New Dating Apps in 2026: 8 Worth Knowing — and Where They Actually Work

Search "new dating apps" and you will get a list of Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and a dozen others that launched between 2004 and 2015. That is not a new dating app list. That is a list of dating apps.

Quick disclosure: GRASS is ours, and that is the only reason it is first on the list below. Now the short version. Five apps genuinely launched in the US in 2024 or later and are running today: Sitch, 222, Cerca, Known, and Ditto. Two more are here for different reasons: Timeleft shipped in December 2023, a month before the cutoff — but its US expansion is a 2024–2026 story, and it has the widest coverage of anything on this page. Overtone hasn't opened to the public at all — it earns a spot here for who is backing it, not for what you can download today. Beyond that, almost none of these work nationwide. Most run in a handful of cities, one is San Francisco only, and one is limited to a few dozen college campuses. That last detail is the one every other list leaves out, and it is the one that decides whether any of this is useful to you.

Below: what each one actually does, when it launched, where it works, and who is paying for it. Every launch date here was pulled from the app's original US App Store record on August 25, 2026, then cross-checked against independent press coverage. Where the two disagree, we say so.

What counts as a "new" dating app in 2026?

Three tests. An app has to pass all three to make this list: it first shipped in the US in 2024 or later, it is still operating today, and you can actually download and use it in the United States.

Those sound obvious. They knock out most of what is currently ranking for this search.

Three of the eight bend one of those rules — Timeleft, Overtone, and us — and each entry says exactly how. We are not exempting ourselves from a test we wrote. The point of a list like this is to tell you which is which, rather than quietly fudge the rule to fit.

• Apps that are not new. Breeze is regularly listed as a 2025 launch. Its App Store record goes back to September 2019 — the 2025 news was a US market expansion, not a product launch. Sweatpals has been on the store since July 2022.
• Apps that are dead. Thursday, the once-a-week dating app with roughly two million lifetime users, announced in January 2025 that it was shutting the dating app down and pivoting the company to in-person events. It still shows up on "new apps for 2026" lists. City A.M. reported the shutdown at the time. What remains on the US App Store is "Thursday Events," a ticketing app filed under Entertainment.
• Apps you cannot use here. Sonder got a wave of coverage in 2026 for its deliberately irritating sign-up flow. It operates in London, with a few thousand users and four co-founders all working on it part-time.

This list is not exhaustive either, and anyone who claims theirs is complete is guessing. Apple does not publish a "browse new dating apps by launch date" view. What follows is what survived verification — not everything that exists.

Why so many new dating apps launched in 2025 and 2026

Because the incumbents are shrinking, and everyone in venture capital can read a quarterly filing.

The single most telling line comes from Match Group's own Q2 2026 results (filed August 4, 2026). Tinder's daily active users are still falling year over year. The company frames the 4% Q2 decline as "the best result in 10 quarters" — which is a genuinely improving number, and also an admission that the decline has been running for a long time. Across all of Match Group, payers fell 6% year over year to 13.3 million, while revenue per payer rose 6% to $21.13. Fewer people, paying more each.

Bumble Inc.'s Q2 2026 release is steeper: total paying users down 16.4% to 3.2 million, total revenue down 15.2% to $210.5 million, a net loss of $127.9 million.

Those Match Group and Bumble filings cut both ways, though. Match Group's net income rose 36% and Hinge's revenue grew 22%, so the decline is not uniform — the portfolio is holding revenue roughly flat by extracting more from a shrinking base, and Bumble is the one genuinely contracting. One more thing most write-ups skip: those are global figures. They are not evidence about American users specifically — using global numbers to talk about American daters is comparing the wrong pool. For the US picture you want a US survey.

The most current one is from SSRS, fielded in January 2026 with a nationally representative sample of 2,012 adults. It found 37% of US adults have ever used an online dating site or app — but only 6% are currently using one. Among adults under 30, 51% have tried it and 10% are still on it.

It is tempting to call that whole gap a market opportunity, and most write-ups do. The same survey argues against it: about half of the people who have used these apps say they found a committed relationship through one. A good share of that gap is people who left because it worked. What remains — the people who stopped and got nothing out of it — is a smaller number than the headline suggests, and it is the part every app below is actually competing for.

One last sourcing note, because it affects almost everything else written about this topic. The Pew Research figure you see quoted everywhere — 30% of US adults have used a dating site or app — comes from a report published in February 2023, but the fieldwork was done in July 2022. Pew has not run a new online dating survey since. Every "2026 dating statistics" roundup citing Pew is citing four-year-old fieldwork.

