Travel dating apps for solo female travelers

If you are considering using dating apps on your next solo trip to meet people whether for a romantic relationship or for friendship, this article compiles insights from our community of solo female travelers on the best dating apps and explores pros and cons of each to help you decide which one to download.

Dating apps are the gateway to a first date with a stranger in another country, a unique opportunity to meet interesting people, to connect with the locals, to share a meal with someone in between evenings eating alone, to practice a language or to explore a city in the company of a local travel buddy.

“I used tinder in Rome and met one roman guy, he showed me a lot of stuff that I didn’t know about Rome, best experience ever” says one of our group members. The question is not whether you can use dating apps, but which one to use and how to do so wisely and safely.

Below is a list of the most commonly used and recommended apps for your next solo trip and here is a list of safe dating tips as shared by the experts in our community.

Bumble

Female founded and public since 2021, Bumble is a popular dating app with a distinctive factor: women make the first move. The app claims to have changed the dynamics of dating by giving it an equal tone from the beginning. 

Bumble is location-based and it works using the well-known “swipe right or left” format, which became popular thanks to Tinder.

The app is used mainly for dating (Date), but it can also be used for networking (Bizz) or to meet friends online (BFF), a feature very much appreciated by our members. 

What solo female travelers think of Bumble

Many members of our community agree that it is a safe app for users to build genuine relationships, be it intimate or in the form of a friendship.

Our member Lise recommended Bumble as her top pick: “Bumble definitely! Met some amazing people, dating or friends (including my actual bf!). It also depends a lot on the country you’re traveling to. Some dating apps are more or less known and the vibe is not always the same according to the country (Bumble is amazing in Sweden for example but absolutely empty in France)”.

Our Co-Founder, Mar, also met her partner on Bumble.

How Bumble works

Below are the main steps you need to follow to start using Bumble.

1. Create your account: Sign up using an email or logging in with Facebook/Google. 
2. Set up your profile: Add your name, a short description of yourself (up to 300 characters) and a few photos (up to 6). You can choose to link your IG profile as well. Clarify the gender you’re interested in. It’s key to add high quality photos and a creative bio. The most swiped-right profiles usually appear at the top of the line for other users, this means that the popular profiles, the ones that have the highest level of activity in your area, will appear at the top of the list on your feed.  
3. Set your match preferences: Set the age range, gender and distance preferences. If you have the Bumble Premium subscription, you can also choose advanced Bumble filters, which are categories you set up to narrow down the profiles in your Swipe Deck (main feed). This customizes your whole experience and makes a more curated search based on your interests.
4. Start swiping: Bumble rewards “good behavior”. This means that if you start swiping right to every profile that comes up, Bumble’s algorithm will immediately send your profile to the back of the line and might not get many views from other profiles. Instead, choose carefully and swipe right to profiles you really like and would go on a date with.
5. Match: You will get a “match” with the users who liked your profile back. 
6. Send a message: In Bumble, only women can start the conversation, so you will be able to choose who to message from your “match” profile queue. Then, men have another 24 hours to answer. With couples of the same sex, either one can start the conversation, but the timing rule still applies. You can extend the match for another 24 hours, but you can only do it once a day for free. Bumble offers a premium paid subscription with more features including unlimited “match” extensions. Once the conversation is started, there are no more time limits and you can exchange messages for as long as you wish. 
7. (Optional) Video chat: Bumble has a voice and video calling feature. You can also add a “virtual dating” filter to your profile, which will let users know that you’re interested in video chatting before meeting up. 
8. Meet up: if you want and both users agree, you go out on a date. Set up a place and time to meet each other. We suggest choosing a public place, where it’s lit up and there are people around.

Why we like Bumble for safe travel dating

When it comes to dating while traveling, Bumble has a few useful features that we particularly like.

The first one is Bumble’s “Travel Mode”, a feature that is only available as a part of the Bumble Premium subscription. If you activate it, you will be able to select the city your profile appears in for 7 days so you can start to meet people ahead of your trip. 

