Fact Checked by: Debbie Gutfreund, MA
OKCupid has gone through quite the rebranding over the years, and we were excited to see where it landed during our most recent OKCupid review. Initially, the app was pretty readily known as a place to meet people for some, you know, casual fun. It was more of a place to find a friend for the weekend than it was to find the love of your life.
However, people have been reporting some success with other types of relationships goals with this app thanks to a focus on shifting into an environment that is more similar to successful serious dating apps.
So, are these reports accurate? Well, we set out to get to the bottom of it in our most recent OKCupid review! If you’re ready to see our results, grab a seat, and let’s get into it.
OKCupid Nails Gender Inclusivity But Misses in Other Areas
If you’re big on things like gender inclusivity, hot-button political issues (like their newly added pro-choice profile badge), and you like a lot of bells and whistles (available for purchase) in your dating experience, OkCupid might be worth checking out for you. Additionally, much of the site can be accessed for free, with a lot of upgrades and boosts available at additional costs. Some sites also report a userbase size in the 50 million range, which is certainly something that catches our attention if it’s true (not confirmed by the company).
Where we start to have a few issues with OKCupid, though, is with the overall user experience. It’s one of those apps where it feels chaotic and like there is so much going on it feels like you’re lost on where to click or what to do. Sure, this is great if you have a lot of time to dedicate to figuring things out, but if your chief goal is finding someone special—you’re probably going to get frustrated.
Additionally, there are ads if you’re not using an upgraded membership (which is annoying). You also won’t be able to message anyone unless there is a mutual match—so, much like Tinder (owned by the same company), you’re at the whim of your pictures and profile getting you in the door. If you’re not someone who normally gets a lot of quality messages, you may not be a fan of this.
And if you like having some control with being able to search through your matches, you won’t have that option here. OkCupid is basically a swipe-style dating app dressed up with a lot of new bells and whistles.
Users Report a Change for the Worse From OKCupid
If you spend some time looking through forums, you start to see an unsettling trend about OKCupid. Many users report that “in the old days” OKCupid was an amazing place to meet people. However, they say that the app has grown to be over-commercialized, chaotic, and no where near as effective as it used to be.
These are user reviews, so take them as you will, but it’s not something we saw from one or two people, it was from a lot of users in a lot of different threads. Generally, this signals that something is more than likely to be accurate.
Overall, OKCupid score a 7.36 in our most recent review. While some will like their strong push towards gender inclusivity and hot-button political issues, we have some reservations about the user area feeling cluttered and a little chaotic.
OKCupid does not make our list of the best dating apps at this time.
Who OKCupid Is Good For
- Singles looking for a cheap dating site (budget is more important than quality)
- Left-leaning singles who value gender inclusivity and hot-button political stances
- People looking for more casual dating options
Who OKCupid Might Not Be Best For
- Religious and Christian singles who are turned off by some political and moral stances
- Older singles (45+)
- People who are turned off by chaotic dating app experiences
5 Things to Know About OKCupid
- The company does have a troubled past with a lot of issues surrounding data leaks of user’s sensitive information.
- The owners of Match.com purchased OKCupid in 2011 for $50 million.
- OKCupid gives users the option to place a Pro Choice badge on their profile and donates to Planned Parenthood for any user who does.
- While OKCupid is technically free to use, most of the noteworthy features require you to pay.
- Unless you upgrade your experience, you are going to be inundated with quite a few ads during your experience.
Pros
- A high level of inclusivity for singles of all genders and sexual orientations
- Utilizes compatibility questions to enhance matching
- Some reports of a userbase as large as 50 millions
Cons
- The app has a history of serious data leaks
- Unless you upgrade, you are inundated with ads
- Moderators seem to overlook a pretty significant amount of fake profiles
- There are still a lot of users that are looking for hookups instead of relationships
In This Review
Testing | Membership Tiers | Member Quality | Pricing | Free Trial | Support
OKCupid Testing Results
Through our rigorous testing and dating app focus groups, we’ve score OKCupid a 7.36 out of a possible 10 points.
