Deciding which website to give your time and effort is an important decision with lots of factors to consider. The road for online dating was paved by Match.com, the oldest and possibly most popular platform online to this day. Now, there are many competitors out in the field vying for attention.
I broke down all the juicy details about OkCupid vs Tinder, two extremely popular dating services with a strong presence in the mobile world and very popular with a younger crowd. While Match.com may have set a standard for online dating, these two trendy apps come forward with unique approaches.
By the end of this comparison guide, you’ll know just which app to sign up for, and you can be on your way to joining the 20% of married couples who found their perfect match online!
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OkCupid vs Tinder: Overall Review
The biggest difference between OkCupid and Tinder is the approaches they take on when it comes to finding your matches. Tinder is the leading name in the “swipe app” style, where you flip through matches quick and reject based on first glances. OkCupid is a little more fully-featured as a full-fledged dating service.
Both are great, but each serves a different group of people. Your personal wants when it comes to dating apps are the biggest factor here, but let’s take a quick general look at what OkCupid vs Tinder looks like.
OkCupid Rating: 8/10
Tinder Rating: 7/10
Winner: OkCupid
With a huge number of clients, OKCupid and Tinder are the most famous free dating applications by a long shot. OkCupid clients like its peculiar poll and interest evaluation questions, and guarantee it’s a superior spot to locate a genuine relationship. Tinder doesn’t waste time with this part; singles can see photographs of other singles in their filtered location, at that point swipe to favor or reject potential matches.
OkCupid is much more intent on the profile creation, the match compatibility aspect, the member’s experience, and promotes a deeper interactive need when using their site.
OkCupid vs Tinder: Pricing
Both Tinder vs OkCupid have free versions that be used all on their own. There are no required payments to be made in order to view and interact with other members, which is a valuable thing to look for in a world of paid dating subscriptions. For more features, you can upgrade membership, but it’s not necessary.
OkCupid Rating: 7/10
- The A-List, which goes for $9.95 for one month or $6.95 every month when you agree to accept a half year.
- A-List Premium, which goes for $24.90 for one month or $19.90 every month when you agree to accept a half year.
Those costs won’t set you back so much as another site would, and I like that you’re ready to try out the site for nothing before choosing to bet everything. You’ll need to buy into the A-List for additional helpful features, yet the expense isn’t steep in any way.
Tinder Rating: 6/10
Upon download, Tinder is totally free, but most members upgrade at least once to get more features available to them. In fact, Tinder was once the highest grossing app on iTunes. Unfortunately, some controversy has been held around the payment methods that Tinder uses, and they were actually taken to court once for unethical charging by age discrimination.
There are two upgrade plans available for Tinder.
- Tinder Plus is $10 a month, or $20 if you’re 35+,
- It’s an additional $4.99 a month to go higher up and achieve Tinder Gold status
Winner: OkCupid
Charging extra for those above the age of 30 just isn’t cool! OkCupid has better prices and they don’t change based on personal differences between members. It’s a flat rate for all users, and their free-trial is 14 days long!
OkCupid vs Tinder: Demographics
When signing up for a dating site, you want to trust that you can be matched with a good variety of like-minded singles. No one wants to deal with dozens of poor matches, or feel alone on an app they put time into. I figured out the general demographics for each of the apps and compared the two.
OkCupid Members:
OkCupid’s unique understanding of individuality in the dating pool helps open up the door for less traditional singles. They achieve this by jumping into both the shallow and profound parts of a relationship without driving individuals to self-assess. The whole site’s method is worked around numbers, and it’s pleasant to realize they can focus on the reality of diverse members.
This app is very liberal, meaning it is an all-inclusive safe-space for gender, sexuality, religions, races, practices, and world views. You’ll find a healthy community of transgender and non-binary members as well as several homosexual or left-wing members. Thanks to this, a lot of its users are under the age of 35.
Tinder Members:
Once again, Tinder attracts a younger crowd, with 22% of their users being full-time students. Originally Tinder was created for college students but opened their easy platform up to anyone of all ages and backgrounds. Thanks to this, you have a lot of diversity, but it’s mostly focused on the basics of a person and less inclusive of gender identities and progressive themes.
