Tinder Plus Features

This post used to include Tinder Gold features but was split in two due to the increasing number and complexity of features, as well as the controversial nature of Tinder Gold; as of 2019-10-20 .



For Tinder Gold Features, see here.

This is in no way meant to endorse paying for Tinder Plus, nor is it meant to deter people from it. The aim is to explain the features, so you can make an informed decision on whether it seems worth the price to you personally.

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Because Tinder does a pretty poor job of explaining some of these features, in my humble opinion.

Rewind

If you mistakenly liked/noped somebody, you can get them back and correct the mistake. After pressing the rewind button, their card floats back on top of your deck.

Unlimited Right Swipes

Usually, you get around 110 right swipes per 12-24h period, depending on how you spread those swipes.

Unlimited right swipes means just that, of course. You don’t have to worry about counting swipes, and you’ll probably be a little less picky and get more matches because of it. Keep in mind, if you live in a not-so-densely populated area, having unlimited swipes could just mean you’ll run out of active people to swipe on faster.

Since roughly the middle of 2017, there appears to be a hidden swipe limit in place. After 2000 swipes in either direction within one hour, your account becomes locked from swiping for 12 hours, showing you the “Check back later for new people” message. Presumably, this has been put in place to hinder abuse of the system, such as autoswipers and bots, but not declaring this rule anywhere does mean “unlimited” is not quite an accurate description. The limit is actually 47’976 (right) swipes per day. Going over this hourly limit might also affect your score.

5 Super Likes a day

The timer for these works a bit differently than for the 110 swipes. It always refreshes 24 hours after your first issued super like since the last refresh, no matter if you’ve run out or still have some left.

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Since it’s debatable how well super likes even work in the first place, you’ll have to rely on personal experience when deciding whether this is a reason for Plus.

No Ads

No Ads.

Hide Distance

This option seems useful for when you are passporting to a faraway place, for example to pre-swipe in your next vacation location, and don’t want people to swipe left because they see a huge distance indicated in your profile.

Personal Opinion: Unfortunately, the way they implemented this is sub-optimal. It completely removes the distance indicator, so anyone paying attention should come to the conclusion that you have hidden your distance. I believe this is worse than “1200 miles away”. Now if it instead always showed you as “1 mile away”, or in the case of passporting, the actual distance between them and the passport address, it might actually be useful.

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Hide Age

Like hiding distance, this just replaces your age with a blank space.

Personal Opinion: Unlike hiding distance, this is prominently noticeable even without opening a profile. I can’t imagine a situation in which this would be beneficial.

Control *whom you see

“Balanced Recommendations”

This is the standard setting for free users. It shows you profiles based on various factors, but most importantly based on your- and their score, and how recently they were active.

“Recently Active”

Since the standard setting already shows you the most recently active people first, you might wonder what the point of this setting is. And rightly so, because the difference isn’t explained anywhere.

Now, there is no official information on this (that I’ve found), but from personal experience, I was convinced the following is true.

“Recently Active” only sorts profiles based on their “last online” time. It disregards ELO-scores. This means that with this setting active, you’ll see everyone Tinder has been hiding from you while providing you with “Balanced Recommendations”.

Update, 2018-09-27: The above seemed to make sense and was apparently confirmed from smaller tests I did, but in the course of my biggest experiment yet, “Swipin’ ’round the Globe”, I found out I had it all wrong..

As it turns out, the only difference between Balanced, and Recently Active, is really the sorting by recently active (and not distance and other factors). And yes, that is as pointless as it sounds, because activity is already the primary sorting priority of “Balanced”. Over the course of an hour, you will see the same people with both sorting methods.

Switching between the two settings did have a surprising side effect though: If you’ve been in a slump of sorts, choosing another sorting method (and fiddling with distance settings to update the stack) can suddenly show you attractive profiles again. Why? No idea, but it was a welcome discovery.

Control who sees you

“Standard”

This is the standard setting. You are shown to people within your attractiveness bracket, according to your score within Tinder’s algorithm.

“Only People I’ve liked”

Plus feature. Nobody will come across your profile unless you like them first.

Only recommended if you are drowning in matches anyway, and/or you have a reason to hide your Tinder profile from certain people, like students of your class.

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Passport

This feature is useful if you want to gather some matches in your next vacation destination before you get there, to swipe in multiple locations in general (for example if you often travel between cities), or just to satisfy your curiosity.

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 When you select a location with Passport, Tinder will treat your profile as if you were there, except it still shows your actual distance to matches.

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 When switching locations, you will not be visible to people in your last location(s) anymore, except for the ones you already swiped right on and the ones whose decks Tinder already assigned you while you were there.

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 You can keep up to 4 passport locations in your list. When you add new ones, the oldest one (the one you’ve used least recently) gets pushed out. When you relog, the list is cleared except for the place you have currently selected.

Good to know: When you first show up in a new location, whether you’re actually there or passporting, your profile gets a visibility boost similar to the noob boost for new accounts. It also lasts about a day. This is meant to help tourists along, so they don’t have to wait too long to be noticed, as otherwise they might already be home again by the time the matches start rolling in.

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A nice bonus (if the people like you where you’re being boosted) is the fact that this influences your score. So if you find a place on earth where you’re just the local’s type, you can improve your score by passporting there and keeping that setting for a few days. Back home, you’ll profit from your boosted score for a while. Just keep in mind the ELO-carriage will most likely turn back into a pumpkin at midnight (or after some days.)

Paid Super Likes

For the low low price of about a buck a pop, you get to issue additional superlikes, should the 5 a day from the Plus subscription not be sufficient. Given the uncertain reaction of the recipient, this may not be the best investment you can make. A super like is just as likely to turn someone off, rather than featuring you in the spotlight and getting their attention these days. Some find it adorable, some might just give you a closer look, some find it desperate and/or creepy.

Even if you don’t care about wasted money, personally, I’d go waste it somewhere more fun, as you might actually lower your chances with your dream match by sending them a super like.

Good to know: These count as consumables, which means you will lose any you had left, should you choose to reset your account.

Paid Boosts

Like paid superlikes, boosts count as consumables and will be lost when you delete your account. Unlike paid superlikes, they seem to be super effective! (Because the effectiveness of not using them has been reduced. Allegedly.)

Addendum: Since the release of… Super boosts… Yes, “Super boosts”… the effectiveness of normal boosts seems to have been reduced. Strange.

Not to be confused with the kind of boost new profiles, or travelers get.

I do feel the need to point out that Tinder’s description of the feature is not only lacking but heavily misleading, in my humble opinion.



While boosting, you are not placed at the top of everyone’s queue. Not even when adjusted for everyone else who’s using boost right now.

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 It seems while your boost is active, Tinder places your profile card near the top of the deck for people you’ve liked, whether they’re currently online or not. Of course, if they’re not swiping at the same time, your card will be pushed further down in time, as others’ cards pile up on top.

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Meanwhile, your profile is placed in the decks of approximately tenfold the number of people you would usually be shown to, but this comes with a catch: It’s also not only the people Tinder would usually recommend you to. See below:

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 Meanwhile, your profile is placed in the decks of approximately tenfold the number of people you would usually be shown to, but this comes with a catch: It’s also not only the people Tinder would usually recommend you to. See below:  Apparently, boosts ignore both your distance settings and Score, basically showing you anyone (and showing you to anyone). If you have a non-average score, you should notice a change in the types of matches suggested.

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 It is speculated (and seems evident) that since the Boost feature exists, your visibility while not boosting is noticeably reduced, compared to before. I should note that this could also be solely due to non-boosters being pushed back in the queue by boosters. Though this explanation is not likely to be responsible for the entire reduction.

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 Tinder Plus users get one free boost per month (since 2017, it used to be one per week originally). The timer starts as soon as a boost is used. Grandfathered Plus accounts may keep their one-a-week boost, which is something to consider before resetting your account.

Super Boosts

As the name suggests, super boosts are much stronger, and much more expensive boosts lasting three hours. Supposedly they will net you “up to” 100x more likes than swiping regularly and all that for the low low price of 30 dollars or more (prices depend on user location and age (sometimes not even that)).

For my full opinion on the matter, see this post from when super boosts were released.

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I hope you found this guide helpful. Thoughts? Criticism? Praise? Something to add? Feel free to leave a comment below, or visit the SwipeHelper Subreddit. See you there 🙂