The 8 new dating apps of 2026, compared

We start with our own app, because you should know whose list this is before you read the rest of it — not because it won anything. After that, the order follows how much independent verification exists for each, not how interesting the pitch sounds. Five of the eight are clean 2024-or-later launches; three carry an asterisk, and one of those three is ours. For each one: what is genuinely new about it, where it works, and what it costs you.

1. GRASS — the activity is the filter

Launched: 2020 on the US App Store; the US push is a 2026 story — our own account, not independent reporting. Where: nationwide, deepest in outdoor-and-athletic-leaning metros.

GRASS removes the grid. You post or join an actual thing — a trail run, a climbing session, a morning hike, a pickup game, across 30-plus activity types — and meet whoever shows up. No essay to write, no matchmaker fee: the filter is the activity. Someone who turns up at 7am to run has already told you something no profile can.

The catch: by this article's own first test it is not a new app — it shipped in 2020 and only the US side is recent, the same asterisk Timeleft carries below. Density applies to us as much as to anyone here: if a trailhead, a bouldering gym, a pickup game or a long walk somewhere green is a plausible Saturday, there are people to meet. If none of those are, better to know before you download anything.

2. Sitch — a matchmaker instead of a menu

Launched: July 2024 (US App Store record). Where: New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago and Austin, per its own site as of August 2026.

Sitch removes the browsing entirely. You answer around fifty questions by text or voice, real people on the team review every profile, and an AI matchmaker sends you specific introductions. There is no grid to scroll.

It raised a $5 million seed round from M13 and a16z speedrun — $7 million in total funding to date — and TechCrunch covered the model in June 2025, when it was still New York only. It sold introductions in packs of three ($89.99), five ($124.99) and eight ($159.99) — check current pricing before you commit, because this is a paid service, not a freemium app.

The catch: five cities. If you are not in one of them, there is nothing here for you yet — the nationwide apps built for serious intent are the realistic fallback.

3. 222 — dinner with six strangers, no profiles at all

Launched: February 2024 (US App Store record). Where: 17 markets per Forbes, biggest in New York — not all of them are US. Cost: $22.22/month, plus the cost of the dinner itself.

222 puts you at a table with about six people it thinks you will get along with. There are no profiles, no photos to judge, and no direct messaging. Its own App Store description tells you "this is not a dating app" — worth taking at face value. People do meet partners through it, but it is built as a group experience first.

It raised a $10.1 million Series A in December 2025 led by Upfront Ventures, and was profiled by Forbes in July 2026 alongside the other founders reworking this category.

The catch: a monthly subscription that only pays off if you actually show up to dinners with strangers. If that sentence made you tense, this is not your app.

4. Cerca — friends of friends only

Launched: 2025. Where: strongest in New York and on college campuses.

Cerca only matches you with people connected to someone you actually know. You get four swipes a day, you see the mutual friend before you see the photos, likes are anonymous, and screenshots are blocked. The whole design runs on borrowed trust rather than volume.

TechCrunch reported in October 2025 that it had around 60,000 users, concentrated in New York and on campuses, on a $1.6 million seed round. The mechanic is not new, which is the interesting part: Hinge launched in 2013 matching people through their Facebook friend lists, and dropped the friends-of-friends signal in 2018.

One honest note on the launch date: the App Store record says January 2025, while press coverage from October 2025 describes it as having launched "a few months ago." We take the store record's January 2025 and flag the gap. Its current store copy claims coverage across the US, UK and Canada — that is marketing copy, not verified reach, and the independently reported figure is the 60,000 above.

The catch: it is only as good as your existing social graph. Move to a new city and it has almost nothing to work with — which is precisely when most people want a dating app. If the appeal for you is the lower exposure rather than the mutual friends, the apps built for introverts solve that without needing a shared network.

5. Known — a 26-minute phone call instead of a profile

Launched: February 2026 (US App Store record). Where: San Francisco only.

There is nothing to fill out. You talk to an AI — the company says the average call runs about 26 minutes — and it builds your profile from the conversation. Once matched, you have 24 hours to accept and 24 hours to lock in a date. The clock is the product.

TechCrunch covered it in December 2025 while it was still in San Francisco testing, ahead of the February 2026 store launch; it has raised $9.7 million from investors including Forerunner Ventures and NFX.

Its headline numbers are worth a second look. The often-repeated stat that 80% of its introductions turn into real dates appears verbatim in the company's own store listing, and the "under 1% no-show rate" is the company's own claim relayed in press coverage. Neither has been independently audited. Its per-date price has also moved — reported at $30 in December 2025 and $15 by July 2026 — so check before you assume.

The catch: one city. It is a San Francisco product for now.

6. Ditto — one match a week, delivered by text

Launched: 2025 or earlier — its company was founded in 2024 and campus press covered the service in early 2025; the iOS companion app only reached the US App Store in June 2026. Where: a few dozen college campuses, students only.

