“Designed to be deleted” is the tagline of one of the UK’s most popular dating apps. Hinge promises that it is “the dating app for people who want to get off dating apps” – the place to find lasting love.

But critics say modern dating is in crisis. They claim that dating apps, which have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times worldwide, are “exploitative” and are designed not to be deleted but to be addictive, to retain users in order to create revenue.

An Observer investigation has found that dating apps are increasingly pushing users to buy extras that have been likened to “gambling products” and can cost hundreds of pounds a year.

Many apps, including Tinder, Bumble and Hinge, now offer the prospect of more matches, more profile visibility and more dates – if users pay more money. A former employee of Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, told the Observer: “All they care about is revenue, finding as many ways as possible to lure people to a paid feature.”

At least 4.4 million adults in the UK use online dating platforms or services, according to data company Statista. About a quarter of users pay for the services, generating £150m in annual revenue and placing the UK as the third-largest dating app market globally, behind only the US and China.

The most popular in the UK are Tinder, Bumble and Hinge, which all offer a “freemium” model of a free account with options to upgrade and subscription rates of up to £69.99 a month. Today, even rudimentary features on some apps, such as seeing everyone who “liked” your profile, are unavailable without paying.

While testing Tinder, in just over 60 seconds I was presented with six different adverts offering paid features. After testing Tinder’s 30-minute “boost”, which costs £7.99 and claims to “increase your chances for a match”, a pop-up informed me “You received 38 likes. Don’t keep your match waiting! Get TinderGold to see who!”

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When I went to the “new matches” section, I had no option to see who “liked” me except by paying for a subscription. I was presented again with a pop-up for a TinderGold subscription for a minimum of £11.99 a week.

Match Group has a 60% share of the UK sector, and Bumble Inc about 30%. Match Group is the undisputed goliath, also owning OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, The League, Match.com and more. Its apps have been downloaded 750m times globally and its algorithms decide the romantic fates of millions of people.

But Match is facing increasing scrutiny. A class-action lawsuit in the US, launched earlier this year, claims that: “Harnessing powerful technologies and hidden algorithms, Match intentionally designs the platforms with addictive, game-like design features, which lock users into a perpetual pay-to-play loop that prioritises corporate profits over its marketing promises and customers’ relationship goals.”

A source told the Observer: “[There’s a theory that] the apps are geared not towards matching people, but to keep them on platforms. The algorithm, based on what we can tell from the outside in, is actually sending you false matches, and not delivering the ones you might actually truly be a match [with]”.

This could be for two reasons, the source concluded. “To keep you on the platform”, but also, “breaking down the [users] in terms of sending them matches that make no sense on any level, such that they think that they’re the problem and such that they’re going to be incentivised to continue by escalating subscription costs, and do anything because they are made to feel like they can’t find a match.”

Match Group said: “This lawsuit is ridiculous and has zero merit. Our business model is not based on advertising or engagement metrics. We actively strive to get people on dates every day and off our apps. Anyone who states anything else doesn’t understand the purpose and mission of our entire industry.”

Dating apps today are different from how they were just a few years ago. Tinder, the world’s highest grossing dating app, was free when it became the first mainstream smartphone dating platform in 2012. Other apps emulated its pioneering game-like design, with a carousel of profiles that users can “swipe” through and “like” to match and chat.

After amassing millions of users, Tinder launched its first paid subscription features in 2015. Match acquired Hinge in 2018, and two years later it launched the “standouts” feature, which effectively keeps “people most your type” behind a paywall. It means that daters on Hinge can view the profiles that the app says are “getting the most attention coupled with who we think you’ll like”, but cannot contact them without sending them a “rose”. Hinge offers one free “rose” a week, after which they cost £3.33 each. Bumble offers a similar feature called a “SuperSwipe”: £4 to contact a profile that it says “may help you match!”.The app also offers advanced filters and a more tailored experience for paid users.

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Pop-up adverts in all three apps promote paid-for options that imply you will “get seen by more people” or “get noticed sooner” for a certain period of time. But it’s unclear what users are actually paying for.

Luke Brunning, who runs a love, sex, and relationships research group at the University of Leeds, likened dating apps’ features to video game loot boxes, which have drawn the attention of gambling regulators.

Brunning said that the financial model of some dating apps “is a bit like other kinds of in-video game purchasing, which … some people worry is basically a form of gambling.

“You’re basically saying, ‘look, I’m going to pay money for this profile boost. I’ve got literally no idea how this works. I have no access to data. All I’m doing is paying money to a company in the hope that my profile will be pushed up, and I’ll somehow get an advantage.’ So people worry that could be addictive.”

Before testing Hinge’s boost feature, I was shown a screen that said: “No likes yet – we’re here to help. We can get you seen by more daters, sooner.” I was offered the option to “boost your profile” or “upgrade to HingeX”.

I paid £9.99 for a 60-minute boost, after which I had 23 new “likes”. But I couldn’t see them all. The app told me: “Subscribe to see everyone who likes you”. I was also prompted to buy a £29.99 24-hour “Superboost”, which claims to “get up to 3x more views than Boost”.

