Why a membership is more reputable than free apps

The app is installed in two minutes, registration costs nothing, and shortly thereafter the first notifications arrive: Someone has viewed your profile. Someone finds you interesting. That feels good, and that is exactly why people rarely ask why everything is actually free.

We can answer this question because we know the other side: the side where every day a decision is made as to which registration is approved and which is not. In this post, we show what is documented about free dating apps, what we see during our own registrations, and why even a membership is not a guarantee, but a hurdle.

The one question that decides everything

With every dating platform, one single, very sober question is worth asking: How does this company earn its money? Because you will feel what defines a platform later in everyday life: in the notifications, in the order of the profiles, and in how easy or difficult it is to get out again.

• Advertising: Then your attention is the product. A meeting in the real world brings no profit to the app.
• Data: Then your information is the product: age, location, interests, search behavior.
• Payment per contact: Coins, credits, “boosts”. Then every conversation that quickly turns into a phone call is a loss.

Not because there is a malicious intent behind every free app. But because every business model dictates a direction, and this direction does not automatically align with your wishes. Your goal is to eventually no longer need the app.

What is documented about free dating apps

This sounds like theory, but it is well-documented by organizations that do not sell dating platforms.

Free means: You pay with data. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority found that the free version of a well-known dating app passed on location, IP address, advertising ID, age, and gender to advertising partners without a valid legal basis. In December 2021, it imposed a fine of around 6.5 million euros and noted that this disclosure was part of the core business model. The Norwegian Court of Appeal confirmed the fine in October 2025 as the final instance. The Mozilla Foundation reached a similar conclusion in 2024: 22 out of 25 tested dating apps received a data privacy warning.

Paying alone does not protect you, however. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit in 2019 against a large dating platform. The allegation: Those who registered for free received notifications that someone was interested in them and had to pay to read the message. According to the complaint, a significant portion of these notifications came from accounts that had long been internally flagged as suspected fraudulent. The proceedings ended in 2025 with a settlement of 14 million US dollars, without admission of liability.

The Swiss case: when “free” is the bait

One does not have to look to California for this. In June 2025, SRF Investigativ, “Der Spiegel,” and around twenty other editorial offices published the investigation Dirty Payments. At the center: a network of companies from the Canton of Zug that operates hundreds of similarly structured dating portals, including offers for people aged 50 and over.

The pattern described by numerous affected individuals is always the same: The entry is free. The inbox immediately fills with messages from allegedly interested singles. The trial month turns into a subscription costing around 60 francs a month, there is no cancellation button, and outstanding amounts are collected by a debt collection agency. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs has received over 300 complaints; two warnings remained without effect. We described what such models look like from the inside in Fake Flirts and Chat Moderators.

The point is not that all providers work this way. The point is: The entry was free. The bill came anyway.

What we see when we open the registrations

Up to this point, we have talked about others. Now about us.

We hesitated for a long time to publish these figures because they do not sound like success. In the first 8 months, over 3,000 people registered with DuoLivo. We approved approximately 600 profiles. Everything else was scam attempts or registrations that we deliberately did not approve. In addition, there were more than twenty forged ID images submitted by accounts we had questioned. This is described in more detail in Real People Instead of Fake Profiles.

And this is exactly the point this post is about. If we were ad-funded, these approximately 2,400 rejections would not be a success, but a loss. Registrations would be our product, every deleted account deleted inventory. We would still have the possibility to be strict. We just wouldn’t have an economic reason for it.

A membership reverses this calculation. Our members do not pay for reach, but for the opposite: for a verified community. Added to this is the hurdle itself. Those who pay leave traces: payment data, an ID document upon request, or in case of doubt, an identity check at the post office. Traces are the last thing someone with fraudulent intentions wants. Closed community, no advertising pressure, verified profiles. These three things are connected. You cannot get them individually.

“But isn’t that exactly the same model?”

At DuoLivo, you can register for free. To see profiles and write messages, you need a membership. In terms of form, this is the same model as in the FTC case mentioned above: free entry, pay for contact. What matters is what happens behind the wall.

There, the allegation was that the interest notifications came precisely from the internally flagged fraud accounts, and it was these notifications that sold the memberships. The fake profiles were not the platform’s problem. They were its selling point. Our response to the same accounts is different: We delete them before they reach anyone. That is why it is 600 out of 3,000 and not 3,000 out of 3,000.

Signs that a platform earns from your time

• Every message costs coins or credits. The clearest warning sign: Every conversation that goes well is then a business transaction, every meeting a loss.
• You receive a striking amount of attention before you pay, and little afterwards. This discrepancy is rarely a coincidence.
• The cancellation path is harder to find than the sign-up. Whoever makes it easy to get in and hard to get out has chosen a side.
• The terms include words like “fictitious,” “animator,” or “system message.” Then it is there in black and white that not every profile represents a person with genuine interest.

Signs that a platform shares your goal

• The price is visible before registration. An amount, not a points system.
• The platform is ad-free. Without advertising partners, there is no economic reason to pass on your information.
• Every registration is checked, and additional verification is visible to others. This way, you do not have to rely on your gut feeling alone.
• Automatic renewal is clearly stated before completion, not in footnote 14. And cancellation can be done in the account, not by registered mail.

Where even a membership does not protect you

It would be dishonest to stop here. A membership is a hurdle, not a fence. The subscription traps from the SRF investigation were fee-based. The portal from the FTC case was fee-based. And anyone counting on four-figure sums from a Romance Scam will not be deterred by a few francs in membership fees. The Federal Office for Cybersecurity counts romance scams among the forms of fraud with the largest loss amounts in Switzerland, and according to the FTC, reported losses among older adults increased from around 600 million to around 2.4 billion dollars between 2020 and 2024.

A membership therefore makes forging more expensive, slower, and traceable. It does not replace the review behind it, our work, or your gut feeling.

Before you register: five minutes that are worth it

• Search the terms for four words. “Fictitious,” “animator,” “moderator,” “system message.” If one appears, you know enough.
• Find the cancellation path before you sign up. If you cannot find it, write to support.
• Calculate the price for a year. “Only 9.90 a month” reads differently than the annual amount.
• If you are already in a subscription trap: cancel in writing and verifiably, check for a chargeback with your card provider, and do not pay debt collection reminders prematurely.

Safety First

Regardless of where you register, the principles we describe in more detail in Safe First Meeting apply:

• Never send money to someone you have never met in person. This is the most important rule of all.
• Do not share private addresses or payment data with contacts. Even if the story behind it sounds plausible.
• If someone repeatedly asks for money: break off contact, block, and report. You do not owe anyone an explanation.

Conclusion: not “free or paid,” but “for what”

The question is never whether you pay. You always pay: with money, with time, with attention, or with your data. The question is what your payment rewards on the other side.

A membership is not more reputable simply because it costs money. It is so when the amount is charged once instead of per message, when no one profits from your duration of stay, when every registration is checked, and when you are allowed to leave at any time. If one of these conditions is missing, a membership is just a more expensive free model.

We have chosen this path. Not because it is the most convenient: It forces us to reject more registrations than we accept. But because it is the only one where we can afford this strictness. Trust is not created by many profiles. Trust is created by verified profiles. And by the fact that our interest points in the same direction as yours: that you find someone and no longer need us afterwards.

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