Through your iPhone's own settings, because Apple is the one billing you. Open Settings, tap your name at the top, tap Subscriptions, select the Tinder subscription and tap Cancel Subscription. That applies when you bought through the Tinder app on your iPhone, which is when your order number starts with MK. If you subscribed with Apple Pay or a web payment option, Tinder says to follow its Tinder.com instructions instead.

Check that Apple is billing you

Before you go looking for the button, make sure you are looking in the right place. Tinder identifies who bills you from the prefix on your order number.

  • MK means you bought in the iOS app, and Apple bills you. The steps below are for you.
  • TNDR means you bought on Tinder.com, or with a card inside the Android app. Your cancel button is on Tinder.com.
  • GPA means you bought through the Google Play Store. That usually means you subscribed on an Android phone before you switched, and you cancel in Google Play.

Men who switch phones get caught by the last one. The subscription stays with the store where it started, not with the phone in your hand.

The steps

If your order number starts with MK:

  1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
  2. Tap your name at the top.
  3. Tap Subscriptions.
  4. Find and select the Tinder subscription.
  5. Tap Cancel Subscription.

Once you have done it, go back to the Subscriptions list and look at the Tinder entry again, so you know the cancellation went through rather than hoping it did.

The Apple Pay exception

This one surprises iPhone owners. Paying with Apple Pay feels like paying Apple, but if you used Apple Pay or another web payment option to subscribe, the purchase did not go through the App Store. Tinder says to use its Tinder.com instructions in that case.

Those instructions are short. Go to tinder.com and log in, tap the profile icon, select Manage Payment Account, find the subscription and tap Cancel Subscription.

If you open your iPhone's Subscriptions list and Tinder is not in it, this is the most likely reason.

What does not cancel it

Two things feel like cancelling and are not.

Deleting the app. Tinder says removing or uninstalling the app does not cancel a subscription, and it does not delete your account either.

Deleting your account. Tinder says that does not cancel an active subscription. Its Terms of Use say App Store purchases have to be cancelled in your Apple account to avoid more billing, even after the Tinder account is gone.

So the cancel button in your iPhone's settings is the only thing that stops an Apple-billed plan. If you also want to leave Tinder, cancel first and delete second. A cancelled plan and a deleted account are two separate jobs, and Apple only handles the first one.

Before you cancel, test one change

Many men cancel because a month of paying produced very little. That is a fair reason, but it is worth being sure the subscription was the problem.

Men who do well with dating apps treat every change as an experiment. They change one thing, give it a fair run, and look at the result before changing the next thing. The men who struggle change everything at once, or nothing at all, and then blame the app.

If you have time left on your plan, run one test before you let it lapse. Pick the change that matches where you are losing women. Very few matches points to the photo. Matches that never go anywhere point to the opener. Swap your lead photo for a clear, recent shot of your face taken outside in daylight. Or change how you open: instead of "hey", react in one line to a detail from her pictures, like a trail she hiked or a band she has seen. Give it a week or two of steady use, a short session on most days.

If your results move, you found the real problem, and the subscription may have been fine all along. If nothing moves after a real change, cancel with a clear conscience.

If you are cancelling because you met someone

Good. Cancel the subscription the way above, then decide what to do with the account.

If it is early and you just want to stop meeting new people while you see where things go, turn off Enable Discovery in Settings. Tinder stops showing you to anyone new, and your account stays as it is. If you are sure you are done, delete the account from Settings, knowing it cannot be fully undone later.