Your location will appear as the center of the city you’ve chosen and you can change your location to other cities that are part of your trip, as many times you want.

Because we prefer to be safe than sorry, we also appreciate Bumble’s video or voice call options, you could try to chat with someone you are interested in meeting beforehand to confirm they are who they say they are, even a quick voice call can help you filter out anyone who your intuition disagrees with.

If you like the app and want to take more advantage of it, Bumble offers 2 kinds of paid subscription plans: Bumble Boost and Bumble Premium, which have many additional features to enjoy. 

Tinder

Tinder remains the most popular dating site in the US, and the one that invented the “swipe right” feature and revolutionized the world of online dating.

The app has been downloaded more than 340 million times and is available in 190+ countries, making it an appealing travel dating site. In fact, it was the world’s most downloaded app during 2021.

Fun fact: There are more than 3,000 posts hashtagged #TinderWedding on Instagram. Most of the users are male (at about 70/30%) and most are Millennials (between 30 and 45 years old). Tinder has the most number of users in the US, the UK, Brazil, Canada, and France.

Tinder is very simple to use and uses the swipe right or left feature to let you decide if you like someone. If the other person likes you back, you’ll get a “match”. 

How Tinder works

Here are the steps to follow to get started:

1. The first step is creating your account. You can log in using Facebook/Google account or choose to fill out your name and age, which you won’t be able to change after creating your profile. You can also include your gender, sexual orientation, job, school and city (which are optional).
2. Continue with writing your bio and adding media: some quality photos. You can enable the “Smart Pictures” feature, and Tinder will alternate the order of your pictures and as users like you, it will re-order your images showing the most liked first.
3. To personalize your profile even more: choose your interests (min 3, max 5) and lifestyle description, which are social, personal and professional predetermined descriptions.
4. Swipe: When you’re all set go to Discovery, which is the part of the app where you see other profiles and swipe right or left. To edit your search preferences, go to Discovery settings and select location, distance, age and gender, as you like.
5. Match: If two people like each other’s profile, they will make a “match”, then anyone is able to send a message and start the conversation. If you already matched with someone but changed your mind, you can “unmatch” them in the top right corner of your chat, and they will disappear from your match list.

Why we like Tinder for safe travel dating

Besides the unique features that Tinder has, its global footprint makes it a very appealing and useful travel dating app because it is largely used everywhere.

Besides this consideration, Tinder’s paid subscription (Tinder Plus, Tinder Gold, or Tinder Platinum), have a “Passport” feature allows you to search by city or drop a pin in the map and start liking, matching, and messaging other users that are in the selected area. 

You can navigate in your current location, and also search in destinations you’re traveling to. You can virtually select one city at a time, but you can change the location as many times you like. 

Hinge

Hinge focuses on effective dating and building long-lasting relationships and was recommended by many members of our community as a great platform for short-term travel dates.

How Hinge works

Hinge is similar to its main competitors Tinder and Bumble but has some special features that make it quite unique, such as prompts or standouts. 

Prompts are short questions that give your profile a more personalized and fun look and help start a conversation. Standouts are a list of your most compatible matches. To get started follow the steps below.

1. Create a profile: When creating your profile, you include the usual, your name, email, age and location. You are required to add at least 6 photos or videos. Then there’s an option to go deeper and add details of your work, education level, religion, political beliefs, height, etc.
2. Pick your prompts: To complete your profile you have to choose 3 prompts, which are predetermined questions about your personal life and interests. Some of the prompts available on the app are: “I get along with people who…”, “Fun fact about me”, “Topics to debate”, “One thing I cannot live without”. Pick your prompts wisely as they can get you more matches and be creative conversation starters.
3. Set your preferences: Here’s where you choose the gender of your interest and location. If you have a must you’re looking for in other profiles, you could set up a dealbreaker, which will filter the users and only show you the ones that have your deal breaker in their profile.
4. Look for potential matches: Hinge displays one user at a time, and lets you browse their photos and prompts. There are two options: choose to like or reject them by using the heart and “x” icons, respectively.

