How to get more replies on dating apps

Published Nov 10, 2024

In this article, we’ll crunch the numbers and see who gets the most replies on Duolicious, and how you can be like them. Even though our analysis is based on Duolicious users, there’s no reason this article can’t teach you how to get more replies on Hinge, Tinder, or whatever other dating apps you use.

Who’s in the cohort?

Our analysis is based on a snapshot of Duolicious’ database taken in November 2024. The snapshot contains 116,006 accounts and about 14 million messages. The gender ratio of the snapshot is about 10:1 (male:female). These figures, and our analysis include active and formerly active accounts.

Gender

Gender obviously matters a whole lot when it comes to getting replies.

It’s possible that this link isn’t causal; it might just be because of the gender ratio, and if that were reversed then the men would be the ones getting all the replies.

Bio length

The association between bio length and how many replies you get is very weak.

Though the people who at least write something get significantly more replies than the people who write nothing.

Bios with big words and long sentences

Complicated bios, with long sentences and lots of syllables (i.e. a low Flesch Reading Ease score) tend to get more replies than easy-to-read ones.

Non-ASCII text in your bio

People with non-ASCII text (e.g. emojis or 𝓯𝓪𝓷𝓬𝔂 𝓽𝓮𝔁𝓽) tend to get very slightly more replies.

Number of images

The more photos you have, the more replies you’ll likely get. Adding your first photo makes the biggest difference, though extra ones matter too.

Match percentage

You’re much, much more likely to get replies from good matches than bad ones. Your odds of getting a reply from a 50% match are about 1 in 4. But your odds of getting a reply from a 99% match are about 2 in 3.

Duolicious’ match percentage effectively measures the similarity between members. Even though apps like Hinge and Tinder don’t have match percentages, it’s still a good strategy to look for members similar to you when using those apps, as these are the people who you have the best odds of striking up a conversation and getting along with. Try looking for people who share your interests.

Distance

Maybe surprisingly, there’s no strong relationship between distance and reply rate on Duolicious. This could be because Duolicious’ distance filters work in both directions, so people can only receive messages from people who live far away if they want to receive those messages.

Bio sentiment

The average person whose bio has a neutral tone tends to get very slightly fewer replies than those with a decisively positive or negative one.

Interestingly, women’s reply rate is highest for bios which are only slightly negative, whereas men’s reply rate is highest for very negative bios. Women’s reply rate is lowest for bios which are slightly positive, whereas men’s reply rate is lowest for bios which are neutral. So what’s best for men and women roughly follows a U-shaped curve, but shifted to the left or right depending on gender.

Verification

Counter-intuitively, we couldn’t find a statistically significant relationship between whether someone is verified and how many replies they get, though verified men and women both give more replies than their unverified counterparts.

Number of people messaged

You might expect that people who message lots of other people are indiscriminate and are therefore less likely to get replies. But it turns out that the people who message a lot of people are no more or less likely to get a reply back from each of them than the people who message only a few.

Clubs

People who join more clubs tend to get more replies.

In dating apps other than Duolicious, this probably means you should add lots of interests to your profile.

Among the biggest clubs, members of the trans and femcel clubs are the most likely to get replies, whereas members of the gym club are some of the least likely to get replies. Presumably this has to do with the gender differences in these clubs.

Profile color scheme

People who customize their profile’s color scheme get significantly more replies.

Conclusion

All up, if you want to maximize your odds of getting replies, then the more of these things you do, the better: