How to Cancel an OkCupid Subscription

It depends on how you paid. If you paid by card or PayPal, go to okcupid.com/settings in a web browser and click Turn off automatic billing. You cannot cancel those in the app or on the mobile site. If you subscribed through Apple or Google Play, you have to cancel through Apple or Google. Deleting your OkCupid account does not stop billing through those stores.

If you paid OkCupid directly with a card or PayPal, the only place to stop it is the website, in a proper browser.

1. Open a web browser, on a computer if you can.
2. Go to okcupid.com/settings and sign in if asked.
3. Click Turn off automatic billing.

Do not look for this in the app. OkCupid does not let you cancel card or PayPal billing there, or on the mobile version of the site. That is where most men get stuck, tapping through the app's menus for a button that is not there.

If you bought your plan inside the app using your Apple ID or your Google Play account, OkCupid is not the one billing you. The store is.

That means you cancel through Apple or Google, not through OkCupid. Go to the subscriptions section of your Apple account or your Google Play account, find OkCupid, and cancel it there.

This is the trap that costs men money. Deleting your OkCupid account does not stop billing through Apple or Google Play.

If you delete the account first and forget the subscription, the store can keep charging you for a service you no longer have an account on. So the order matters. Cancel the billing first. Then, if you want to leave OkCupid entirely, delete or disable the account.

If you have already deleted the account and the charges are still coming, do not go looking for your old OkCupid settings. Go straight to Apple or Google, because that is where the billing lives, and cancel it there.

Think back to how you paid.

• If you upgraded inside the iPhone app and confirmed with your Apple ID, it is an Apple subscription.
• If you upgraded inside the Android app through Google Play, it is a Google Play subscription.
• If you entered card details or logged into PayPal on OkCupid's website, it is billed by OkCupid.

Your card statement can also settle it. A charge that comes from Apple or Google means the store is billing you, not OkCupid. If you still cannot tell, check your Apple or Google subscriptions list. If OkCupid is not there, the billing is probably with OkCupid itself, and the website is where you cancel.

Cancelling stops future billing. It is not a refund, and OkCupid does not automatically refund time you did not use.

So cancel when you have decided, rather than waiting until the last day and risking another charge. Once billing is off, the question of the next payment simply goes away.

Whether to cancel should depend on what the plan did for you, not just on the bill.

a dating coach's view of paid features on dating apps is that they multiply the results you already have. The sites are businesses that want paying members to stay, so the paid extras are usually built to be worth the money. The one he calls worth it in almost every case is the ability to reach as many women as you want, instead of waiting for the app to ration your chances.

But a multiplier only helps if there is something to multiply. So compare your paid weeks with your free weeks. Did you get more mutual Likes? More real conversations? More numbers and dates? If the answer is yes, and the dates are worth it to you, the plan earned its keep. If the paid month looked exactly like the free one, cancel, and look at your photos and your first messages before you pay again.

Cancelling now does not rule out paying later. My advice is to try the paid features, because many are worth it. But try them at the right moment, once your free account already brings in some mutual Likes and conversations. Get there first. Then a paid month becomes a fair experiment instead of a hopeful one.

A free OkCupid account still works. You can Like women, message them once you have Liked them, see who Liked you back and talk to your matches.

The main difference is that free Likes are limited each day, so spend them carefully. Like women you would genuinely be glad to take out, and write to each one with a short line about something specific on her page. Move good conversations toward a drink within a handful of messages. Done well, that is enough to get dates without paying anything.