So things aren’t going well on Tinder, because you have almost no matches. And when a girl does bite, it takes 2-3 messages before the girl replies.
Then you see the colorful and promising promo for Tinder Gold. The subscription is supposed to remedy the situation by unlocking various extra features. And then, a few questions pop into your head:
- Is Tinder Gold worth it as a guy? What are the advantages of the premium version? Will you get more matches and dates with attractive women?
- What are the differences compared to the other premium versions (Plus and Platinum)?
- Is the cost of the subscription justified or is it just a waste of money?
- Do you need Tinder Gold? Is it necessary to be successful on Tinder? Or is the free version enough?
I put the paid version through a thorough test and extensively tried out the additional features so you don’t have to! I’ll tell you about my experiences in this article:
The extras and advantages of Tinder Gold
Basically, the Gold subscription offers all the extra features of Tinder Plus, but also includes some additional functions. It is, so to speak, the “upgrade” to the Plus version, as you will see below.
But is Tinder Gold worth it, or is the subscription just a bunch of marketing junk? This is a fair question, after all, no one wants to throw their hard-earned money out the window.
To figure this out, let’s first take a close look at the individual subscription features and see what they offer you.
Each individual feature of Tinder Gold is given a rating, depending on how useful (or useless) it is.
“Useful” 🙂
“Just Okay” 😐
“Meh” ☹️
You could just call it “good – average – bad”, but that would be boring, right?
So, let’s get started with the test of Tinder Gold and go through the features one by one:
Instantly see who has liked you
Doesn’t this Tinder feature make you go bananas? You get a notification that a girl likes you – and according to the blurry profile picture, she seems to be pretty good looking too.
But then you swipe like crazy through the partner suggestions without finding the lady in the “stack of profiles”. In the worst case, the match you’re hoping you to get NEVER materializes!
So, you accumulate a lot of likes from women, but you can’t like them back.
Really annoying, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, this happens quite often on the app, for various reasons: because the lady is already out of range (for your search radius) or Tinder wants to fire you up a bit and use their app a bit more.
To solve this problem, you need Tinder Gold:
With the premium version, you can directly see who gave you a Like – and IMMEDIATELY make the match with that person, without hours of swiping!
Therefore, this feature is very helpful for uncovering Likes and just save you a lot of precious time swiping and looking for the needle in the haystack.
Rating: Useful 🙂
Full access to all Top Picks
The so-called Top Picks are a compilation of selected profiles that are either particularly attractive or have certain similarities with your profile.
These profiles are renewed every 24 hours and exchanged for new suggestions.
Tinder Gold offers you two advantages over the free version in terms of the range of functions of Top Picks:
- Daily access to all Top Picks profiles (instead of just the first 10 every day).
- Possibility to buy additional Top Picks
Top Picks are supposed to be a kind of gourmet menu for Tinder – but as a man, you can quickly lose your appetite!
Because they are usually the “elite” of the most attractive women with top model photos, that are extremely picky with who they swipe so a normal, average guy has a veeery small chance to match with them. This is true even if you use swipes in combination with Super-Likes (see below!).
So a Gold subscription won’t help you get a match in Tinder with these Instagram beauties and travel girls. At least that’s my experience.
So the benefit is extremely low, the additional function brings next to nothing.
Rating: Meh ☹️
“Passport” feature (free choice of location).
Do you want to swipe in New York, Paris or London? Or just in a far off corner of your home country?
With the so-called “passport” you are no longer limited to your search radius in the dating app, because you can set your location freely – and worldwide!
This premium feature in Tinder Gold is worth it, since it can be useful in several cases:
- If you’re traveling to a certain place soon and want to set up a date with a woman there beforehand.
- Or vice versa: if you want to keep swiping on your hometown while traveling with your cell phone.
- If you just want to meet people from other regions, countries and cultures (also to train your foreign language skills)
- if you want to define a location in order to find a specific woman in a narrow radius there
- if you are looking for a partner abroad because you like a certain type of woman (for example Asians, Eastern Europeans, Latinas etc.)
So, having the “passport” in your bag of tricks is a good thing when using Tinder, as long as you are the traveling kind.
Rating: Useful 🙂
5 Super Likes per week for free
The step up from the “normal” Like is a Super-Like, which you can give by tapping the button with the blue star (or swiping up).
This is a kind of giant virtual compliment on your cell phone, as if you were bringing a stuffed teddy bear and a bouquet of flowers on a first date.
You get 5 Super-Likes every week for free as a subscription. However, you can also buy them individually at any time, even in the free version of Tinder without a subscription. One super like is worth around $3-5, depending on how many you buy at once.
However, using Super-Likes on Tinder as a guy might not be the best strategy. Why’s that?
