Tinder has agreed to pay $60.5 million to settle a decade-old class-action lawsuit alleging the dating app charged users 30 and older more than younger subscribers for identical premium features, with a claims deadline arriving this week.
The case, Candelore v. Tinder, Inc., was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in 2015 by user Allen Candelore, who accused the company of violating California's Unruh Civil Rights Act and Unfair Competition Law. According to the lawsuit, detailed by ClassAction.org, Tinder charged users 29 and older more for Tinder Plus and Tinder Gold subscriptions than it charged teenagers and users in their twenties for the same swiping and messaging features.
Roughly 268,000 California residents who bought a premium subscription while over the qualifying age — 29 on or after March 2015, or 28 on or after March 2016 — are covered by the deal. Payouts will be calculated automatically from a formula blending a flat share of Unruh Act damages with a portion tied to how much each user actually spent, so no claim form is required, though members are asked to confirm a payment method by Aug. 18, per TechSpot. A Los Angeles judge granted preliminary approval in January, with final sign-off expected this spring.
Tinder denied wrongdoing throughout the litigation, maintaining its age-based pricing tiers, once publicly justified as reflecting younger users' generally tighter budgets, did not amount to unlawful discrimination. The company agreed to end the practice as part of the settlement.
The case has drawn attention beyond the payout because it set an early precedent for how age-based software pricing collides with California's civil rights law — a question that has resurfaced as more subscription apps experiment with personalized pricing based on age, location or usage history. Consumer attorneys have pointed to the Tinder outcome as a template for similar claims against other apps that vary subscription prices by demographic factors rather than usage. Eligible users who have not yet selected a payment method have only days left to do so before the fund is distributed later this year, with checks expected to go out once the court grants final approval.