Bumble was founded in 2014 by Whitney Wolfe Herd with help from Badoo CEO Andrey Andreev and former Tinder employees Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick. The app quickly made waves in online dating by putting women in the driver’s seat. That setup gives women full control over their networking, friendship, or dating experience.
You can access Bumble for free on Google Play (where it has 3.8 stars), the Apple App Store (where it has 4.3 stars). The platform has been downloaded more than 100 million times, so it is no surprise that Bumble earns an estimated $500 million to $1 billion in revenue each year.
Below, we break down the features and costs of Bumble for you to consider before you make your final decision.
Yes, Bumble Has a Free Membership With No Obligations
You can sign up for Bumble using your phone number, Apple ID, or Facebook account. If you use Facebook, the platform will pull personal information, such as your name, age, college, and job. If you want to personalize your account, you can add up to six photos from Facebook or your phone.
Once your profile is ready, you can swipe through other member profiles, make matches, and send messages, all for free. The app’s most distinguishing feature used to be that women must send the first message to men. That is no longer the case.
Anyone can message anyone as soon as a match is created, though they only have 72 hours before the chat window disappears (unless a premium member uses one of their precious Extends).
If you accidentally swipe left to dislike a profile, just shake your phone to unlock the Backtrack feature. You can do this three times for free, and Bumble will reenable it after three hours.
As I mentioned, there is a 72-hour time limit on all matches. If you need more time, the Extend feature comes into play, as it gives you an additional 24 hours to connect with your match. A busy single can use the Extend feature to gain additional time to decide whether to reply to a message.
Each member gets only one Extend per day, so use it wisely. If you want more Extends per day, you must become a paid member.
How Much Does Bumble Boost Cost?
Bumble offers two premium options: Bumble Boost and Bumble Premium. Bumble Boost is the more basic subscription and can make it easier to connect with new people. Bumble Premium is the top-tier plan, and it includes everything in Bumble Boost plus a few extra perks.
Here is what Bumble Boost includes:
- Backtrack — a feature that helps you reconnect with a match if you accidentally swipe left on a dating profile.
- Ability to extend time on your current matches.
- Unlimited swipes.
- One Spotlight per week — a premium feature that moves your profile to the top of the stack so that more people see it instantly. This feature expires and renews weekly, so make sure to use it!
- Five SuperSwipes per week — a premium feature that lets you tell a potential match that you’re very interested in. These five SuperSwipes also expire and renew every week.
As for cost, Bumble Boost is $8.99 for one week, $16.99 for one month, $39.99 for three months paid upfront, or $54.99 for six months paid upfront.
If you sign up for Bumble Premium, you get all the features in Bumble Boost as well as additional features:
- Access to unlimited Advanced filters. You can set a filter specific to your match preference. You can also set unique filters for each Bumble mode: date, BFF, and Bizz.
- Access to your Beeline to see admirers. Your Beeline consists of people who’ve swiped right on you but whom you haven’t swiped on yet.
- Travel mode (mobile only).
- Rematch with users who have expired.
- Incognito Mode (mobile only). With this feature, you can hide your profile from others on the app, so no one will see it unless you swipe right on them. This mode ensures that your matches only include people you’re most interested in.
Bumble Premium costs $19.99 for a week, $39.99 for a month, $76.99 for a 3-month commitment, or a one-time fee of $299.99 for a lifetime subscription.
Best Free Alternatives to Bumble
Bumble isn’t the only online matchmaker in town that’s free for singles. Our dating experts highly recommend these four popular dating apps that offer free communication, at least for single women. Here’s a breakdown of the best free alternatives to Bumble.
- Relationships: Hookups, Casual Dates, Affairs
- Match System: Search by age, location, appearance, and more
- Our Experts Say: “With its massive user base and advanced privacy features, Ashley Madison is the #1 site for discreet hookups, dates, or relationships.” Our Review »
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
Since launching in the early 2000s, Ashley Madison has gained a reputation as a platform that helps people find discreet encounters. That’s one reason why Ashley Madison has attracted more than 90 million people to join.
You can use Ashley Madison to find a partner for a hookup, a casual date, or a long-term affair. To find matches, just set your preferences, including age, online status, location, encounter type, appearance, and ethnicity. Once you set your parameters, the algorithm displays profiles that align with it.
The biggest drawback to Ashley Madison is that it has an unbalanced gender ratio of 72.73% men to 27.27% women as of June 2026 — who are allowed to join for free.
Match
- Relationships: Friends, Dates, and Relationships
- Match System: Browse by zip, age, appearance, more
- Our Experts Say: “Match pairs a large dating pool with search filters specific enough to make that size useful rather than overwhelming.” Our Review »
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
Match was founded in 1995 and has been helping singles find dates for decades. The profiles are detailed, the compatibility matching is spot on, and all members can chat with their matches for free. When you’re ready to access premium features (such as seeing who’s liked you), you can sign up for a one-month, three-month, or 12-month subscription.
Match’s success in finding partners comes from its personality-driven algorithm, and the platform recommends a list of Daily Matches according to your preferences. People seem to enjoy Match’s non-swiping approach as the popular dating platform has more than 30 million members and 13.5 million monthly visitors.
Match has fostered 517,000 relationships and 92,000 marriages, and many users share their stories to inspire others.
3. OkCupid
Launched in 2004, OkCupid was founded by a Harvard math major who wanted to quantify human relationships by asking a range of personal, funny, and unusual questions, including “Are you afraid of death?” OkCupid currently has more than 4,000 questions in its personality test, but you don’t need to answer all of them.
To get started, our dating experts recommend answering between 12 and 50 questions. Not all questions may be relevant to you, and you can always skip questions if you’d rather not publicize your answer.
The best thing about OkCupid is its pledge to remain a free dating service. If you’re short of money, this online dating platform is your alternative for connecting with new people. However, cheap prices can come with some trade-offs in the quality of matches.
The most common complaints we hear about OkCupid are about fake users and matching with single people who are far away.
4. Facebook Dating
While Facebook Dating is a new player in the online dating scene, it’s already available in 20 countries, including the US, Mexico, Canada, and Brazil. You can only access the Facebook Dating app if you have a Facebook account.
One especially useful thing about Facebook Dating is that it keeps your dating activity separate from your main Facebook profile. In other words, your Facebook friends won’t see that you’re using the dating app.
However, those benefits haven’t led to big numbers for Facebook Dating, and it falls short in online activity and popularity. Online dating is a numbers game, and Facebook Dating doesn’t have enough numbers to make it a go-to app for singles — yet.
Does Bumble Have a Free Trial?
Yes, Bumble has a free trial for 14 days. The trial gives you a chance to try the platform’s premium features for free. When the 14-day trial is over, Bumble will automatically charge your card for the subscription.
If you enjoy Bumble and want to keep using it, you don’t need to do anything else. But if you tend to forget about subscriptions, setting a reminder in Google Calendar or on your phone can save you from an annoying surprise later.
A Bumble Profile Could Be Worth a Try
Bumble is the dating app that puts women in charge. Its matchmaking system is designed to stop unwanted contacts from going forward. Receiving dozens of “What’s up, cutie?” messages each day can quickly become annoying.
Men also benefit from the Bumble approach because they receive messages only from women who want to connect with them.
If Bumble’s approach appeals to you, it’s easy to give it a shot. You can join for free and upgrade later if you decide you want the extra features. You might even find that a free membership is all you need to meet someone interesting on Bumble. That makes it a pretty easy risk to take.
