Dating Sunday 2025: The busiest day on dating apps is almost here

Dating apps are gearing up for their busiest day of the year: Dating Sunday.

This landmark day in the dating world always lands on the first Sunday of January. The idea is that singles, back from their holiday travel and with a slate of new resolutions, will turn to dating apps with fresh eyes and open hearts.

Sure, some of this is marketing, but there are stats to back up the popularity of this day. Dating apps routinely see a surge in activity on Dating Sunday.

On Tinder, user likes, which indicate that you want to match with someone, were 15% higher on the first Sunday of 2024 than the rest of the year. Users are also more likely to respond and have conversations. Last year Hinge, which like Tinder is owned by the Match Group, reported a 27% increase in likes sent on this day and a 29% rise in messages sent.

“The new year marks a shift from one chapter to the next and offers us the opportunity for a reboot,” Moe Ari Brown, Hinge’s love and connection expert, wrote in a blog post. “For daters looking for connection, the New Year energy also brings hope, promise for renewal and fresh starts to their dating lives.”

The rise in usage is expected to stay relatively consistent until February (January 1 through Valentine’s Day is considered peak season by the apps). Tinder said that during this roughly six week period, 486 bios are edited per minute on Tinder. And more than 298 million more likes are sent on Tinder during this time than the rest of the year, according to the data.

In general, dating apps have seen some growth over the last year, but have struggled to reach their pandemic highs when relationships turned entirely online. Users have also been more reluctant to pay for features due to ongoing economic uncertainty. Tinder paying users have been routinely declining. (Hinge has been an outlier—it reported paying users increased 21% in the third quarter of 2024.)

Shares of Match Group, which owns Hinge and Tinder, are down 9% from this time a year ago, while Bumble stock is down 43% in the same period.

For those interested in partaking in this busy season, Hinge’s Director of Relationship Science Logan Ury put together some tips in that same blog post. His advice includes refreshing your profile, looking for reasons to say “yes” to people, commenting on people’s profiles rather than just leaving a like or an emoji, starting the conversation right away, making the most of dating hour (9 p.m. hour EST. in the U.S.), and sending more voice notes.

Happy dating season, everyone.