Here’s the short version of my reasoning:
A Super-Like comes across as way too eager, especially to desirable girls – as if you’re desperately begging for attention because you lack confidence about your attractiveness through the normal swiping process.
Also, pretty women are tagged with lots of super likes in the app, so you don’t necessarily gain their attention either, but get lost in the crowd as well.
My experience with Tinder Gold is that super likes do not lead to more matches. As such, try keeping your fingers away from the blue star!
If you still want to try Super-Likes, you can save quite a bit of money if you buy Super-Like packages individually instead of getting a full Gold subscription.
Rating: Just Okay 😐
Unlock unlimited likes
The makers of the dating app have built in something really nasty for swiping: a Like limit. This means that after about 50 to 100 swipes to the right, it’s over.
You can then no longer give likes in Tinder and have to wait 12 hours until you can start liking again.
It’s kind of like the evil kindergarten teacher that takes away a kid’s toys.
For most guys, Tinder Gold is worth it simply because it lets you give out unlimited likes. It vastly increases your chances of having a match by giving you the power to cast a wider net.
Of course, you should have a profile that is as attractive as possible, so that you get enough matches within the Like limit. In addition, it is never a smart strategy for your ranking with the Tinder algorithm to wipe all partner suggestions to the right.
But studies have shown that normally attractive men, even with 50 to 100 likes, only average 1 lousy match per day.
At this point, the law of large numbers begins to apply:
The more profiles you can like, the more chances you have to get matches. So to get a certain number of matches per day, you have to “break” the like limit!
Therefore, this ability to give unlimited likes is gold in Tinder, especially for the average guy.
Rating: Useful 🙂
Undo last swipe decision
There will be times when you come across the profile of what seems to be your dream girl, except that your finger misfires and swipes to the left instead of the right…
…and now you have to deal with the fact that the girl that might have been the One is gone, never to be seen again, even though you actually wanted to give her a nice Like!
For this emergency you need Tinder Gold, because with it you can undo the last swipe and decide again – in this particular case to swipe right on the girl with the awesome profile.
To do this, users simply tap on the button with the yellow “back arrow”.
While a nice quality of life feature, it’s not a must, especially if you don’t swipe your phone like it has ketchup stains on the screen.
If you stay calm and focused in the Tinder app, such a mishap won’t happen in 99% of cases.
In this respect, you can usually skip this premium feature, since it hardly brings anything useful.
Still, mistakes happen, so the rewind feature is definitely a lifesaver that you can use every now and again.
Rating: Just Okay 😐
1 free boost per month
Want to get on the fast track and really be hottest commodity around? With Tinder Boost, your profile appears at the very top of the stack of profiles for women in your area – for a full 30 minutes.
This is a really huge advantage on Tinder Gold, because with the boost function you have the chance to get a lot more matches!
However, the strategy only works under three conditions:
- You have really attractive profile pictures – i.e. really good photos that will get you a lot of likes even without Boost.
- You are in a densely populated region (larger city), where there are many single women who can be shown to you.
- You use the Boost at the right time, when many people are active in the dating app (for example, Sunday evening).
If these three conditions are not met, the increased visibility is not worth it.
However, in my experience with Tinder Gold if you have a really good profile and stick to the other rules, you’ll easily get 5 to 10 matches in those 30 boost minutes. Cool, isn’t it?
By the way, you can also buy the boosts in Tinder individually – in packages of 1, 5 or 10.
Depending on the size of the package, you’ll pay between 4 and 6.50 dollars per piece.
If you only want to use the Boost feature, it doesn’t make sense to buy the complete Gold version right away. In that case, it’s cheaper to buy Boosts individually, without a subscription.
Rating: Useful 🙂
Hide distance and age in profile
With the Gold version you can set hide your distance and age so that they’re no longer displayed in your profile. This can be useful for men who don’t want to reveal everything about themselves right away when online dating.
Overall though, Tinder Gold is not worth it for this feature, at least that’s my opinion.
Because honestly, why would you hide this information in the app?
In fact, secrecy can be extremely detrimental, as women on Tinder naturally want to know exactly how old you are and where you’re from.
Very few female users are interested in a guy who could be old enough to be their dad or something in real life.
Also, the prospect of a possible long-distance relationship does not look very promising with a guy who hides such information.
Therefore, your profile should immediately provide clarity regarding your distance and age.
However, when using the “passport” feature mentioned above, it can be very helpful to hide the distance. After all, meeting a man on Tinder thousands of miles away might scare off a lot of ladies, so you’ll get fewer matches.
As such, the only real advantage of hiding your distance is if you’re passporting yourself to far away places.
Rating: Just okay 😐
Only visible to liked people
In addition, you can set in Tinder that you are only displayed to those people who you have previously given a Like. With this, you are of course relatively anonymous in the dating app, almost like an invisible ghost.