Hinge’s like function is a bit different from the rest. In other dating apps, you like the user’s complete profile, whether in Hinge, you can like a specific picture or prompt, and let that person know what caught your attention. Also, when you like something you can leave a comment and start the conversation. Weekly, you have one chance of upgrading your like into a “rose”, which shows that you are very interested in that profile.

For your “standout” list, Hinge uses its algorithm to put together your most compatible profiles, based on their likes and prompt answers. But there’s a trick to it: you can’t like any profile from your standout list, instead you have to send them a “rose”, so you can only do it once a week, or buy more roses in the app.

For the messaging part, once you get a match with someone, anyone can send a message and start the conversation.

Why we like Hinge for safe travel dating

There’s a prompt called “Best travel story” which encourages users to tell a unique adventure they’ve had during a trip and can tell you a lot about a user and start a travel related conversation. Or test whether they would be a good travel companion if you are using it as a travel dating site.

Facebook Dating

Facebook Dating is “the Walmart of travel dating” as one of our members put it. It’s the company’ first inroads into a completely new social networking space within the Facebook app where you can meet new people who share your interests. 

The service launched in 2018 and can be accessed from your Facebook account without the need for a separate app, and is currently available in 46 countries. 

How Facebook Dating works

To use Facebook Dating, you need to create a Dating profile, which is different from your main profile. You can add up to 12 photos and, like Hinge, choose ice-breaker prompts you can answer and include in your profile. 

In Dating, you can like and message people you’re interested in. When another person likes you back, you’ll get a match, similarly to the other apps, and can start messaging each other.

Your Dating profile will not be visible to your current Facebook friends or anyone outside Facebook Dating. Likewise, your Dating chats will be separate from your main account’s inbox and you can delete your Dating profile whenever you want, without affecting your main Facebook account.

Facebook Dating uses data to suggest the best potential matches for you. Besides using the info in your profile, like interests and preferences, they also use info from your main profile, like Facebook Groups and events you may have in common. 

You can narrow down the options in your suggested matches by setting up a “strong preference” in your ideal match section.

A unique feature of Facebook Dating is called “Secret Crush”. In the Interests section of the app,  you can add a list of up to 9 secret crushes. If any of those users also added your profile to their list, both will receive a notification and get a match. After that, you can begin messaging. So unless you match with someone, you won’t know who added you to their Secret Crush list.

Why we like Facebook Dating for safe travel dating

Facebook is everywhere and has a large user base, couple this with the relatively low friction model to create your Dating profile and you have a relatively easy travel dating site that is also free, at least for now.

In addition, Facebook Dating has other options that make it a particularly useful travel dating site. The first one is the “Match Anywhere” option (being rolled out) which lets you pick up to 2 additional locations where you can browse profiles.

In those locations, you can also decide if users who added your primary dating location as additional can see your profile or match with you. 

The second is the fact that you don’t need to download an extra app and can simply use Facebook, and do not need to keep separate messaging or go through the cumbersome chatting functions of other apps that make it more likely to move away and to Whatsapp other easier messaging apps.

Happn

Happn is an app that “connects you to the people you cross paths with every day”. Unlike other apps, which have a larger geographical focus that you can set yourself, Happn focuses on narrow geofencing and on helping you notice the people who share your daily routine.

Its location-based algorithm makes it possible to connect to other Happn users who you have crossed paths with during the day, and it even has a map where you can locate people who are going out in the same area you’re in, which makes it easier to just meet right there and then. 

What solo female travelers think of Happn

How Happn works

The sign-up process for Happn is very similar to the other dating apps mentioned above. 

1. Create a profile: First you fill out your basic information (name, age, gender of interest, city of residence) or you can also signup using your Facebook/Google account. 
2. Enter other details: Happn goes deeper into details by asking you to add a short self description, work and education data, and your habits (exercise, cooking, travel, partying, etc), you can even add your music selection from Spotify!
3. Discover: Then explore the main feed to see profiles who cross paths with you. 
4. Match: You can like or dislike each profile and if the like is mutual, it’s a “crush”.
5. Connect: Happn users can only send a message if both have liked each other’s profile. 

