We Asked Women What Dating Apps Actually Feel Like. They Did Not Hold Back.

We ran a small survey recently. Just some deep conversations with real women, mostly in their early twenties, most of them in Indian metros, all of them with experience on at least one dating app.

We asked three things. How was your overall experience? Why? And what would actually make you pay for a dating app?

The answers were honest in the specific way that people are honest when they are not performing for an audience. A few were blunt in a way that made us pause. One woman said she wished she had never downloaded the app at all.

Here is what we learned.

More than half rated their experience below average or worse.

About 60% of the women we spoke to described their dating app experience as "below average" or "bad." Another 14% described it as neutral. The remaining said their experience was slightly positive, but even among those women, almost every single one added a qualifier. "Good, but exhausting." "Very good, but creepy people exist." "Good overall, but maybe 10 to 20 percent of people on there are actually serious."

Not one person gave an uncomplicated positive answer. Not one. Even the women who had found friends or gone on genuine dates through apps described the process the way you might describe a city you love but would warn a friend about before they visit.

The portrait that emerged was not of an experience that is uniformly terrible. It was of an experience that requires so much emotional labor, so much filtering, so much self-protection, that even when it works, it feels like work.

The same three words kept coming up.

Ghosting. Safety. Casual.

These were not prompted. We did not ask "have you been ghosted?" or "do you feel safe?" We asked an open-ended question and these words showed up in response after response, unprompted, as if they are just the assumed vocabulary of dating apps in India now.

Ghosting was nearly universal. Women described it not as a rare bad experience but as the default. "People ghost very quickly." "Everyone ghosts after a while." "Delayed replies, then nothing." One woman captured it perfectly: people simply do not move conversations forward. They match, they exchange a few messages, and then they vanish. Not with cruelty. With indifference. Which somehow feels worse.

Safety came up in ways that ranged from practical to visceral. One woman described having a fine experience on a dating app in Gujarat, but the moment she used the same app in a different city, she encountered "creepy jerks" and felt genuinely unsafe. Another asked for a feature where she could share her location with an emergency contact with a single tap if a date went wrong. Several asked for verified profiles not as a nice-to-have but as a precondition for using the app at all.

Casual intent was the pain point that carried the most emotion. Multiple women described the exhaustion of sifting through people who are not looking for what they are looking for. One woman, visibly frustrated even through text, said the men she encountered "just want to hook up" and that using the app to get over a breakup left her more depressed than before. Another said that the percentage of people on dating apps who are genuinely serious about a relationship is maybe 10 to 20 percent. The rest are passing time.

What struck us was not that these problems exist. Everyone knows they exist. What struck us was the resignation. These women were not angry. They were tired. They had accepted that this is what dating apps are, and they were either enduring it or walking away.

What they actually want to pay for is not what apps are selling.

This is where it got interesting.

When we asked what feature would make them pay for a dating app, not one woman said "more matches" or "unlimited swipes" or "see who liked me." Not one. Those are the features that every major dating app monetizes. They are the features that generate billions in revenue globally. And the women we spoke to had zero interest in any of them.

What they wanted was verification. Proof that the person on the other end is real, is who they say they are, and is not a fake or duplicate profile. One woman described the specific nightmare of a friend whose photos were stolen and used to create a fake dating profile without her knowledge. Another simply said: "Double check on the authenticity of each profile. That could ensure safety."

They wanted intent filters. The ability to separate people looking for something serious from people looking for something casual, before a single message is exchanged. Not as a soft preference buried in settings. As a hard filter. One woman put it directly: "There should be an option where people can choose if they want the app just for casual or for genuine connection."

They wanted fewer matches, not more. This one surprised us until it didn't. One woman said she gets 10 to 15 matches a day, and trying to talk to that many people simultaneously is "boring and difficult." Her suggestion: limit matches to 3 or 4 a week "so I can actually get time to know someone I am really interested in."

