Grindr bets wealthy gay men will pay more to find the right match

Grindr built its business by helping gay men find each other for free. Now its chief executive wants more of its wealthiest users to pay handsomely for the privilege.

The dating app is planning a push into premium services, including a product that could cost $350 a month and a still pricier “luxury” offering pitched as a social club for the modern gay man.

Grindr boss George Arison is betting that charging affluent users more can boost profits at the company, which has grown rapidly over the past decade but has lagged behind rivals in converting them into paying users.

“The targets are people who have significant disposable income and who value their time in a very significant way,” Arison told the FT. He added that Grindr was not yet “anywhere near the premium price points” in terms of “what people will be willing to pay for long-term relationships”.

Grindr had an average of 1.4mn paying users for 15mn monthly active users in the second quarter of 2026, about 9 per cent. Morgan Stanley analysts estimate that the dating app monetises 30 per cent less than its main rivals.

Despite being slower to make money from its users, Grindr has proved an outlier in the dating app sector as it has continually gained users in recent years while peers such as Tinder and Bumble have declined.

Arison has retained the free experience as Grindr’s core product but has set about developing a series of new initiatives to target paying users looking for a tailored offering.

The products include Edge, which began public testing in select cities earlier this year and can cost hundreds of dollars a month depending on user location. It uses AI to suggest profile improvements and compatible partners.

Grindr is also planning a “luxury lifestyle and experiences product”. Arison declined to say how much it would charge for this service, but noted that “it’s going to be expensive.”

The Grindr boss, who joined the company in 2022, said his vision was to “capture more of people’s wallets for more services and products, rather than just dating and connections”.

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Grindr’s stock has risen by about a third in the past six months, buoyed by the company raising its full-year guidance and being upgraded to “overweight” by analysts at Morgan Stanley. Grindr now forecasts full-year revenue and adjusted earnings guidance of at least $540mn and $232mn respectively.

In a potential warning sign for user growth, Arison said the UK’s Online Safety Act, which requires websites to verify users’ ages before they can access adult content, had deterred some users worried about being outed as gay from using the app, which he thought was “pretty awful.”

“I’ve spoken to members of parliament here who I don’t think understood what the Online Safety Act would do when they passed it from the perspective of the impact that it would have on applications,” he said.

Arison said he had “no desire” for any underage user on the app, but that age verification should take place at an app store level to help users feel more comfortable.

“I cannot overstate how much I don’t want minors to have access to products like Grindr, it’s just that there’s a much better way to do it at the app store level than it is at the application level,” he said.