When talking about dating apps, Hinge is one of the names that come to our mind. With its “design to be deleted” punchline, Hinge make it different from other dating apps initially. But is Hinge better than Tinder or Bumble?

Today, we prepared a full Hinge dating app review for you! This way, you will know if you should use Hinge or not. If you’re ready, let’s quickly dive into the details of our review.

What Is Hinge App?

Hinge is a dating app launched in 2012 when Tinder also hit the scene. At first, these two apps were similar. Both of them focused on scanning vast amounts of profiles.

However, Hinge found that just 1 in 500 hinge swipes led to phone number swaps, and it wanted to change that. So Hinge pivoted in 2015, rebranded as an app for “meaningful connections” rather than people looking for friendships or one-night stands. Hinge also changed its setup procedure too; it then focused on questions – like eHarmony – to get to know your better for accurate match.

How Does Hinge Work?

Since Hinge doesn’t have a web version, you have to download the Hinge app on your phone.

After downloading the app, you can complete your registration process with your Facebook account or mobile number. When you sign up with your Facebook account, Hinge will try to match you with mutual friends of your friends.

Next, you need to answer a standard questionnaire. Are you interested in men, women, or everyone? What’s your preferred age, distance, ethnicity, or religion? If you don’t want to provide these information, you can also use the “Prefer Not to Tell” button.

Your own personal information is divided into three categories: Virtues, Vitals, and Vices. Virtues include where you work, where you went to school, and your politics. Vitals include height, whether you have children, and where you live now. Vices are drinking, smoking, and whatever other drugs you do. 

The point of all of this is to create a well-rounded hinge profile that reveals your personality and preferences. The fastest way to meet your true love through Hinge is to allow Hinge’s matching system to create a list of the best matches for you. The matching algorithm is based on your answers.

Hinge shows you one profile at a time, mixing together their photos, answers, and personal information. If you are interested in someone, tap the “heart” icon next to something on their profile to comment on it, then hope they match with you. Alternatively, tap the red cross icon to switch to the next profile. Free users can only love up to 10 people per day, so use those hearts wisely.

What’s Different About Hinge?

Now let’s continue our Hinge review with its different features.

1. Sending Likes

Different from other dating apps, sending likes on Hinge is more than just a tap of the heart button. If you want to send a ‘like’ to another Hinge user, you have to choose a particular part of his or her profile that you like. It can be a photo or any of his or her written answers. In addition, you can add a comment with your like, too, to start a conversation. The users you send a like to will see which part of their profile you liked the most.

2. Most Compatible

When you use Hinge, the app learns your preferences. Sometimes it will show you someone it considers “most compatible”. It’s based on the Gale-Shapley algorithm that pairs people “who are likely to mutually like one another”. It measures this based off your engagement and who engages with you, as well as matches you to people with similar preferences.

It’s by no means perfect, but Hinge claims you’re eight times more likely to meet someone with most compatible match than other ways.

3. Your turn

Your matches will go nowhere if you don’t chat with them. In an effort to reduce ghosting, Hinge identifies chats with “Your Turn” to prompt you to start chatting or remind you that you haven’t responded.

4. Video Prompts

Hinge doesn’t just let you video chat. It also gives you a number of conversation starters that encourages you to open up about your personalities and interests during a video date – more like an ice breaker to help smoothen the virtual date.

5. We Met

We Met is a new feature of Hinge wherein you privately provide feedback to the Hinge team about your date with a particular match. If you share your phone number with a match, Hinge will follow up a few days later and ask if you went on a date. The data will be used to improve future matches to match you with similar people.

How Much Does Hinge Cost?

Hinge has two membership levels – Free and Premium.

With a free Hinge membership, you can:

• Create your profile & upload up to 6 photos
• Send up to 10 likes each day
• Filter your matches for gender, location, age, distance, ethnicity and religion

With an upgraded Hinge membership, you can:

• Send unlimited likes
• Unlock all the filters
• See everyone who has already “liked” your profile

Premium Membership is offered in three package durations of 1, 3, and 6 months. The longer your subscription is, the cheaper the deal you get.

Hinge Review: Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Hinge makes it clear it’s for relationships, not hookups, which puts everybody on the same page.
• You can interact with users’ profiles directly instead of just swiping on them
• Users you previously skipped will show up in your feed again, just in case you want to “reconsider.”

Cons:

• Hinge doesn’t provide a desktop version of the program.
• You can only interact with your daily suggested matches unless you upgrade to a full membership.

Hinge Review: Is It Worth Getting Hinge?

In general, we can say that Hinge is a quality dating app that offers cool features. If you want to find serious relationships, Hinge a good choice. Also, this is where Hinge is different from Tinder or Bumble.

As for the negatives, we can only say that there is no website and the free version is limited. Apart from these points, Hinge is a very pleasant application to use.