They wanted audio features before exchanging personal details. Multiple women wanted the ability to voice-call through the app so they could get a sense of someone without having to share their Instagram or phone number.

And they wanted privacy. Not vague privacy. Specific privacy. Disappearing messages. Screenshot notifications. The ability to be anonymous. The option to not have their location visible. One woman listed these not as features she would like but as conditions under which she would feel comfortable using the app at all.

The exhaustion is the real story.

There is a specific pattern in these responses that I want to name, because it is the thing that the data alone does not capture.

Almost every woman described an arc. Excitement at the start. A period of genuine engagement where they met interesting people, had good conversations, maybe even went on dates. And then a gradual decline into exhaustion, boredom, or numbness, at which point they either powered through with diminished expectations or deleted the app entirely.

One woman described it as: "At first it was exciting, new people, swiping was fun. But after a point everyone seemed the same. Either timepass or they ghost."

Another: "It was very good, slightly exhausting after a point."

Another: "It was okay, but I stopped using it very quickly. It felt boring and risky."

This arc is not a bug. It is the user experience. The apps are designed to be exciting at the start, when everything is new and the algorithm is generous with your visibility. Then the novelty fades, the algorithmic boost disappears, the quality of matches declines, and you are left doing the same repetitive work, swipe, evaluate, message, wait, hope, get ghosted, start over, with diminishing returns.

The women we spoke to were not describing a bad product. They were describing a product that is working exactly as intended. The apps are designed to keep you engaged, not to help you find someone. The exhaustion is not a failure of the system. It is the system.

The gap between what exists and what they described wanting is enormous.

Read the responses again. Strip away the slang, the casual tone. Look at what these women are actually asking for:

They want to know the person on the other end is real. They want to know that person is looking for the same thing they are. They want fewer, better options instead of an overwhelming flood. They want to feel safe enough to be themselves without giving away personal information too early. They want someone to help the conversation go deeper instead of watching it die at message three. And they want the platform itself to take some responsibility for the quality of the experience, instead of dumping every filtering, verifying, and safety decision onto the user.

None of this is radical. None of this is technologically impossible. It is just not profitable under the current model, where the business makes money from volume, from engagement, from keeping people swiping rather than helping them stop.

What we heard and what we built.

I am going to be direct about why we ran this survey and why we are publishing the results.

Pinnaya was designed before we had this data. We built it based on a thesis: that dating apps in India are structurally failing serious users, especially women, because the incentive model rewards engagement over outcomes. We built verification because we believed fake profiles were destroying trust. We built a 3-match limit because we believed volume was the enemy of connection. We built progressive profile disclosure because we believed women deserved control over how and when they are seen.

This survey did not tell us we were right. It told us we were not wrong. Every pain point these women described, the ghosting, the casual intent mismatch, the safety anxiety, the exhaustion, the longing for fewer and better matches, maps directly to something we already built.

That is not a coincidence. It is because we talked to women like these before we wrote a single line of code. Not as a marketing exercise. As the foundation of the product.

The women in this survey are not our target demographic in some abstract segmentation sense. They are the people we are building for. Their words, their frustrations, their specific and practical demands for what a dating app should be, are the brief we work from every day.

If you see yourself in these responses.

If you read these responses and felt recognized, if the exhaustion or the resignation or the "I wish I had never downloaded it" landed somewhere in your chest, know this: you are not asking for too much. You are asking for the bare minimum. Verification. Intent alignment. Safety. Fewer matches that are actually worth your time.

The fact that this feels like asking for too much says everything about how low the bar has been set.

The bar should be higher. And the women in this survey are not the only ones who think so.

Pinnaya is the dating app these women described before it existed. Government ID verified. Intent-filtered. 3-match limit so every conversation gets the attention it deserves. Progressive profile disclosure that puts control in your hands. Built by people who listened.

Visit Pinnaya.com | Download on iOS | Download on Android