Ditto is the strangest one here, in a good way. You text a number to join. Every Wednesday at 7pm you get one match. There is no feed to check, no streak to maintain, nothing to open at midnight. A companion iOS app arrived in June 2026, but the product is still the weekly text, not something to scroll.

TechCrunch reported in August 2026 that it had about 150,000 sign-ups, that roughly one in five matches becomes an actual date, and that it had raised $9.2 million. Forbes named UC San Diego, Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Michigan and UT Austin among its campuses.

The catch: if you are not currently enrolled at one of a few dozen schools, you cannot use it. Worth watching rather than waiting for.

7. Timeleft — the widest US footprint here, with a catch

Launched: December 2023 (US App Store record — earlier than the rest, but its US growth is a 2024–2026 story). Where: the broadest US coverage on this list, roughly 46 cities.

Timeleft seats you at a Wednesday dinner with four to six strangers. It also runs women-only tables and a run-then-coffee format. Like 222, it is upfront that this is about friendship, not dating — its own tagline is "Turn Strangers into Friends." Plenty of people meet partners this way regardless; that is just not the promise.

Its scale claims — 200+ cities globally, millions of members — come from its own marketing site and have not been independently audited. What matters more for a reader in Denver or Seattle is simply that it operates there, which most of this list does not.

The catch: you are buying a table of strangers, not a match. There is no public success rate for meeting a partner this way, because that is not what the format is optimized for. Go in wanting an interesting Wednesday and it delivers; go in wanting a partner and you may be disappointed by design. The reason a shared table works at all is the same reason any shared activity does — the group does the introducing for you.

8. Overtone — Hinge's founder, funded by Match Group

Launched: not yet. Where: certain locations later in 2026, per TechCrunch's report.

Overtone is on this list for what it reveals, not because you can use it. It is the new venture from Justin McLeod, who founded Hinge and stepped down as its CEO in 2025. It is voice-first, using AI to make curated introductions.

The part worth pausing on: per TechCrunch's July 2026 report, its $18 million round is funded in part by Match Group, alongside FirstMark Capital and Pace Capital — and Match Group's CEO, Spencer Rascoff, sits on Overtone's board. So one of the most closely watched new entrants in the category is partly financed by, and partly governed by, the incumbent it is positioned against. That is not a scandal, and Match Group announced it openly. It is just the kind of detail that tends to get cut by the time a roundup turns into a list of app names.

The catch: it does not exist yet. Anyone recommending it today is recommending a press release.

Quick comparison: launch date, coverage, and who funds each one

Launch dates are from each app's original US App Store record, checked August 25, 2026 — where press coverage tells a different story, the entry says so. Where a coverage figure could be read more than one way, we name the source: Sitch's five cities and Timeleft's city count are both company-stated; Cerca's reach is the independently reported figure, not the wider one its store listing claims; and our own 2026 US push is our account, with no independent reporting behind it.

The part these lists never tell you: most of them don't work where you live

Count the coverage column again. One app is San Francisco only. One is students only. One needs you to already have friends in the city. Sitch is five cities. 222 is seventeen markets, and not all of those are in the US. Only Timeleft and our own app are available nationwide — and Timeleft is the one that says it is not a dating service, while ours carries the density caveat in its own entry. Being available everywhere is not the same as there being anyone there when you open it.

This isn't a knock on these companies. Matchmaking and dinner-table formats need local density to work at all — a matchmaker with forty people in your metro cannot match you with anyone. Launching city by city is the correct way to build this kind of product.

But it does mean the honest answer to "what are the new dating apps?" for most Americans is: several interesting ones exist, and depending on your zip code, you may be able to use none of them. If you are in New York, you have real options. If you are in Boise, Richmond, or Fresno, you have a reading list. Which makes the more useful question a different one: not which app to wait for, but what is already running near you on a Saturday morning. That test you can apply today, and we come back to it at the end.

If what you actually want is a ranked list of apps that work nationwide today, that is a different question, and we answer it separately in our 2026 dating app rankings. If you are burned out rather than shopping, the 30-day no dating app challenge is probably the more useful page.

Who actually owns the "new" app you just downloaded

None of the seven apps we reviewed above are Match Group brands, and neither are we. The company's own Q2 2026 filing names its portfolio as Tinder, Hinge, Match, Meetic, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, Pairs, Azar, BLK, Chispa, The League, Upward, Salams and HER, plus what it calls other smaller brands.

That list is worth reading twice. Someone comparing Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, The League and HER thinks they are weighing five competitors. They are weighing five products from one company.