One of the men I matched and chatted with indicated that he had “liked” me before I purchased the boost.

Addictive design appears to have been baked in to Tinder from the beginning. Jonathan Badeen, Tinder’s co-founder, invented the swipe mechanism and wrote the original Tinder iPhone application.

In 2018 he told HBO’s Swiped documentary that “we have some of these almost game-like elements where you almost feel like you’re being rewarded. It kind of works like a slot machine.

“You’re excited to see who the next person is … Hopefully, you’re excited to see the ‘It’s a Match!’ screen. A nice little rush.”

Badeen said he’d learned about the intermittent variable reward system, a form of engineered behavioural addiction, in business classes at college. “Having unpredictable yet frequent rewards is the best way to motivate somebody to keep moving forward,” he said.

Intermittent or random rewards are addictive because they hijack the brain’s reward-seeking systems to expect something good to come without knowing when, so people feel compelled to keep playing, scrolling or swiping.

When contacted by the Observer, Badeen said he was no longer affiliated with Tinder or Match Group.

Natasha Schüll, author of Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, compared the infinite vertical scroll of social media – the addictive potential of which the UK parliament is now scrutinising – with the “horizontal scroll” of dating apps.

Instead of going out to meet people in real life, she said, daters “get stuck swiping left and right”. That’s because the designers of these dating apps “make it as easy as possible, like on a slot machine”.

Schüll said: “Gamblers are always talking about this ‘machine zone’ that they get pulled into where they feel like they’re merging with the process. I think this sort of trance-like state, whether it’s texting, or trading, or mobile sports betting or the dating, it starts to feel like this curious, trance-like flow, [where] you can’t stop and you’re just like, ‘let me keep swiping.’”

Schüll believes some dating app companies have used “every manner of enticement and monetisation to get revenue and extract value out of people… preying on their natural humanity. It’s … predatory monetisation, on top of what’s already these … addicting kind of features.”

As a result, she said, “there is some sort of crisis happening” in dating.

Carolina Bandinelli, an associate professor at the University of Warwick who specialises in digital intimacy, has interviewed dating app users in the UK and Italy. “I can report the anger of people with the algorithm and how the algorithm doesn’t work,” she said.

“Those premium subscriptions are the business exploitation, the financial exploitation of this frustration – the promise that if you do something different, if you do something more, then the algorithm will reward you.”

“There is a certain extortion,” she said. “Dating apps are businesses. If they worked, they would be financially unsustainable.”

Tinder claims to have made 55bn matches, but Match Group does not keep data on how many lasting relationships have been formed via its platforms.

Dating apps are regulated in the UK under the Online Safety Act, via Ofcom, but only regarding illegal and harmful content, particularly that concerning children. Technology that may exploit or harm adult consumers was more pertinent to consumer protection law, Ofcom said.

The Competition and Markets Authority said: “Online dating sites must operate fairly and ensure that customers are not misled.”

Tim Giordano, a partner at Clarkson Law Firm, which is leading the US lawsuit against Match, said that people using dating platforms were particularly vulnerable because “the carrot that’s being dangled is the single most important thing that people look for in life, which is love, connection, and companionship”.

Peter*, a 57-year-old divorced father from Fife, has been single since 2012 and uses Match.com and Plenty of Fish. He believes Match deploys cynical tactics to retain subscribers. “When you signify you’re cancelling your membership and you’ve two or three weeks before it ends, all of a sudden … you’re shown a gorgeous [woman].”

Peter believes it is “duplicitous” and “deceitful”. He said: “There must be managers in a room in the Texas HQ of Match.com that say, ‘send profiles to those sad, lonely old men.’”

Earlier this year, Match’s chief executive, Bernard Kim, said: “Our goal is to see real single users find a date and then get off of our apps. We focus on attracting singles who want to make real connections and satisfying our daters who are earnest in their intentions by delivering great experiences.”

A spokesperson also highlighted a 2022 blog post that said the algorithm “recommends profiles using recent activity, who members are sending Likes and Nopes to, profile elements like interests, and location”.

A spokesperson for Bumble said: “Bumble Inc exists to help people build healthy and equitable relationships. During this well-documented loneliness epidemic we firmly believe that relationships are the crucial foundation of a happy and healthy life. The best way we can deliver as a business and for our members is to continuously innovate and drive real impact across the user experience.

“Our business thrives on personal recommendations from success stories of people who’ve found love and friendship through our apps. As a result, there is a strong incentive for our teams to develop features that help users build authentic online connections that can grow into real-life relationships.”

The Advertising Standards Authority indicated that if anyone had concerns over in-app adverts or purchases, it would consider any complaints it received.

The Trading Standards service said “any unhappy consumers should register their complaints with the Citizens Advice consumer service, so Trading Standards can get an idea of the scale of the alleged problem.”

Dating apps do not fall under the remit of the Gambling Commission, which declined to comment.

Peter argued tighter regulation was needed. “I feel exploited by Match,” he said. “Now we’re all just a swipe, and that’s it. It’s depressing. It’s swipe left, swipe right, and we’ve all become monetised. It’s a terrible thing.”