Dating app Pure hits $220 million run rate as Gen Z bails on Tinder

Pure, a 12-year-old sex-forward dating app, has hit a $220 million annual revenue run rate — and CEO Luka Dremelj forecasts it will double that figure next year. In February, the company reported $100 million in annual revenue. Over the past year, revenue has more than doubled in the U.S., Pure's biggest market, even as mainstream rivals scramble to stem subscriber losses.

"People are getting a bit tired of all the traditional swipe-based dating apps and they're looking for something different," Dremelj told Fast Company. He credits the app's interface and user experience for its growth.

What does Pure sell that Tinder doesn't?

Pure pitches itself as an alternative to Hinge and Tinder, and an even less inhibited version of kink-friendly Feeld. It's free to download, but men and nonbinary users pay to initiate chats and boost visibility: $13.99 a week, or $648 a year. Women get most features free, with a Pure Queens subscription starting at $4.99 a week adding more controls.

The user split is 60-40 men to women — a far better balance than Tinder's roughly 75% male audience. Most users are Gen Z and millennial. And unlike swipe-based apps, Pure runs on a feed of "personal ads" — old-school newspaper-style come-ons tagged with turn-ons, from massage and music to one-night stands, foot fetishes and dominant-submissive dynamics. The app surfaces mutual turn-ons as conversation starters, and there's no "hard pass": users can always revisit profiles they skipped.

Roughly half the product is chat and sexting. Photos and videos vanish after one viewing, all chat content disappears after 24 hours unless both users lift the limit, and screenshots are banned — with the other party notified if someone tries. Connie Collins, a 25-year-old sex educator, found that out the embarrassing way. "Knowing that I, a well-intentioned person, tried to screenshot a conversation and couldn't, made me feel really safe," she says.

How does anonymity-first design work?

Privacy on Pure defaults to anonymous. Users get random usernames, can skip photos entirely, and the app itself doesn't verify identity. "The traditional discourse around sharing information on dating apps is that we have to make the online world smaller, more controlled, and less anonymous," says chief product officer Sergej Vujanović. "I feel that some level of anonymity at the start is great, and then you can decide on your terms when you want to share. We're not prohibiting sharing more."

Berlin-based content creator Dilara Doshi, 31, uses her real name and face; other users hide behind caps, emojis or offers to send photos "if it's a vibe." She typically meets someone within hours of matching. "I like that our communication disappears on Pure. I don't want footage being saved," she says. Pure nudges users to keep chats in-app, warning them when they share a social handle that the other party could identify them.

Cybersecurity expert Aaron Rose of Check Point Software Technologies flags the limits: someone can photograph the screen with another device, and "without identity verification, you don't necessarily know offhand that who you're talking to is an actual human being. It could be a bot."

What are the risks?

Pure requires no photo, video or age verification except where local law mandates it, as in the U.K. Vujanović argues verification "would be done already at the level of Apple and Google in their app stores," noting users are "feeling a bit reluctant" to upload IDs.

The contrast with Match Group is stark. Tinder rolled out Face Check video-selfie verification for all new users last year, and Match told Congressional investigators the pilots cut interactions with scam accounts by 70% in the U.S. Pure offers optional verification badges, True Photos — photos provably taken in-app — and a Safety Signal feature sharing location and date's profile with a trusted contact.

The gap has legal consequences. A lawsuit filed in Harris County, Texas, in October alleges that in March a 35-year-old former police officer posed as a 16-year-old on Pure, connected with a 13-year-old, brought her to his home, gave her drugs and sexually assaulted her. Pure says U.S. law enforcement hasn't contacted it; it learned of the incident from a Houston Chronicle article and can't verify either individual was on the app.

Does the growth story hold up?

For all the friction, demand is real. Doshi got 900 likes in a day on Pure versus 40 on Hinge. Pure tested AI photo-selection and bio-writing features — already standard on Match and Bumble apps — and killed them when they didn't lift interactions. "I don't think AI can help so much," Doshi says.

The practical question for the industry: Pure is proving that a $648-a-year, anonymity-first product can grow faster than the verified incumbents — while the Texas lawsuit shows exactly what that growth model leaves exposed.