Grindr

Full Review

A Catholic publication bought commercially available location data, traced a priest's movements through Grindr, and publicly outed him. That happened. Not in some hypothetical privacy nightmare scenario — in real life, to a real person, using data that Grindr made available to third-party brokers. I'm leading with this because any review of Grindr that buries the privacy history below the feature list is doing you a disservice.

The Blacklight scan on the web version came back at 1 tracker. 0 cookies. No fingerprinting. No session recording. No keystroke capture. VirusTotal: 0/94. On paper that's a clean result. Better than Seeking's 10 trackers. Same ballpark as RedGIFs and Fapello.

But Blacklight scans what happens in your browser. It doesn't measure what the app does with your GPS coordinates on the backend. It doesn't see server-side data partnerships. And Grindr's backend is where the real story lives. The FTC settled with them over selling precise user location data — not approximate, precise — to third-party data brokers. Norway's Data Protection Authority fined them about $7 million for sharing data with ad partners without valid consent. We're talking GPS coordinates attached to profiles that include sexual orientation, HIV status, and self-identified "tribes." That's not abstract data. That's a map of who you are and where you go, sold to whoever wanted to buy it.

I keep giving Seeking a hard time about its 10 trackers and I stand by that. But Seeking's tracking happens through ad networks in the browser — visible to Blacklight, measurable, blockable with the right tools. Grindr's data sharing happened at the infrastructure level, invisible to any browser scan, and it took regulatory investigations in two countries to even confirm it. The 1-tracker Blacklight result is accurate. The full privacy picture is worse than Seeking's 10 and it doesn't show up in any scan I can run.

OK. The app.

Grindr invented the proximity grid. Open the app, see a grid of faces sorted by who's closest to you. Tap one, see the profile, send a message. Every dating app copied this eventually but Grindr did it first and for gay and bisexual men it's still the only one that matters. Scruff exists. Hornet exists. Their user bases are fractions of Grindr's. In most cities — and I've checked this in multiple metros — Grindr has more active users online at any given moment than all its competitors combined. Network effects built the monopoly and network effects maintain it. You don't use Grindr because it's good. You use it because that's where everyone is.

The thing is — it actually is pretty good as a product. The interface is clean and modern. The grid loads fast. Profiles are well-organized. Filters work: age, distance, body type, position, relationship status, HIV status, tribes. Search and discovery are intuitive. Dark theme available. Mobile is the primary platform (6 million web visits is nothing compared to the app user base) and the mobile experience is polished. Somebody at Grindr HQ knows how to build an app. The design team earned their salaries.

Pricing is where I start losing patience. Free tier works but it's deliberately crippled. Fewer visible profiles, ads wedged between faces in the grid, restricted filters, no read receipts, no incognito mode. XTRA runs about $23/month — removes ads, shows more profiles, better filters. Unlimited is $45/month — adds incognito, unlimited views, unsend messages. Then there's EDGE, which is a newer tier that reportedly costs between $219 and $499 per month. Per month. For a dating app. The EDGE pitch is personal matchmaking and concierge features, which sounds like Seeking's pricing philosophy on steroids.

I gave Seeking a low value score at $100/month. Grindr's top tier is potentially five times that. Even XTRA at $23 is more than most mainstream dating apps charge for their best plan. And this is a company that was already monetizing user data through broker sales when the free tier was generating less revenue than they wanted. The pricing tells you where the incentives point.

The operator is Grindr Inc. NYSE-listed. Los Angeles headquarters. Public company with SEC filings and regulatory obligations. That transparency matters — you can look up their financials, their executive team, their data practices (or at least the version they disclose). It also means the FTC settlement and the Norwegian fine happened to a publicly traded company with every resource to prevent them. They didn't prevent them. They got caught and paid the fines.

Billing through the app shows as Apple or Google on your statement. Not Grindr. That's about as discreet as it gets for a dating app. Web subscriptions show as Grindr LLC which is more identifiable but most users are on mobile anyway.

Ads on free tier are integrated into the grid — sponsored profiles between real ones. Not pop-ups, not redirects. Minimally intrusive as dating app ads go. Premium removes them.

6.0 out of 10. The product is well-built and the user base is irreplaceable for gay and bisexual men. The Blacklight scan is clean. But I'm not going to score a dating app well when its operator has been caught, fined, and settled over selling GPS locations attached to HIV status and sexual orientation to data brokers. A priest got outed. That actually happened. Grindr says they changed their practices. Maybe they did. The $500/month premium tier suggests they've found new ways to extract value from the user base and I hope this time it's just from wallets.

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