Raya vs Hinge: What Is Different?

The biggest difference is the door. Raya makes you apply, a membership committee decides whether you get in, it runs only on iPhone, and you pay a membership once you are accepted. Hinge is free to download on iPhone and Android, anyone can sign up, and its paid tiers are optional extras on top. So Raya is a small, paid room you may or may not get into, and Hinge is a big free one where your matches depend on how well you use it.

On Raya, you do not simply make an account. You fill out an application, and a membership committee reviews it. Raya says referrals make acceptance more likely, and it asks for your Instagram handle as part of the process. Then you wait for an answer, and nothing about the wait is in your hands.

On Hinge, you download the app and start. There is no review and no waiting list between you and the first woman you see.

That gap matters more than any feature. A man choosing between the two is really choosing between an app he can use tonight and an app he has asked permission to use. If you are single now and want to be dating this month, only one of those is a sure thing.

Raya charges accepted members a membership fee for full use of the app. Above the standard membership sits a higher tier called Raya+. There is no free way to use Raya properly once you are in, so the fee is the price of being there at all.

Hinge works the other way round. The regular app is free on both iPhone and Android. You can pay for Hinge+ or HingeX, and you can buy Boosts and Roses on their own, but none of that is needed to get dates.

So on Raya, the question is whether being in the room is worth a membership. On Hinge, it is whether a paid feature fixes a real limit you run into on the free version.

Everyone you see on Raya got through the same committee. That is the whole appeal. The women in it were picked rather than simply signed up, and the application keeps the app smaller than an open one.

It also stays narrow. Raya runs only on iPhone, so any woman who carries an Android phone is not on it. Add the application and the fee, and the pool in any one city is far smaller than what an open app offers.

Hinge is open to anyone on either kind of phone, so the pool is far bigger and far more mixed. You will see more women, and you will need to be choosier with your likes.

Neither is better in general. A small, filtered pool suits a man who would rather see fewer people who fit what he wants. A big pool suits a man who wants options and is willing to sort through them himself.

Hinge+ gives you unlimited likes, shows you everyone who has liked you at once, and adds advanced preferences for narrowing who you see. HingeX includes more on top: features that put compatible people in front of you sooner and show you higher in other people's feeds.

The one worth trying first is seeing everyone who liked you. Every woman on that list has already decided she likes what she saw. a dating coach has said that on Hinge, most of the women he matches with liked one of his photos or something he wrote before he ever sent a like. Replying to the women who liked you first is the quickest way off the app and onto a date.

Unlimited likes only help a man whose likes come back. If yours mostly go unanswered, paying to send more of them buys you more silence.

Raya suits a man with an iPhone who is patient about getting in, has an Instagram that honestly shows his life, and is happy to pay for a smaller, filtered crowd.

Hinge suits nearly everyone else. It suits the man on Android, the man who wants to start today, and the man who does not want to pay before he knows whether an app works for him.

a dating coach's view is that every man does better on some dating apps than on others. Part of it is who uses each app, and part of it is the format: Hinge runs on prompts, and some men simply answer prompts better than they write about themselves. The only way to know which app suits you is to try, keep what works, and drop what does not.

The worst way to handle this choice is to apply to Raya and stop dating while you wait.

Nobody can tell you which way the decision will go. So run Hinge while the application sits. A yes from Raya then lands on a man who has spent weeks practicing on real women. A long silence costs you nothing, because you were out on dates the whole time.

Once you are inside either one, the same few things decide what happens.

Your photos should show your face clearly and match the life you actually lead. Your prompt answers should give her a picture of a night out with you. A job title tells her nothing about that.

Your first line should pick up on one specific thing she put there. A plain hello tells her you read nothing, and she will answer it the same way, if she answers at all. Keep the back and forth short. a dating coach usually gets a date in somewhere between three and ten messages, because the goal is a plan and a phone number, not a long chat inside an app.

Get those right and the choice between the two apps matters much less than it seems.