Using this premium feature only makes sense in two cases:
- for women who are usually overwhelmed with Likes and want to be more selective by choosing exactly which man is “allowed” to see / Like them.
- If you fear being seen by certain people on Tinder – for example, nasty work colleagues, your ex-girlfriend, or your current partner (if you’re cheating, which I hope you’re not!).
Otherwise, this incognito feature isn’t that useful since it really limits how many women can see your profile, which in turn reduces the number of likes you’ll get.
The disadvantage of the whole thing is that you miss many chances for matches, because your profile is simply no longer visible in the app.
Thus, there is also no longer the possibility that women discover you first when swiping and give you a like, which you can then like back so you can get a match.
If you use this feature, you will literally dissapear from Tinder and get fewer likes. No thanks!
On top of that, hiding your profile is a huge contradiction with the other useful feature in Tinder Gold, where you can see how many people have liked your profile. So you’re basically cancelling out one feature with another.
Rating: Meh ☹️
Hide ads
While swiping, you’ll sometimes see ads for fast food delivery services, fitness coupons, and all other sorts of things you never knew you wanted (according to marketers).
These ads can be briefly annoying when online dating, but still isn’t a problem in my eyes.
All you have to do is just swipe left on those ads. It’s just a small movement with your finger on your phone, and the ad disappears immediately.
Unlike other free apps, Tinder doesn’t require you to watch a minute-long video before you can get back to enjoying life. The whole thing is therefore comparatively bearable and hardly distracting.
So Tinder Gold is not worth it for this. However, ad-free use is a nice extra that one is always happy to take.
Rating: Just Okay 😐
The costs for Tinder Gold at a glance
Now you know what features you’ll get with Tinder subscription – and whether these features will help you to get more matches and dates.
Of course, the only question that remains is how much all this fun will cost.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to make a general statement about the costs in Tinder, because Tinder has different prices for each individual, depending on various factors. These include, for example:
- Age
- Gender
- Operating system (Android or iOS)
- Location
The price listed in your own Tinder app is the only one that matters, so take a look and see for yourself.
But just so you have an idea, here are the prices a 36 year old guy has to pay for Tinder on Android:
As you can see, you can choose between a 1, 6 or 12 months subscription periods. The longer the term, the cheaper the Gold subscription will be (converted to the single month).
Is Tinder Gold worth the money?
Longer-term subscriptions to Tinder Gold are definitely worth it – especially considering the cool features you get for the price!
After all, with a 6-month term, you’re only paying half per month, and with a 12-month term, you’re only paying a third per month compared to the “original” cost of the 1-month Gold subscription.
In my opinion, the 12 bucks per month for the annual subscription is an absolutely fair price, considering that the cheapest boost alone costs about 5-6 dollars if you buy it in a package of 10.
However, the cost of Tinder Gold for a 6-month subscription is already close to the pain threshold, and a 1-month subscription is even more expensive. Therefore, you should only buy a 1 month subscription just once at most, as a “trial offer”, so to speak.
Tinder Gold vs Platinum vs Plus
Another question is: Is Tinder Gold worth it, compared to the other two premium subscription models Plus and Platinum?
Which of the three subscriptions should you choose to buy? What is the difference between all the variants?
For this, you have to know that the Gold version is more or less the “middle class”.
This means that in terms of features and prices, Tinder Gold is in the midfield between the cheaper Plus and the more expensive Platinum subscription.
You can also see which features are included in each of the three subscriptions in the table in my article on Tinder costs.
Advantages of Tinder Gold compared to the Plus subscription
As you may have already seen in the app itself, Tinder Plus is the slimmed-down version of the Gold subscription.
The following additional features you can find in Tinder Gold are NOT included in the meager Plus version:
- the 5 free super likes per week
- the free boost 1x per month
- see directly who has liked you
- full access to all your top picks
The biggest features you would miss in the Plus version of Tinder compared to Gold is the free monthly Superboost and instantly seeing the profile of people who have given you a like.
Think long and hard if you need those two features of Tinder Gold. Go through the list of features again and check whether the slimmed-down Plus subscription is not enough for you.
Of course, the flip side of Tinder Plus is that the much more affordable price tag compared to Gold and especially Platinum.
Even more extras – Tinder Platinum as a complete package
The Platinum subscription is the luxury class among the paid Tinder versions, because it offers the largest range of features in the app.
The following three extras are included in Platinum that you do NOT get in Tinder Gold:
- Attach message to super like to start messaging women before a match.
- Priority-Likes: Be shown first to users you swipe right on.
- See every person you’ve liked in the past 7 days.
So are these features worth it for guys?
Short version:
The biggest win is that you can send a message to a girl without matching with her (limited to Super Likes). A lot of the times, this is “pure platinum” in online dating.
Because once you know the tips and tricks on how to formulate the best Tinder openers, you can attach a creative first message to your Super Like and that will dramatically increase your chances of scoring a like.
