Bumble Review

Thursday, January 23rd

2025 Dating Site Reviews

Bumble

• Prices from $1.99 per day to $199.99 for a permanent subscription
• Daily, weekly, monthly, and 6-month plans
• Free to join
• Date men, women, or everyone
• Filters for subscribers
• Add your Instagram and Spotify for matches

Bumble is a popular dating site that's women-owned and frequently used by fans of dating apps. The app puts women first by allowing them to make the first move (for f/m searches), so ladies don't feel bombarded by messages and can be more comfortably selective with the guys they want to match with. Bumble is an app-based dating site, but you can use it on your web browser if you want to. It's just a little less optimized for desktop use.

Sign up with mobile or online accounts

You can choose to either sign up with your existing Google account, or existing Apple account or put in your phone number. From there, you'll be asked to fill out a basic profile, choose which part of Bumble you want to search (Bumble Date, Bumble BFF, or Bumble Bizz), and choose your preferred gender for yourself and which gender (or genders) you want to be matched with. Bumble offers a basic "about me” profile section, where you can write a little blurb about yourself, a field for your work and education, personal details like height (don't lie about this one, fellas), how much you exercise, your star sign, whether you drink, smoke, or want kids, and your religious and political preferences. Bumble asks for six photos of yourself and requires account verification to prove you are who your pictures say.

Free filters for age and distance

For the dating portion of the app (Bumble Date), you'll be able to choose between women, men, or everyone. Without paying, you'll have access to age limit filters and distance filters too. For those who subscribe, you can use the additional filters for items you fill out in your profile. You can limit by height, what kind of relationship others are looking for, whether they have (or want) kids, religion, politics, and more. While you can put in your gender identity or sexualities beyond gay/lesbian and straight, Bumble doesn't allow filtering through those preferences yet.

Add your Insta and Spotify to your profile

As a special feature, you can link your Instagram to allow potential matches to browse the real you (and get chatting off the dating apps if you like). You can also connect your Spotify, so if you ever wanted to find your special someone through similar taste in music, now's your chance. These features are free for non-subscribers too.

Upgrades from as low as $1.99 per day

There are two kinds of upgrades you can get on Bumble: Boost and Premium. Here's what you can expect from each upgrade:

• Boost: Allows you to rematch with expired matches and extend your time with current matches. Your profile will also be boosted and shown to more people. There are five levels of frequency:
• 1 day: $1.99
• 1 week: $12.99
• 1 month: $23.99
• 3 months: $49.99
• 6 months: $84.99
• Premium: This allows you to see who has swiped right on you before you match. You get access to the advanced filters, and you'll also get all of the features of Boost. There are six frequencies to subscribe to:
• 1 day: $3.49
• 1 week: $19.99
• 1 month: $39.99
• 3 months: $79.99
• 6 months: $119.99
• Lifetime: $199.99

Good match rates for women, but no date results

There have been more than 2 billion matches made since the launch of Bumble. On average, women get matched with 1 out of every 2 likes (right swipes). Most users on Bumble are around 25-34 years old, and over 80% of users are looking for a long-term or stable relationship. However, some statistics say that most of the matches on Bumble don't result in an actual in-person date. So, the final success rate is lower than your likelihood of matching.

Terrible reputation for payments and support

Bumble holds an "F” rating from the Better Business Bureau, and there's an alert on the BBB noting that Bumble shows a pattern of complaints from customers who could not complete a billing dispute. On Trustpilot, the news is just as bad. Customers rated Bumble just 1.3 stars out of 5 on average. The primary complaint is that Bumble removes photos that users post claiming that they violate community standards (but the photos do not). Some customers had trouble with the Premium subscription too, where the likes that they were shown before paying disappeared after paying.

Not worth the hassle

While Bumble is considered a "popular” app socially, it may not stack up against more serious dating sites when it comes to actually turning online chatting and swiping into in-person dates. Regrettably, with so many complaints online as well as a poor "F” rating from the Better Business Bureau, Bumble stands out as a place where you want to use caution before spending your money. It may be worth it to join the free service just to see what kind of matches you get, but there isn't a lot of benefit to subscribing.