If you have special interest in a user, you can send a “flashnote”, which is a personalized message that will catch their attention. 

Why we like happn for safe travel dating

Happn makes the user experience of dating online more spontaneous and closer to the old way we used to meet people when going out by simply approaching a stranger and starting a conversation. 

You can open the app at a bar, restaurant, an attraction like a museum or even at your hotel, and see who is around, then see if you spot them, and walk up and talk to them or propose an impromptu meetup. 

If you met someone independently of the app, and did not exchange contacts, you can still find them on Happn, as it will show you profiles you actually crossed paths with, and continue the conversation there.

On the flip side, someone else can also do this with you, so you should be extra careful about the details you reveal on the app at any time, but particularly when abroad, and not reveal anything that could put you in danger (more on that in the next section).

Match.com

Match Group owns Tinder and Match.com, the platform favored by the older generations who use it twice as much as they use Tinder. According to its website, 80% of the users are above the age of 30.

Match.com has been around since 1995, this makes it the very first online dating platform.

It started off as a regular website you would signup for then fill in a profile in. The profile was very detailed and would be entirely focused on finding a life partner, much like a matchmaking service, at scale.

The app will then show you members that fit your criteria and you can message them to connect. This means you don’t have to swipe but rather look through the profiles suggested.

They are so sure that you will find a suitable member to meet that if you sign up for 6 months and don’t find anyone in that time frame, they’ll extend the subscription for another 6 months.

How Match.com works

Unlike other apps which are quick to get started on Match.com leans on a detailed questionnaire to get to know you better.

• Create your profile: Enter details such as you name, what you are looking for, email, date of birth and address.

• Fill in a detailed questionnaire: You’ll be asked to share info on your political and religious views, your lifestyle, your preferences, etc. You will have to make the same selections for the partner you are looking for.

• You will then be shown a list of matches: You can sort out the list based on age, distance, etc.

• Start messaging other members: You don’t have to match with someone else (i.e. like someone who likes you back) to message them, you can message anyone you like shown in your match list. The number of messages you can send every day will depend on your membership level.

Why we like Match.com for safe travel dating

Unlike the other apps, Match.com has been around for long and is less gimmicky than other apps that are focused on gamification. It is very focused on safety and has several features entirely devoted to making users feel safe:

• An entire section on the website on safety tips.
• Background checks on members in collaboration with Garbo, so you know profiles are real and there are no criminals or sex offenders.
• A team of moderators reviewing personal profiles and descriptions to make sure they are real and not spammy. When you report a profile, it gets looked at by a real person and not an AI.
• A feature that allows you to make a call using a temporary phone number without having to share yours.

There are also two premium features we like: the Zen mode, which only shows you people who match your criteria, and Incognito mode which hides you from everyone but lets you see others.

Lastly, you can choose to show your profile to older users (over 50) or to single parents, so you are among likeminded people.

Match.com also organizes in person events and even trips so you can speed-date in real life.

What we don’t like about Match.com is that it is one of the most expensive apps and that it is harder to use it as a travel dating app because your location is set and intended to be permanent as this is a service used to find a life partner.

eHarmony

eHarmony is one of the oldest online dating apps and started off as a website in 2020. Today, it is available in 125 countries.

It offers a 50/50 male/female split on the site, so there are many options for both men and women to find their right partner. It also uses a Compatibility Matching System to suggest the right profiles for you.

You can see their many success stories to read more.

How eHarmony works

Unlike other dating apps, eHarmony will ask you to complete a questionnaire about your personality and what you are looking for and will show you profiles that match that criteria.

• Create a profile and fill in the compatibility survey

• Find the list of matches for you: The app will show you members who match your criteria and with whom you have high compatibility.

• Start connecting with other members: On the free profile you will only be able to send a few messages a day, upgrade for unlimited messaging.

Why we like eHarmony for safe travel dating

eHarmony has been in business for a really long time and is focused on matchmaking instead of only dating, so if you are looking for shorter term travel dating apps, it may not be the right one for you.

