How much does a dating app cost?

$2,500 fixed, agreed before work starts, covering design, build, both store submissions and 30 days of support. No hourly billing and no overage.

How do I get enough users for matching to work?

By launching to a defined community rather than a city — a university, a profession, an interest, a diaspora. Matching needs density, not scale, and a niche gives you density on day one. Come to the call with that community identified.

What do the app stores require?

Age gating, a clear way to report and block, moderation that visibly acts on reports, and a privacy policy that matches what the app does. Apple rejects dating apps for these more often than for anything technical, so they are in the build.

Does it have to be swiping?

No, and for many niches it should not be. Swiping suits high-volume consumer dating; curated daily matches, interest-based discovery or search often work better for a specific community.

How does it make money?

Subscriptions are the cleanest — visibility, unlimited likes, filters. Set up through RevenueCat so both stores work from one integration, with your own tiers and free trials.

You do, entirely, published under your own developer accounts, with source code and design files at handover.

Ship It Live — $1,999 flat

Design + build + deploy · kickoff in 24h · limited slots

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30 days · $2,500 · fixed

Ship It Live · dating sprint

Profiles, matching and chat, on the stores in 30 days.

A real matching product for a real niche — because the general market is taken and the specific ones are not.

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See the 30-day plan

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Quick answer

A dating or matching app can be designed, built and submitted to both app stores in 30 days for a fixed $2,500, covering profiles, photo verification, discovery and matching, chat, reporting and blocking, and subscriptions. Both stores review dating apps strictly on safety, so those tools are built in, not bolted on.

The plan

Day one to day 30, written down.

You get this schedule before you commit, not after. If a phase slips, that is mine to absorb — the price and the date were agreed before anything started.

Days 1–3

Scope lock

Who this is for and what a good match means in that community. The matching rule is the product — swiping is just one implementation of it.

Days 4–12

Design

Profile creation and discovery first, since they decide whether anyone completes signup. Then chat and the safety flows.

Days 13–24

Build

Profiles, verification, matching, chat and moderation. Photo handling and abuse-prevention are built alongside, not afterwards.

Days 25–28

Seed and test

Real profiles from your community, real matching, real reports. A matching app with ten profiles behaves nothing like one with a thousand.

Days 29–30

Submit

Both store listings finished and submitted. Dating apps get scrutinised on safety and age verification, and I handle those review questions.

What $2,500 gets you

Everything needed to launch — nothing padding the invoice.

Profile creation with photos, prompts and the fields your niche needs

Photo verification, because unverified dating apps fill with fakes fast

Discovery and matching on your own rules — not necessarily swiping

Chat, unlocked on mutual interest, with typing and read states

Reporting, blocking and unmatching, plus admin moderation tools

Safety features both stores expect: consent flows, age gating

Subscriptions or paid features through RevenueCat on both stores

Both store submissions handled, source code yours, 30 days of support

Who books this

Built for

Founders building for a community the big apps serve badly

Professional or interest-based networks where matching is the point

Anyone quoted six figures for what is, structurally, profiles and chat

The honest part

When 30 days is the wrong answer.

A fixed deadline only works when the scope genuinely fits inside it. These are the cases where I will tell you so rather than take the booking.

Anonymous or adult-content platforms. Both stores restrict them heavily and the moderation burden is a business, not a feature.

AI matchmaking that claims to predict compatibility. You can have sensible ranking; you cannot have a science that does not exist.

Live video dating at scale, which is a real-time infrastructure project with its own budget.

Questions

Before you book

Yes — structurally it is profiles, a matching rule, chat and safety tooling, all of which fit. The hard part is not the build, it is getting enough people in one place for matching to work at all.

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30 days from now, this could be live.

A 30-minute call decides whether the scope fits. If it doesn't, I'll tell you what would.

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