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Match Group's Q3 2026 Report: What Tinder's Missed Connections, Hinge's Cheaper Tier, and Other New Plans Mean for Women (November 2026)

Match Group, the company that owns Tinder, Hinge, Match, The League, and more, posted its results for July through September on November 2, 2026. Most coverage will be about money. But the report also says a lot about what the apps are building next, and several of those plans are aimed right at women.

The big ones: Tinder is testing a feature that shows you men you physically crossed paths with last week, and women liked those profiles about 4 times as often as normal ones. Hinge is testing a cheaper paid tier with extra filters and custom location limits, and the company says women like it most. And after a year of fixing the app, Tinder says 2027 is about making more money from it. Here is what each change means for you, and how to keep your location under your control.

Short answer

Tinder is coming back a little, including with women. Daily users grew again in September for the first time in three and a half years. The drop in women using Tinder each month slowed to 6% from 8% the quarter before.
Location is the new selling point. Tinder's Missed Connections (testing in Canada and Australia) and Hinge's In Your Orbit (in testing) both use where you go to suggest matches. You can turn Missed Connections off.
Hinge's cheaper tier is coming. Match says it is testing a lower priced plan with more filters and custom location boundaries, it "resonated particularly well with women," and it expects a rollout in the last months of 2026.
Friends are Tinder's big bet. Women were 2 times as likely to like a group profile as a solo one in early testing of Group Hangouts.
Expect paywall changes in 2027. Tinder says it will now bring "the same urgency to revenue in 2027" that it brought to users in 2026.

What is new in the November 2, 2026 report

Tinder: more users, and more women staying

Tinder says its daily active users grew compared to a year earlier in September 2026, the first time in three and a half years. Monthly users were still down 5.5%, but the gap is shrinking, and it narrowed to 6% for women, from 8% the quarter before. Tinder says the gains are showing up "for both women and men" and across every age group. Paying users fell 4% to 8.9 million.

What it means for you: a slightly busier app with a bit more women around. If you left Tinder over the last two years because it felt empty or full of bots, it is fair to say it is changing, though it is still shrinking overall.

Missed Connections: men you crossed paths with

This is the feature to understand before it reaches you. Tinder is testing Missed Connections in Canada and Australia. Every Sunday at about 8 PM local time, you get a "Drop" of people you may have been close to at around the same time in the past week, based on phone location data from you and them. In tests, Tinder says women were about 4 times as likely to like these profiles as regular profiles. Match also said the feature went from idea to finished product in "just a few weeks" using AI tools.

Tinder's help page (June 2, 2026) lists the safety rules:

The Drop does not show the day or time you crossed paths, or anyone's exact or live location.
People you blocked or unmatched, and people who blocked you, do not show up in either direction.
Tinder limits how often the same person appears, even if you cross paths a lot, so coworkers and neighbors do not keep showing up.
You still have to like and match before anyone can message.
It works with "While Using the App" location access. "Always" access is optional and gives "more relevant" Drops.

The part to think about: your profile can show up in the Drops of men who were near you. Tinder hides the time and place, but a man who sees you in his Drop knows you were somewhere near him last week. If he already knows your routine, that is a clue. You can opt out without changing your normal Tinder feed.

Hinge: a cheaper tier with location limits, and In Your Orbit

Hinge keeps growing. Monthly users rose 12%, paying users rose 23% to 2.3 million, and revenue rose 19% to $221 million. Three things matter for women:

A lower priced plan. Hinge is testing a cheaper paid tier that gives "more choice and control through features like additional filters and custom location boundaries." Match says early tests have been encouraging, "with these features resonating particularly well with women," and it expects to roll it out in Q4 2026 (October to December). The average paying user already pays a bit less (down 3%) because of discounts and this test.
In Your Orbit. Hinge is testing a way to help you discover people you "naturally cross paths with," including in real life. Like Missed Connections, it uses real world signals, not just your profile.
Friend's Take. The feature that lets friends add to your profile is catching on. Match says nearly 70% of early users feel it helps their profile show who they are, and about two thirds of them are Gen Z.

Hinge India: safety tools other countries do not have yet

Hinge relaunched in India on September 28, 2026. The report says it has nearly 1.5 million monthly users there. New users may join through a waitlist and finish their profile first. Hinge added Face Check, a Block List during sign up so you can avoid being seen by an ex, coworker, or family member, and Screenshot Protection that blocks screenshots of profiles in Discover, Likes You, and Standouts. You can still screenshot chats to report someone. Hinge said safety and privacy matter "especially" to women there. These are India features for now, but Hinge often tests things in one market first. Hinge also plans to enter Japan in 2027.