Two things get blurred here constantly. "Not on Match Group's brand list" is not the same as "verified independent" — for the smaller apps here, ownership simply is not publicly documented, and we are not going to assert something we did not verify. And Overtone is not a Match Group brand either — but "not a brand" is doing less work than it sounds like, given that Match Group helped fund it and put its CEO on the board. A different thing from ownership, and still worth knowing before you file Overtone under "challenger."

Match Group has also been on a buying spree: it acquired HER in May 2025, invested $100 million in Sniffies in April 2026, and shut down its own LGBTQ app Archer in June 2026, less than three years after launching it. A lot of what looks like a diversifying market is really just capital moving around inside the same handful of companies.

What all of these are reaching for

Line the seven others up and the pattern is hard to miss. Sitch removes browsing. 222 removes profiles. Known removes the form. Ditto removes the feed. Cerca removes strangers. Timeleft removes the one-on-one entirely.

Every one of them is deleting a piece of the swipe-based model, and most of them are replacing it with the same two things: someone or something that filters for you, and a real-world event you have to physically attend. The category's own founders have concluded that scrolling through people is the broken part.

That shared conclusion is why we built GRASS the way we did — and it is the one thing on this page you do not have to wait for anyone to launch. The density caveat in our own entry above is real, and it applies to every app here equally.

But that is a limit on how well any app can match you, not a limit on what you can do this week. The underlying move does not require a company to open your city first. You can show up to a run club, a bouldering gym, or a Wednesday pickup game this week, with or without an app. We wrote about that shift in why run clubs became the new dating apps, and about the mechanics of it in the complete guide to outdoor dating.

Try the activity-first version of this, or just go to the run club — we are genuinely fine with either. If you want the app: download GRASS free.

FAQ

What are the new dating apps in 2026?

Five of the eight genuinely launched in the US in 2024 or later and are running today: Sitch (matchmaker-led introductions), 222 (six-person dinners, no profiles), Cerca (friends of friends only), Known (an AI voice call instead of a profile) and Ditto (one match by text each Wednesday, students only). Timeleft, which shipped in December 2023, has by far the widest US coverage of the group. Overtone, from Hinge's founder, has not opened to the public yet. Our own app, GRASS, is on the list too, with its own asterisk: it shipped in 2020 and only its US push is recent.

What is the newest dating app in 2026?

It depends which date you count, which is worth knowing before you trust any list on this. Known is the most recent to open publicly: TechCrunch reported it was still in San Francisco beta testing in December 2025, and its App Store record dates to February 2026. Ditto's iOS app is the newest arrival on the App Store (June 2026), but the service itself has run through iMessage since 2025 and its company was founded in 2024 — the app came late to something already running.

Are any of these new dating apps free?

Mostly no, and that is the biggest structural difference from the last generation. Sitch charges roughly $90–$160 per batch of introductions, 222 runs $22.22 a month on top of what you spend at dinner, and Known has charged per date. The swipe-based apps were free to download and monetized later; these are closer to paid services from the first screen. Our own app is the exception on this list — downloading it and joining activities does not cost anything, with an optional paid tier on top — but we would say that, so weigh it accordingly.

Which new dating apps work outside major cities?

Two of the eight: Timeleft, which says on its own site that it operates in roughly 46 US cities — and describes itself as a friendship service rather than a dating app — and our own app, which is available nationwide but is thinner outside outdoor-and-athletic-leaning metros. Every other app here runs in between one and seventeen markets, or is restricted to college campuses. Outside a major metro, nationwide apps remain your practical option.

Are new dating apps safer than Tinder or Hinge?

Not automatically. Some designs do reduce specific risks — Cerca only matching friends of friends adds accountability, and formats like 222 and Timeleft put first meetings in public group settings. But a smaller app also means fewer moderation staff and a shorter track record. Verify safety features individually rather than assuming new means safer; our dating app safety guide covers what to check.

Is Overtone available yet?

No. As of August 2026 it has not opened to the public and is expected to launch in certain locations later in the year, per TechCrunch's report. Any list presenting it as something you can download today is wrong.

Why do so many new dating apps only launch in New York or San Francisco?

Because matchmaking and group-dinner formats need local density to function. A matchmaker needs a large enough local pool to make a good introduction, and a dinner needs six compatible people free on the same Wednesday in the same neighborhood. Launching in dense metros first is a product requirement, not a marketing choice — which is also why coverage should be the first thing you check, not the last.

Where to start this week

Check coverage before you check features. Open the two or three apps above that operate in your city, and ignore the rest until they open yours — a great product you cannot use is worth less than an ordinary one you can.

And if the list comes back empty where you live, that is useful information rather than bad news. The thing all eight of these companies concluded — ours included — that scrolling a grid of faces is the broken part — does not need a launch announcement before you can act on it. There is a run club, a climbing gym, or a pickup game near you that is running this weekend regardless of what any of these companies ship next.