| Test Category | Results (out of 10) | Weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safety and Security | 6.9 | 20% | Implements solid moderation and security measures, though the open-ended nature of profiles leaves room for occasional scams and fake users. |
| Profile Engagement | 7.5 | 15% | Detailed prompts and question matching foster deeper conversations, but engagement levels vary by location and user interests. |
| Feature Effectiveness | 8.5 | 15% | Personality quizzes, identity tags, and niche filters help users connect over shared values, creating more targeted matches than swipe-only apps. |
| Pricing | 7.5 | 15% | Free tier allows basic messaging, but premium plans provide useful perks like advanced filters and visibility into who has liked your profile. |
| UX and Usability | 7.25 | 10% | Bright, modern interface is appealing; some users report confusion with too many overlapping features |
| Popularity | 5.4 | 10% | Rapidly declining search volume and popularity |
| External Reviews | 7.75 | 10% | Frequently praised for inclusivity and depth, while user complaints often mention fake profiles and declining local activity in certain regions. |
| Feature Growth | 8.25 | 5% | Consistently updates to include new identity options and matching features, maintaining relevance in the modern dating scene. |
| Overall | 7.36 | ~ | ~ |
Learn more about how we test and score here.
Our testing looks at over 70 different data points to determine our overall ranking. These data points are broken up into the different categories reflected in the table above. Here’s a deeper look at some of the categories and the raw data from our OKCupid testing.
9-Point Safety and Security Checklist
| Test Category | Results (out of 10) | Weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Privacy Policy | 7.0 | 15% | Written in user-friendly language, though OkCupid gathers detailed personal and lifestyle data from profiles and question responses to power its matching system. |
| Third-Party Data Usage | 6.5 | 15% | Shares insights with partners for marketing and analytics, and while users can tweak some settings, data sharing remains part of how the platform operates. |
| Encryption | 8.0 | 15% | Protects user data with HTTPS encryption, and hasn’t been associated with any recent high-profile security incidents. |
| Block and Report | 8.5 | 15% | Provides quick and visible ways to block or report users, helping keep the app safer, though determined scammers can occasionally return. |
| Account Verification | 7.5 | 10% | Offers photo verification as a trust signal, but not all users opt in, leaving some uncertainty for those seeking verified matches. |
| Data Minimization | 5.5 | 10% | Requires users to answer a significant number of personal questions for matching, collecting more data than simpler swipe apps. |
| 2FA | 4.5 | 10% | Lacks broad support for two-factor authentication, leaving account protection mainly reliant on passwords alone. |
| Terms of Service | 7.0 | 5% | Written clearly, but users sometimes report frustrations with managing subscriptions and avoiding unwanted renewals. |
| Strong Password | 6.5 | 5% | Encourages creating secure logins, but doesn’t enforce strong rules or alert users proactively if account details are compromised. |
| Overall | 6.93 | ~ | ~ |
Here’s something interesting we saw during our testing (we also saw this on the Upward dating app, also from Match Group when testing). Notice that the popup is for Match.com, but we’re on OKCupid. It looks like Match Group is being much more forward about comingling its brands and using your profile information on more than one brand.
In case you’re wondering, this has been in their TOS for a long time, so it’s probably been happening behind the scenes already. Not something we’re a fan of at all.
Popularity Testing for OKCupid
| Factor | Testing Score | Weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search Trends | 5.5 | 25% | Significantly declining popularity over the past 5 years as backed by Google Trends and anecdotal Reddit comments |
| Internal Testing | 4.5 | 25% | Used to be a powerhouse; appears to be declining in popularity |
| Search Volume | 4.3 | 15% | Rapidly declining search volume (Ahrefs) |
| Traffic | 7.8 | 15% | 9.524 monthly visits (SimilarWeb); #23 in the industry |
| News Coverage | 7.5 | 10% | Minimal now, but decent coverage of newer features over the past few years |
| Social Reach | 3.5 | 10% | Facebook page last post Aug 2021; Instagram still active with 96.8k followers |
| Total | 5.41 | ~ | ~ |
Value Analysis for the Price (DAVPD)
| Feature/Factor | Maximum Points | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matchmaking Process | 500 | 300 | Uses question-based matching and compatibility % but less rigorous than deep personality matching. |
| Curated Matchmaking | 250 | 0 | No human-curated matchmaking; entirely app-driven. |
| Size of Membership | 150 | 140 | Large user base, particularly strong in urban U.S. markets. |
| No Excessive Gamification | 100 | 60 | Includes likes and swiping, somewhat gamified experience. |