However, it is a great place to meet someone in a place you are planning to move to or a future travel partner!

Internations

I used Internations for several years until I met my partner. As an expat, the platform offered a very niche and curated experience specifically targeted at young professionals who travel a lot for business and are looking to connect with likeminded, and often high-flying, professionals for dinners and networking events in key global cities.

The focus of Internations is not exclusively on dating but rather on professional networking meeting other expats in various cities by attending social events such as drinks that are organized by local ambassadors. In the larger cities, these events can gather a few hundred people and are an easy place to meet others.

Everyone is open minded and there is usually a local host that is there ready to greet you and introduce you to other to break the ice. From then on, you’re on your own but are likely to find lots of topics to chat as everyone is generally an expat.

Internations has a feature where you can share your travel plans and meet up with others who respond, either local or who will be there at the same time as you. This will usually be for dinner as the focus is on business travelers who have meetings during the day.

What solo female travelers think of Internations

I do not recommend upgrading to the paid membership. Many users were angry during the pandemic because the membership renewed automatically under German law, where the company is based, and Internations did not to refund anyone, regardless of extenuating circumstances or the lack of a notification of renewal.

So if you upgrade, make sure to set up a notification to decide if you want to cancel it before it gets renewed.

How Internations works

Like all other social media networks, Internations requires you to join with an email and password and then fill in a profile.

From that moment on, you can share your travel plans which will be posted on the city’s feed, or see what events are planned where you live or will travel to, and simply join, then go in person. These events carry an entry fee which tends to include a drink.

There is a free membership and a paid one with more features such as discounts to events.

Why we like Internations for safe travel dating

Being more of a cross between Tinder and LinkedIn, Internations is more of serious and professional platform where most of the users behave themselves as if they were in a business setting and thus, improper conversations or interactions are unlikely. This means you should feel safer on Internations than you do elsewhere.

Additionally, the destination events are a great way to meet other people, local, expats and travelers, and to maybe carry on with a group or one on one dinner date afterwards, or on the following day.

Plenty of fish (POF)

Plenty of Fish is a Canadian born dating app that is popular in English-speaking countries. It is different from the rest because of the little filtering the app does and the fact that it is free to get started in, resulting in, as the name indicates, plenty of options.

That means that I can take quite some time to scroll through options until you find someone you want to meet but also that you have more options than on other paid-only dating platforms.

POF is focused on providing fun games for users to engage in so you can make the whole experience less awkward. For example, you can play a game called Cue’d which asks random questions to 5 singles at a time.

You can expect at least, a fun time, as POF sayd: “Read the cues and be as honest (or savage) as you want with your answers. You’ll be playing with 5 singles so show ‘em who you really are!”.

What solo female travelers think of Plenty of Fish

Our members agree that Plenty of Fish is a great way to get started online dating at home or when traveling because it is free so there is little financial commitment, but this usually comes at a cost of time or having to lower your risk threshold.

“I have met some cool decent men off POF and alot of creeps too, but I guess that’s to be expected.”

How Plenty of Fish works

• Create a profile on the app with your email

• Choose the kind of experience you want: Select your gender and sexual preferences, location, whether you are looking for a serious relationship or not, and the age range for your search.

• Start matching: You will see a limited number of profiles to start matching with on the free account and you can upgrade to increase the number.

• Start messaging: You can message all the users you matched with. Every day, you will also see a few members you can message directly at the top of your feed.

Why we like Plenty of Fish for safe travel dating

Plenty of Fish is on the lower side when it comes to safety features, especially if compared to other sites and apps on this list which have filters and checks. It also does not offer any support, since it is largely free and focuses on offering customer service via self-service Help center and a chat feature.

However, Plenty of Fish it is free, so if you are only keen to get a taster for what online dating could look like or are open to meet people wherever you may be traveling to, without any commitment or interest in long term dating, it is a no-frills, low entry barrier option.

Conclusion

There are many dating apps out there and the one you choose will depend on what you are looking for and the destination you will visit. Regardless of which one you use, check out our list of travel dating safety tips to do so wisely.