What Dating Apps Does Match Group Own?

Match Group says its portfolio includes Tinder, Hinge, Match, Meetic, OkCupid, Pairs, Plenty Of Fish, Azar, BLK and more. It owns a lot of the dating apps a man is likely to open, but they are separate apps with separate members, so owning them together does not mean they share one pool of women.

Match Group groups its brands into sets. It describes Match, Meetic, OkCupid, Plenty Of Fish and demographically focused brands as its Evergreen and Emerging brands. It also names these emerging brands: BLK, Chispa, The League, Archer, Upward, Yuzu, Salams and HER.

Its Asia segment consists of two brands, Pairs and Azar. Tinder and Hinge sit in the wider portfolio alongside them.

The company also says it shut down an app called Hakuna. So a name you saw in an old article may no longer be a live app, and the App Store will tell you in a minute.

A few of these have a clear identity, and Match Group describes them.

Pairs is a leading provider of online dating services in Japan. Meetic is a European dating brand based in France. OkCupid takes a question-and-answer approach, where your answers drive how you are matched. Plenty Of Fish relies on a freemium model and has broad appeal in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

For a man in the United States, the apps that matter most from this list are usually Tinder, Hinge, Match, OkCupid and Plenty Of Fish. The Asian and European brands matter if you live or travel there, and the smaller brands are worth a look only if one of them is built for the kind of woman you want to meet.

This is the useful part. The same company owning two apps does not put the same women on both. Each app has its own members, its own rules and its own feel.

Hinge is built around prompts that give you something to start a conversation with. Match lets a paying member search and write to a woman directly. OkCupid takes a question-and-answer approach to matching. A woman who uses one may never open another.

So when a man asks which Match Group app to use, the honest answer is whichever one holds the women you want to meet, in the place you live. My advice on this kind of choice is to test rather than guess: try one for a week, count the replies and the plans, and move on if nothing happens.

It means the apps share a parent company. If you care about what happens to your data, read each app's own privacy policy, since each one sets its own terms.

It also gives you one habit worth keeping: follow the rules of every app you use. A man who behaves the same way on all of them has one reputation to protect, and no reason to wonder what a complaint on one app might cost him on another.

Do not open all of them. Spreading yourself over five apps gives you five thin conversations and no real date. Choose one that gives you the most conversations where you live, and add a second only if the first is working.

A sensible pair for many men is a swipe app such as Tinder or Hinge for volume, with Match beside it for searching and writing to women you pick yourself. Keep the same best photos on both and note which one produces the plans.

Brands get added, merged and shut down. Match Group's annual report, filed with the SEC, is the source for the list above, and the company's own site shows the portfolio it wants you to see. If you need to know for certain whether an app you use is part of the group, check there rather than relying on a forum post or an article, including this one.