Winner: Tinder
OkCupid definitely caters to a specific group of people. Younger, liberal crowds who are often involved in the LGBTQ+ community make up a large portion of the site, which is great, but Tinder has a more wide variety of members. Niche sites are great on their own, but it’s the places like Tinder that can truly draw in big groups of people and offer something for everyone as opposed to just a part of society.
OkCupid vs Tinder: Who is better at being Scam-Free?
OkCupid, on the other hand, has a good reputation for genuine profiles. Tinder does too, and since bots are easy to spot with their bare-boned profiles, you won’t fall for many schemes. Being aware of how to avoid scams is important any time you use a dating service online, but these two are pretty clean.
Winner: A Tie!
OkCupid vs Tinder: Features Comparison
OkCupid Rating: 9/10
On OkCupid, you get access to three different membership tiers, each with a building block of features that can be unlocked. Most people have just the basic, free version of the site, which isn’t very limited even on its own. I made a list of the various features included in each tier.
Free membership features:
- Double Take: Like Tinder, this matching portion allows you to flip through potential profiles suggested by the app one at a time, and you can reject or approve them quickly.
- Questionnaires: This feature is mentioned a lot, but it’s worth the attention. There is tons of unique questions to be answered in a ton of subjects from religion to romance to sex to politics. None of these are “basic”, either, and you can judge the importance of the answers.
- No open messaging: Unless you both have matched with each other, you won’t even be sent the other person’s message. During the Double Take screen, you can check if they did attempt to contact you, but their email won’t appear in your inbox until you have both swiped yes.
- Blog: OkCupid hosts a great blog that focuses on lifestyle, dating, psychology, and romance! It even talks about deep social issues and boasts about other popular dating services to look into.
A-List features:
- Check who likes you: You can see all the people who have swiped yes on you in the list “likes”, and it can help you discover who all finds you interesting enough to get to know.
- Boost: Highlight your profile so it can appear more frequently on the search pages, the social newsfeed, and in the Double Take roulette.
Tinder rating: 6/10
Just like OkCupid, you can use Tinder free of charge to discover easy matches and communicate together. You also get two choices for membership options, like OkCupid, but they have a bit of variety in the unlockable features.
One of the most famous features Tinder has introduced is only available for the highest tier of members – the Tinder Gold elite. This feature is called Top Picks, and it will highlight 9 of your best matches across the app based on your behavior with prior swiping. Cool, right? It’s just unfortunate you’ll need to pay around $15 a month just to access the shoe-ins for soul mates.
Other Tinder features include:
- Messaging
- Quick-swipe match roulette
- Brief, cute bio section
- Labels (Gold member only)
- Music playlist sync with Spotify
Winner: OkCupid
There is just a lot more to do on OkCupid, and more ways to interact. Connecting with their intellectual dating pool and spending time answering fun questions and building full, complete profiles is just a better approach to quick, casual dating and helps promote real connection. Every feature in OkCupid feels streamlined, unique, and perfected, but Tinder seems to stick with the easy basics.
OkCupid vs Tinder: Dating Success
OkCupid tends to see more real relationships begin, probably thanks to the more time that members are required to devote to completing their profile and grow their match compatibility. The exact numbers for each are difficult to reveal since everything heavily depends on your location and the demographics of users in your area.
Winner: A Tie!
Verdict: Which is Best?
OkCupid is the winner!
To the extent that web-based dating goes, OkCupid stands out in a really, really good way. When you’re over swiping applications with little though put into them, like Tinder, yet maybe not ready for marriage, this meets in the middle. You can discover responsibility yet feel hip and have a ton of fun. It has picked up an outstanding rep by being one of the principal dating locales ever (2004 to be precise), driving OkCupid to win the hearts of a great many singles.
OkCupid really focuses on the progressive group of people online giving dating websites a shot, and their unique, thought-provoking questions, multi-faceted matchmaking, and current political vibe help you avoid feeling like a washout conversing with individuals on the web.
All of that being said, OkCupid will require some time and effort put into the use of the site. If you want something quick and easy and maybe aren’t too concerned with finding a long-term partner, Tinder is a more passive, idle app for quick matching and laid-back dating.
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