| U.S. Based Company | 100 | 100 | Owned by Match Group, headquartered in Texas, USA. |
| End to End Encryption | 75 | 50 | No mention of end-to-end encryption (most likely used); uses standard security measures instead. |
| SSL Encryption | 75 | 75 | Data in transit protected by SSL encryption. |
| Robust Profiles | 50 | 50 | Detailed profiles with essays, identity tags, and interest prompts. |
| App Store Rating | 50 | 40 | Usually around 4.0 on iOS, with solid feedback but occasional complaints. |
| Google Play Store Rating | 50 | 40 | Ranges 3.8-4.2 on Android; mixed reviews but generally positive. |
| Report and Block | 50 | 50 | Clear tools for reporting or blocking problematic users. |
| Profile Verification Optional | 50 | 30 | Optional photo verification exists but not required. |
| Profile Verification Required | 50 | 0 | Not mandatory; fully optional. |
| Additional Resources | 50 | 25 | Provides some blog content and dating tips but not extensive. |
| Refund Policy | 50 | 10 | Refunds generally unavailable or very restrictive. |
| Email Verification | 50 | 50 | Required for account creation. |
| SMS Verification | 40 | 10 | Used occasionally but not consistently required. |
| Email Support | 40 | 40 | Provides email support for account and payment issues. |
| Video Profiles | 30 | 10 | Has video prompts and answers but not robust video profiles. |
| Religious Filters | 20 | 20 | Filters for religious preferences are available. |
| Smoking/Drinking Filters | 20 | 20 | Users can filter based on smoking/drinking habits. |
| Profile Completion Requirement | 20 | 20 | Encourages robust profile completion for better match visibility. |
| Phone Support | 20 | 0 | No public phone support option found. |
| Video Chats | 20 | 10 | Offers in-app video chat but not heavily promoted. |
| Account Pause Feature | 20 | 20 | Can hide or pause profiles without deletion. |
| Last Active Feature | 20 | 15 | Shows approximate activity status like “recently online.” |
| 2FA Protection | 20 | 0 | No widespread two-factor authentication publicly documented. |
| Photo Options | 20 | 20 | Allows multiple photos, albums, and diverse photo prompts. |
| Community Forums | 10 | 0 | No official public forums for community discussion. |
| 2,000 | 1205 |
The raw score for our Dating App Value Per Dollar (DAVPD) for OKCupid is 1,205 out of a possible 2,000 points. When you assess the current price of OKCupid of $17.49 per month, that gives us a DAVPD score of 68.897.
Reviewing Membership Tiers and Features Available
Let’s talk features! One of the most robust areas of our OKCupid reviews was the list of features offered by the site.
And while a lot of features generally is a good thing, we do have some reservations that there’s so much going on at OKCupid that it creates a bit of a chaotic environment.
But let’s talk about things and let you form your own opinion.
OKCupid Membership Tiers
With OKCupid, you have three different membership tier levels to choose from—Free, Basic, and Premium. The first is, well, free as you might guess. The other two are paid (updated pricing on these is further down in the guide). Here is what you get with each level:
| Feature | Free (Free) | Basic (Paid) | Premium (Paid) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ads | Yes | X | X |
| Sign Up Questionnaire | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| See All Photos | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited Likes | X | Yes | Yes |
| Deal Breakers | X | Yes | Yes |
| See Your Intros | X | Yes | Yes |
| See Who Liked You | X | X | Yes |
| SuperLikes (weekly) | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| See All Question Answers | X | X | Yes |
Sign Up Questionnaire
When you join OKCupid, you’ll go through its 15 question matching questionnaire that they use to compute a matching percentage with other users.
The questions are quite random, but we can see how some of them would certainly be pertinent to matching people together. It’s not a real in-depth matching questionnaire like you’ll see on other sites, but it still is certainly better than nothing. Here’s a sample of one of the questions (all questions are multiple choice).
You can also come back and make edits (and add additional information) after the sign up process.
See All Photos
Regardless of your OKCupid membership level, you will be able to see all photos from all users at all times. Compared with the rest of the online dating industry, this should be something viewed as a positive perk as many sites limit you to only seeing the main photo or no photos at all.
Unlimited Likes
As mentioned, OKCupid operates on a mutual match system where you only hear from people who also say they like you. That means that in order to send messages, you have to go and like other users. With a free account, you are limited in the number of likes you can send out. However, with the paid accounts (Basic and Premium), you’re free to send as many likes as you want, which should inevitably help to increase your chances of a match. It does also, however, increase the chances that some people are just clicking like on everyone and only actually looking at profiles if they have a match.