This will get a lot of girls to reply, even if they would never have liked you based on your photos alone.
In addition, you’ll really stand out among the sea of male competition by a having a cool opener.
So if you haven’t gotten many matches on Tinder, a platinum subscription might be a better choice than the gold version.
Of course, this also results in higher costs.
Conclusion: Is Tinder Gold worth the money as a guy?
The paid Gold subscription offers quite a few advantages thanks to the extra features that are unlocked for you as a user.
In my experience, the most important features on Tinder Gold include:
- unlimited likes without limit
- see who has liked you to directly make the match
- the 1 free boost every month
- the “passport” feature to swipe around the world (including hide distance in your profile)
- undo accidental dislikes
For these additional features, I can definitely recommend the premium version!
Whether you need Tinder Gold depends on your personal swipe habits as well as preferences in the dating app.
For example, if you are traveling a lot in the big wide world, the “Passport” is almost mandatory for you. And if you like to swipe for a long time every day, you should urgently remove your Like limit.
My tip for your decision strategy: go through the description of the individual features above and think about what you really need.
Then you can decide whether Tinder Gold is worth it for you or not.
It may also be that the Plus or Platinum subscriptions described above make more sense for you instead – depending on which features you need most urgently in your current situation.
Tinder Gold won’t save you from a bad profile!
With all that being said, there’s a big caveat to using Tinder Gold, Plus or Platinum:
A paid subscription won’t save you from a poorly setup profile.
Lots of guys believe that they can make up for an incredibly bad profile by buying a Gold subscription, thinking this would somehow magically make girls swipe right on you more often.
Unfortunately, that’s not really the case.
A Tinder premium subscription is only worth it if you already have a decent profile that gets you at least 1-2 matches per day, since a premium sub will let you increase those numbers quite a bit. If you aren’t getting any matches at all, you should focus on remaking since paying for a subscription won’t help you at all.
A premium Tinder subscription is a “win more” type of feature, where guys with solid profiles get multiple times more matches.
If you’re on a free Tinder account, and are getting 0 matches, then a premium Tinder account will also give you multiple times more matches. Unfortunately, any multiple X 0 = also 0.
This is because with an unattractive profile, women will still hardly like you, no matter how often you use the boost, passport or other premium features. It simply won’t make a difference.
So if you don’t have good profile pictures and description texts in the dating app, the money you pay for a subscription is really wasted.
But once you upload attractive photos and write really cool sentences in the Tinder bio, a subscription will hugely magnify your success.
So if you’ve done your “homework” in this regard, Tinder Gold is quite worthwhile. You’ll get so many matches that you won’t be able to write to all the women – let alone meet them on a date.
3 easy steps to improve the Tinder profile of any guy
Use Photofeeler.com to the best photos for you
Photofeeler.com is a free platform where you upload photos of yourself, and 20 other users will judge how good the photos are. It has 3 major categories: Social, Dating and Business photos.
Users can even leave quick comments and feedback on your photos, so you can know what makes them low-quality.
Overall, it’s a great service for someone who has trouble figuring which photos are good for dating, and which aren’t.
Here are a couple of examples so you can see how it would look like:
Wear a suit if possible
If you’re a guy, consider adding a photo of you in a nicely fitting suit.
It’s best if it’s not a selfie. If you don’t have somebody around to take a photo of you, then consider buying a cheap phone tripod. Put it on a counter somewhere and pose as if you’re about to leave the house and someone took a surprise photo.
Does it seem fake? Maybe. But if you already have suit, this means you’re the kind of guy to use suits. It’s just that nobody seems to have had the chance to take a decent photo of you in it.
You know it’s funny. I used Tinder for a long time with decent success with a profile of varied pictures that people suggest: mixture of me being out and about, being active, some with people/some by myself. But then one day I changed my profile pic of a new one with a suit and a tie and the same ones from before trailing after that. I reset the account and I’ve been getting blown up every since and been getting a lot of attention from girls, even initial contacts. Even the dates have seemed to have gone a lot better.
Blog reader quote
Have photos with a dog (or cat)
According to science, having a photo with a dog can dramatically increase your chances of getting Tinder matches.
To back this up, a UK based pet food company called Webbox once did a test on Tinder to see if having a photo with a dog can help out guys and girls on the app.
Sure enough, it did. Below are the improved results for a man’s profile that added a single photo with a dog.
So if you have a dog, use a photo of him and you.
If you don’t have a dog, try “borrowing” one from friends or family. If your friends or family don’t have one, then consider volunteering for an animal shelter and snap a photo while you’re there.
If you’re more of a cat person, then posting a photo with your furry will also work, although not as well as a dog photo will.
Might this come across as deceptive? Maybe. But then again, all is fair in love and war.