lower-pressure paths into real-world connection and better outcomes, which is what we’re focused on,” Bailey said*.* “Their desire for real connection isn’t fading. What’s changed is what people expect from the dating app experience.”

The Double Date feature has taken off with Gen Z, with 85% of the feature’s users being under age 30, according to the company.

Beyond these new features and products, Match Group is turning to user interface development, and artificial-intelligence tools to bring back paying users to Tinder.

While Hinge and Tinder have fairly similar volumes of Gen-Z users, at 56% and 60%, respectively, many Gen-Z daters say they have Tinder downloaded on their phone, but spend much more time on Hinge and prefer it.

“I think a lot of people are tired of fleeting connections. We just spent so much of our existence on social media,” says Avery Parker, a 22-year-old college graduate from Florida, who said that he finds more genuine people on Hinge. “I get tired of Tinder a lot faster than I get tired of Hinge.”

Whether Parker and other Gen Z singles will become more consistent Tinder users remains to be seen, but there are signs of comeback for the app. Tinder saw monthly active users decline 7% in March from a year earlier, its slowest rate of decline in 31 months, according to the company. Morgan Stanley analyst Nathan Feather says the drop in MAU should slow to 6% year over year in the second quarter. The company saw overall revenue growth for the first time in nearly two years in the first quarter.

Wall Street expects Match Group to post earnings of 65 cents a share in the second quarter, up from 49 cents a year ago. Revenue is forecast to decline less than 1% year over year to $857.8 million, according to FactSet. The analyst consensus calls for $446 million in revenue from Tinder and $207 million from Hinge.

Marok also says that Match Group’s new leadership team, led by CEO Spencer Rascoff, has delivered a more credible road map to a Tinder turnaround than their predecessors, leaving some room for optimism.

All of this is helping boost Match Group stock, which is up 22% year to date. Still, questions remain about whether an improved product experience on Tinder can definitively lead to sustained user growth.

Investors hope to find out Tuesday.

Write to Molly Bordoff at molly.bordoff@barrons.com

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