Deal Breakers
The deal breakers feature on OKCupid is one where you can select things that are “hard no’s” for you when it comes to a match. For example, if you don’t want to see matches who smoke, you’ll need to upgrade to get this feature. One of the drawbacks to this feature is that you may still see people who violate your deal breakers if they haven’t answered that question on their profile yet. Still, it should help at least to some degree to increase the quality of your matches to be more like what you’re looking for.
See Your Intros
Under each photo on OKCupid is a button where you can click and send a quick comment to someone about their photo or a section of their profile. The idea of this feature is to give you other ways to initiate contact outside of the swiping feature. On one hand we like this because the swiping-only feels limited. However, on the other hand, we’re not fans because it’s a bit confusing how this relates to messages, what they see, if they can respond, etc. Again, it’s that chaotic feeling we continue to allude to seeing during our reviews.
See Who Liked You
The visible likes feature is available for premium members and allows you to see who has liked your profile before you like their profile. Without this feature, you only know if someone likes you if you coincidentally like their profile as well. So, with this feature you get a heads up on who is interested in you which may allow you to shift your interest to those who are more likely to interact with you.
Within about five minutes of creating our test account that was basically empty, we had 19 likes. While this could be as a result of a large userbase, it does raise some suspicions about the quality and validity of those likes.
Super Likes
A feature obviously ripped straight from Tinder (it’s okay, they’re owned by the same company), is the Super Like. This is a way of liking another member but getting it to rise to the top of their list. It adds some additional pizzazz and attention to a normal like. It’s a neat feature when you really want to get someone’s attention, but it stinks if you use it and get no luck because you only get 1-3 per week depending on your membership level.
See All Question Answers
Similar to the visible likes feature, this is a perk to those with a premium subscription. There are prompt questions on OKCupid. The way they usually work is that you answer a question and then you can see how others answered the question. With this feature, you will see everyone’s answers without having to answer yourself.
The Quality of Singles at OKCupid
The question here went two ways during our OKCupid review—quantity and quality. When it comes to quantity, there seems to be no shortage of singles on the site. According to some unsubstantiated (but probably true) reports, there are upwards of 50 million users on the site. If this is true, that’s an incredibly massive amount of people and options.
When it comes to quality, there are some things we had reservations about. First, we saw a lot of profiles during our testing and reviewing that were most likely fake or belonged to people looking for something unsavory. No, we cannot 100% confirm these are fake accounts, but we have a lot of years in the dating industry and we’ve gotten pretty good at spotting these things.
Honestly, it’s probably tough to police these things with 10s of millions of users. But even though we understand why it’s a challenge, that doesn’t make a difference to a user looking for a top notch dating experience.
Overall, though, it’s tough for us to review the actual quality of the people on the site because that’s something that depends on your preferences. What we can say, though, are the following:
- Some of the profiles are filled out well and some have pretty short answers and are incomplete.
- Users seem to do a pretty good job uploading quite a few photos on their profiles.
- The larger percentage of people we saw in our reviews were looking for more casual/hookup type relationships.
One other thing that’s probably important to point out is that OKCupid is okay with risque photos. We never saw any nudity but we saw plenty of pictures of people flipping off the camera, scantily clad, and “showing what their mama gave them.” If you’re cool with that, cool. If not, though, we wanted you to be aware.
Pricing is a mix of membership options and a la carte add-ons.
When it comes to OKCupid, pricing is broken down into two categories—membership costs and additional add-ons. For membership costs, there are three memberships—Free, Basic, and Premium. In the features section of the guide we outlined what you get with each of these (scroll back up if you missed it). And for paid addons, you have boosts, which move your profile to the top of people’s lists for 30 minutes.
Here’s what each is going to cost you at OKCupid.
| Membership Type | Membership Length | Membership Cost | Total Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Premium | 1 month | $34.99 monthly | $34.99 |
| Premium | 3 months | $23.33 monthly | $69.99 |
| Premium | 6 months | $17.49 monthly | $104.94 |
| Basic | 1 month | $24.99 monthly | $24.99 |
| Basic | 3 months | $16.66 monthly | $49.98 |
| Basic | 6 months | $12.49 monthly | $74.94 |
| Add On - Boost | 1x | $6.99 | $6.99 |
| Add On - Boost | 5x | $5.99 each | $29.95 |
| Add On - Boost | 10x | $4.99 each | $49.99 |
OkCupid Payment Options
- PayPal
- Credit Cards
- Debit Cards
- Google Play
- iTunes
OKCupid Free Trial
To make things as crystal clear as possible, we’ve put together a table that shows you exactly what you do and do not get with your OKCupid free trial. You will notice two columns marked as “Paid”. This is because OKCupid has two paid premium tiers (as well as some a la carte upgrades available), which are obviously both not available with the free trial. The column marked “Basic” is what you’ll get with the free trial.
