Dating app cheating statistics: what the research actually says

How many dating app users are already in a relationship?

Nobody outside the apps can count every profile. What exists is a handful of surveys, each asking a different group a different question.

Published figures run from Tinder’s own 1.7% (married users only) to just over 45% (married or partnered, from a global 2015 panel). The newer studies sit in between, at 22.4% and 24%.

Where did “42% of Tinder users are in a relationship” come from?

It started on April 24, 2015, with a blog post called “What to Know About Tinder in 5 Charts” from GlobalWebIndex, the market research firm now called GWI. The text said about half of Tinder’s users called themselves single and that a significant portion were already in a relationship. The exact split sat in a chart. [5]

News outlets ran the chart’s numbers: 30% of Tinder users married, 12% in a relationship, 54% single, and 3% divorced or widowed. The 42% that still circulates is the first two added together. So “30% are married” and “42% are in a relationship” describe the same group of people. [7]

Tinder disputed the figures that week and called the study inaccurate. In August 2015 it went further on Twitter, saying its own survey of 265,000 users found 1.7% were married. [6] [7]

GWI answered the next day with the details. Its numbers came from an online survey of 95,118 internet users aged 16 to 64 in 34 markets, and 1,282 of them had used Tinder in the past month. In that group, 34% said they were married and 11% said they were in a relationship. In the UK and US, GWI said, about two-thirds of Tinder users were single. [4]

Should you still quote it?

• It’s more than ten years old. Tinder, its users, and dating habits have all changed since 2015.
• It came from a global panel. GWI said far more of Tinder’s audience was partnered in regions where people tend to marry young, and fewer where they marry later. [4]
• People gave their relationship status at the start of a general survey about their online lives. GWI noted that this can differ from what someone tells Tinder. [4]
• It measured who uses Tinder, not why. GWI read its data as a sign that Tinder worked as a social app, and it didn’t measure cheating at all. [4]
• Tinder’s 1.7% is a company statement about its own users, which isn’t independent research either. [6]

If you need one accurate line: in 2015, a market research panel found that just over 45% of people who had used Tinder in the past month were married or in a relationship, and Tinder said its own data put married users at 1.7%.

How common is cheating in general?

Most infidelity research asks about marriage, not apps. The General Social Survey, a long-running survey of U.S. adults, asks people who have ever been married whether they’ve had sex with someone other than their spouse while married. YouGov asks a broader question that includes emotional cheating.

The gap between 13% and 33% comes mostly from the question. The General Social Survey counts sex outside a marriage. YouGov counts any cheating, physical or emotional, in any monogamous relationship a person has ever had. The dating app rows come from narrower samples, so treat them as signals rather than national rates.

How do people find out?

Data on how cheating comes to light is thin, and almost none of it is about dating apps. What exists shows how often partners check and how often cheating is discovered.

When YouGov asked people who had been cheated on how they found out, many said their partner told them. [11]

The last row matters if you plan to look at bank statements. Only about a third of people who have tried online dating have ever paid, so many profiles never create a charge at all. Our guide to dating app charges on a bank statement shows how each app bills.

How to read these numbers

• Check who was asked. A national random sample, a global internet panel, Tinder users who answered a newspaper link, and students at one university can give very different answers to the same question.
• Check the question. “Have you ever cheated?” covers a whole life. “Are you on a dating app now?” is a snapshot. “Sex outside your marriage” leaves out emotional affairs and unmarried couples.
• Check the definition. In the iFidelity Survey, people with stricter definitions of cheating were less likely to report an affair, so the definition shapes the count. [10]
• Check the date. The 42% claim is from 2015. The General Social Survey moved from in-person interviews to online and mixed modes in 2021 and 2022, which IFS says may complicate comparisons over time. [9]
• Remember it’s self-reported. Every figure here is what people chose to tell a researcher, and some people don’t answer honestly about things they’re ashamed of.
• A statistic is never a verdict. Knowing that 13% or 33% of people say they have cheated tells you nothing about your partner.

What the numbers can’t tell you about your partner

If you’re worried, these numbers can make you feel better or worse depending on which one you read first. What helps more is what you’ve actually noticed, and a clear answer about whether a profile exists.

Our guide to the signs your partner is on dating apps covers what to look for, and the free quiz can help you sort your thoughts. When you want to check, we search up to 12 dating apps, including Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, using one clear photo and the city they live or work in. Each possible match comes with a confidence note on what lined up and what didn’t. You pay once, your report arrives by a guaranteed date or you get a full refund, and we never contact them.

Sources

Checked October 2026. Numbers match the bracketed references in the tables and text above.

1. [1] Pew Research Center: Key findings about online dating in the U.S. (2023)
2. [2] Institute for Family Studies: 1 in 10 Married Young Adults Are on Dating Sites (2025)
3. [3] Timmermans, De Caluwé & Alexopoulos: Why are you cheating on Tinder? Computers in Human Behavior (2018)
4. [4] GWI: Why Tinder Has a Lot of Positives to Shout About (August 2015)
5. [5] GlobalWebIndex: What to Know About Tinder in 5 Charts (April 2015, archived copy)
6. [6] Fortune: Tinder’s August 2015 Twitter response, including its 1.7% figure
7. [7] TIME: coverage of the 2015 GlobalWebIndex figures and Tinder’s response
8. [8] Institute for Family Studies: Who Cheats More? The Demographics of Infidelity in America (2018)
9. [9] Institute for Family Studies: Men With Prestigious Jobs Are More Likely to Cheat (2025)
10. [10] Institute for Family Studies: Predicting Infidelity, an iFidelity Survey analysis (2020)
11. [11] YouGov: How many Americans have cheated on their partners in monogamous relationships? (2022)
12. [12] YouGov: What Americans think about dating apps (2019)
13. [13] Weiser et al.: Swiping right, Personality and Individual Differences (2018)
14. [14] Texas Tech University release on the Weiser study, via Medical Xpress (2018)
15. [15] Pew Research Center: Dating and Relationships in the Digital Age (2020)
16. [16] Pew Research Center: From Looking for Love to Swiping the Field (2023)
17. [17] YouGov: Section 4, cheating in relationships (August 2026)