What Is the Age Range for The League Dating App?

The League does not publish one. Its FAQ and its safety page give no official age range and no average age for members. What they do say is that users younger than 18 are banned, so every member is an adult, and that the app shows you people who meet your preferences, as long as you also meet theirs. So the practical age range is the one your own settings produce.

Three points from The League's own pages are useful.

• Members under 18 are banned, so everyone you can match with is an adult.
• Matching shows each member the people who meet his preferences, where he also meets the other person's.
• Age, height and distance preferences can filter out potential matches, and The League recommends being as inclusive as possible.

It gives no breakdown of members by decade, no median age and no typical range. Any number you read elsewhere is a guess from someone's experience in one city, not a figure the app stands behind.

This is the part most men miss. Matching is two-sided. You set an age range for the women you want to see. Every woman on the app has set one too, and she only appears in your stream if you fall inside hers.

So your age matters in two ways. It decides who your own filter lets through, and it decides whose filter lets you through. A man who sets a narrow range has already removed some women from his stream. A man whose age sits outside what many women set has removed himself from theirs.

You cannot see her settings, so you cannot tell which of these is happening. What you can control is your own range.

The League says age, height and distance preferences can filter out potential matches. Each extra condition you set shrinks the pool, and the effect adds up.

A man who sets a tight age range, a minimum height and a short distance has combined three filters. The number of women who meet all three, and who also meet his on their side, can be small. In a mid-sized city it can be very small.

The League's own recommendation is to be as inclusive as possible. Take that at its word.

You find the right range by testing it.

1. Start with an age range wider than your instinct says. Include women a few years older and a few years younger than you would normally pick.
2. Use it for a week or two, and keep an honest count of your matches.
3. Look at who you actually match with and who answers your messages. Those women show you where your real range sits.
4. Narrow or widen by a couple of years, and compare the count.

a dating coach's rule is to change one thing at a time and keep what works. Change the age range alone, leave the photos and the opening line as they are, and the number will tell you what the change did.

An age range is only a filter. It does not decide how a conversation goes.

Within any range, the men who do well write a specific first message that refers to something in her page. They ask a question she can answer in a sentence. Then they move toward a plan once a few messages have gone back and forth. A man who does that in a range that is a little wider will get more dates than a man who stays inside a narrow range and sends the same generic line to everyone.

The people available to you also depend on where you live. A big city has more members at every age, and a small one has fewer, so a narrow range that works in one place can leave nothing in another.

If you are in a quieter area, widening your range is often the fastest fix, along with distance. Widen one at a time so you can see what each did.

Whatever you enter for your own age, make it your real age. The League verifies members through LinkedIn, Doximity, edu and corporate emails, so your details are checkable, and a mismatch is a quick way to lose a woman's trust before the first message.

Honesty also saves you the conversation where she finds out. A man who is straight about his age spends his time on women who are fine with it.

There is no published age range for The League. Everyone on it is an adult, the app matches you only with people whose preferences fit yours, and a narrow filter will shrink what you see. Set a wider range than you think you need, watch your matches for two weeks, and adjust one thing at a time.