Tinder's friend features and Events

Group Hangouts. In early testing, women were 2 times as likely to like a group profile as a one to one profile. It launched in some Nordic countries in September and the US in October. In Norway, about 15% of daily users ages 18 to 22 have joined a group of three or more.
Double Date has made 30 million matches since launch.
Events is live in 56 cities. Match says 55% of eligible users ages 18 to 24 have used the Events tab, and over 60% of people who attended gave it five stars (from Tinder's own in app survey).

Tinder's feed will react faster, and then the paywall

Your swipes will shape your feed within seconds. Tinder plans to start testing "real time adaptive recommendations" in Q4 2026, which "respond to user actions within seconds rather than hours."
Money comes next. Match says that as user numbers improve, Tinder is "beginning to turn our attention to monetization" and is "exploring new monetization opportunities." In plain words: expect paid features and prices to be reworked in 2027.
Safety moved to the top. Match says it centralized Trust and Safety across the whole company in Q3.

New research on location and dating apps

The new features lean on where you go, so it is worth knowing what researchers have found.

Distance filters once gave away near exact locations. A 2024 study from KU Leuven, presented at the USENIX Security conference, tested 15 dating apps. Six, including Bumble and Hinge, had a flaw where a stalker could use distance filters to find a user to within about 2 meters. The apps fixed it by making locations less exact, to about 1 kilometer, according to TechCrunch (July 31, 2024). The lesson is not that today's apps are broken. It is that location tools are tricky, and new ones deserve a careful look.
About 1 in 4 app users report cyberstalking. A study of 848 adults who used dating apps, published November 25, 2025 in the Asian Journal of Criminology, found 27% said they had been cyberstalked through a dating app. The risk was higher for people who used more apps, shared more about who they are on their profile, and used more premium features.

What people who tried it say

Missed Connections is only in a few test markets, so there are not many reviews yet. These are summaries of real posts from 2026.

Drops can bring back people you already saw. On May 3, 2026, a user in a test market asked why Missed Connections kept "pushing old matches." Another user said on August 12, 2026 that they kept rematching with the same three women every week. A third said on May 8 that the app "doesn't understand that no means no" when it showed people again. Tinder's help page says it limits repeats, so if the same men keep showing up, that is worth reporting.
Some users think it nudges you to message. One reply on May 4 said the feature seemed to "refresh" matches you never messaged, and that it got them to finally start a chat.
Paywalls already frustrate people. On January 7, 2026, a man back on the apps after a 15 year relationship said the apps feel built "to force you to pay" for premium features, and that it makes things so "aggressive and soulless" that he understood why women are turned off. With Tinder now focusing on revenue for 2027, expect that debate to heat up.
People want better location control. On March 5, 2026, a 24 year old man said many smaller apps had "little to no location filtering," which is one reason he kept going back to the big three. Hinge's custom location boundaries are aimed at exactly this.

Lesser-known tips

Turn off Missed Connections if you do not want to be in Drops. On Tinder, go to Profile, then Settings, then Missed Connections Settings, and switch off "Include me in Missed Connections Drop." It does not change your normal matches.
Keep Tinder on "While Using the App" location. "Always" is optional. It gives Tinder your location in the background all day for slightly better Drops. You do not need it.
Do not like a Drop because it feels like fate. Women liked these profiles 4 times as often. Crossing paths is a coincidence, not a sign he is a good match. Read the profile the same way you would any other.
Wait on Hinge's cheaper tier before paying for the top one. If you mostly want better filters or to limit where matches come from, the new plan may cover it for less once it rolls out.
Do not prepay long plans right now. Tinder says it is reworking how it makes money in 2027. Monthly plans keep you flexible.
Swipe like you mean it. If Tinder's feed starts reacting within seconds, careless right swipes on men you are not into will tell it to show you more of them.
Share less identity on your profile. The cyberstalking study found more identity details raised risk. Skip your workplace, your exact neighborhood, and your last name.

Fair take

There is real good news here. Tinder is less empty than it was, safety work is getting more attention, and Hinge is building a cheaper plan around the tools women asked for. Group features and events give women a lower pressure way to meet men, with friends around.

But look at the direction. Both big apps are moving toward using where you go in real life to pick who you see. Match designed Missed Connections with privacy rules, and they are reasonable. Still, the feature only works because your phone tells Tinder where you were. And Tinder is saying out loud that 2027 is about getting more money from users. The features women like most may end up behind a paywall.

Bottom line

Use the new tools on your terms. Try Group Hangouts or Events if meeting with friends feels safer. Opt out of Missed Connections if you have any reason to keep your movements private, and keep location on "While Using." Watch for Hinge's cheaper tier before paying for more. And before you jump back in with a fresh profile, The Face They See lets people of the opposite gender rank your photos for free.

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