| Feature | Basic (Free Trial) | OKCupid Basic (Paid) | OKCupid Premium (Paid) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create Account | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Swipe on Matches | Yes (Limited) | Yes | Yes |
| Send Messages to Matches | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Filter Dealbreakers | ❌ | Yes | Yes |
| Use Rewinds | ❌ | Yes | Yes |
| See Intro Messages | ❌ | Yes | Yes |
| Ad-Free | ❌ | Yes | Yes |
| See Who Liked You | ❌ | ❌ | Yes |
| Superlikes | ❌ | ❌ | 3 per week |
| See All Question Answers | ❌ | ❌ | Yes |
As is standard with apps from the Match Group portfolio, you can send some messages for free.
OKCupid is one of many dating apps owned by Match Group (they also own Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, etc.). As is the case with most of their portfolio, free trial accounts are able to send some messages and likes free of charge. Technically, this is not the industry standard. However, since Match now owns the majority of the industry, technically it’s starting to become the standard.
The operative word here is some. Free trial accounts are limited to a certain number of likes per day (if you want to understand the difference between likes and messages, check out our OKCupid review). The exact number is not published anywhere. According to some older Reddit posts, it looks like the number may be 10 (shared below). We weren’t able to test this ourselves, because we don’t like to send likes to people just for the sake of testing.
Expect to see some ads during your free experience on OKCupid.
Ads on dating apps are pretty archaic and rare these days (at least on higher tier options). That said, OKCupid still runs them on the free trial versions of the app and desktop. You will see a button that says “Remove Ads”, but this is just a purchase link that takes you to the premium upgrade page to pay for them to be removed.
There are a lot of frills you won’t get, but that’s okay.
If you look at the chart above, there are a lot of features listed that you may not even know what they are (the review link we posted above goes into them). In a nutshell, these features are small enhancements that try and help you either have a better experience, correct mistakes you made when swiping, or see more potential ways to connect with people.
While these probably do help to enhance the experience, they’re just frills that most people won’t care too much about. So, while it would be neat to see some limited form of them in the OKCupid free trial, we’re not so upset that they aren’t (and you probably won’t notice).
Filter Dealbreakers is one we do wish was included.
When you sign up with a free trial account, you’ll be able to set your preferences for what you’re looking for. However, OKCupid is only going to “kinda” listen to those. In other words, they’ll treat your selections as preferences, but not deal breakers. This means you may be less likely to see someone who doesn’t fit what you’re looking for, but you still might.
We get this because they’re a business that needs to make money. That said, for some categories, it’s really going to make the app a lot more work to use. For example if religion or politics of smoking/drinking habits are important deal breakers to you, you’re going to have to manually check every match you get to make sure they fit what you want.
Again, we get it, but it’s definitely an annoying aspect of the OKCupid free trial.
Steps to Claim an OKCupid Free Trial
Getting this free trial is crazy easy. Here are the steps:
- Step 1: Go to https://www.okcupid.com/.
- Step 2: Create an account
That’s literally it. Anyone who signs up for OKCupid automatically gets access to the free trial account. You can use it indefinitely with the features we mentioned above. You do not need a promo code, coupon, or special link.
But, remember, the goal of them giving this to you is to try and upsell you to a premium account. There’s not really anything wrong with that; it’s just something to keep in mind.
If anyone tries to mention that there is a “better” free trial out there, they’re just selling you snake oil. Here’s another Reddit thread where someone asked about this.
The top comment (besides one that was a joke about coupons) was this:
Customer support seems to be lacking with OKCupid.
An often overlooked area of OKCupid reviews is the customer service area. What happens if you end up needing some help with something? We’ve seen some dating apps with zero customer support options, which is why we focus so heavily on what each app we view has to offer.
We had high hopes for OKCupid due to their extensive FAQs, but unfortunately, that is the extent of their customer support. If you can’t find an answer to your questions in their FAQs you have the option to send an email, but there is no way to immediately talk to a real person about your concerns.
This means that users unable to use a service they may be paying for are left wondering if their issue is even being looked into. This doesn’t paint the best picture of OKCupid, since other dating apps have full-blown customer service teams and moderators who are available to help you any time of day.