Can you use dating apps to make friends?

Apps & Tools · by Simone Rainieri · 6 read

Yes, you can use dating apps to make friends, and plenty of people already do. Bumble runs a dedicated platonic mode, and Tinder users have reported using it for non-romantic reasons even though it isn't built for that. But "you can" and "it works well" are different claims, and the honest answer is that dating apps are structurally awkward tools for friendship, because almost everything under the hood was built to optimize for a different signal than the one friendship actually needs.

What "yes, but" actually means here

Dating apps generally handle this one of two ways. Some, like Bumble, formally support it: Bumble for Friends is a separate mode inside the main app, with its own profile, its own matching pool, and as of a September 2025 relaunch, group chats and local meetups built on the Geneva platform Bumble acquired the year before. Others, Tinder chief among them, have no platonic mode at all, so any friendship use happens off-label, through people stating "just here for friends" in a bio built for a romantic-swipe interface that was never designed to read that intent.

The formally-supported version works better in practice, for an obvious reason: everyone else on that mode has opted into the same framing, so you're not hoping a stranger reads your bio correctly before deciding whether to swipe. The off-label version puts the entire burden of intent-signaling on you, in an interface designed around a completely different question.

Why the mismatch runs deeper than the bio

The structural problem sits underneath the bio, in what the algorithm is actually optimizing for. A dating app's ranking and recommendation systems exist to surface people you're likely to find attractive and message with romantic intent, because that's the behavior the product is built to generate and monetize. Even inside a formally platonic mode like Bumble for Friends, the underlying matching mechanic is still profile-and-photo-first swiping, the same interaction pattern the dating side uses, just pointed at a different labeled pool of people. Attraction is a fast, largely visual judgment, which is exactly what a swipe interface is good at capturing. Compatibility as friends runs on slower signals: communication rhythm, how someone handles disagreement, what pace of contact feels comfortable to them, none of which fits into a photo and a one-line bio.

There's a decision-fatigue layer on top of that mismatch too. Research on dating app use, including a 2025 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, found that fear of missing out on better options was linked to decision fatigue among app users, and that fatigue correlated with users trusting the algorithm's ranking more, not less, even as satisfaction with individual choices dropped. That dynamic wasn't studied specifically for platonic use, but there's no obvious mechanism by which swapping "romantic partner" for "friend" as the stated goal would switch off a fatigue effect that comes from the format itself, the volume of profiles and the speed of judgment being asked of you.

The safety and expectation mismatch is real, not theoretical

Beyond the algorithm, there's a plainer problem: intent mismatch. Pew Research has found that a meaningful share of dating app users report installing an app for reasons beyond romance, friendship among them, which means anyone using a mixed-intent platform for platonic reasons is likely to run into people who read the same interaction very differently. A conversation one person intends as strictly platonic can land as a slow-building romantic overture to the other person, and on a platform whose whole premise is romantic or sexual connection, that ambiguity is baked into the format rather than a rare edge case. Formally platonic modes like Bumble for Friends solve the worst of this by segmenting the pool, everyone in that mode opted in for the same reason, but it doesn't eliminate risk entirely, since the underlying account, verification, and moderation infrastructure is typically shared with the dating side rather than rebuilt separately for platonic use.

What a platonic-first-by-design app actually changes

A product built from the ground up for friendship, rather than adapted from a dating app, can change the two things above at the root instead of patching around them. It can drop the photo-and-swipe-first interface entirely in favor of something that surfaces conversational or personality signals before appearance, and it can build a user base where romantic intent was never on the table in the first place, so there's no ambiguity to manage session to session.

That's the specific gap apps like Vairi are trying to close: a conversational onboarding, about 5 to 7 minutes with an AI concierge, tries to establish things like conflict style and pace of life before you're introduced to anyone, matches are anonymous until both people opt into revealing names and photos, and you get one match at a time instead of a browsing feed. It's a genuinely different mechanic, not a friendship label stuck on a dating interface. The honest trade-off: it's small and early, live only in London and New York, so the pool is nowhere near Bumble's scale, and one match at a time means slower volume if what you want is to meet a lot of people quickly. If breadth matters more to you than getting the matching mechanic right, a mixed-intent app with a bigger user base will still get you more conversations, just noisier ones.

So, should you actually do it

If a formally platonic mode exists on an app you already use and you're comfortable with shared account infrastructure, it's a reasonable low-effort first move, and it's meaningfully better than trying to signal platonic intent inside a fully romantic interface. If the swipe-and-hope-they-read-the-bio version is what you're considering, on Tinder or similar, expect the mismatch problems above to show up regularly, and budget for a fair number of conversations that don't go where you meant them to. Either way, treat it as one channel among several rather than the whole plan, the same way you would with any single app.

Key takeaways

Dating apps can be used for friendship, most cleanly through a formally platonic mode like Bumble for Friends, and more awkwardly off-label on apps like Tinder that have no such mode. The core mismatch is structural: swipe-and-photo interfaces optimize for a fast attraction judgment, not the slower compatibility signals friendship actually depends on, and Pew Research shows a meaningful share of app users already report non-romantic reasons for being there, which creates real intent-mismatch risk even inside dedicated modes. Purpose-built platonic apps change the mechanic rather than patching around it, at the cost of a much smaller user pool for now.

Related reading: for the full range of dating-app and non-dating-app options, see [apps to make friends without it turning into a dating app](https://vairi.app/journal/apps-to-make-friends-without-dating-apps). For a full breakdown of Bumble's platonic mode specifically, read [Bumble for Friends, explained](https://vairi.app/journal/bumble-for-friends-explained). For the broader question of whether any of this is worth the social awkwardness, see [is it weird to use an app to make friends?](https://vairi.app/journal/is-it-weird-to-use-an-app-to-make-friends)

Frequently asked questions

Can you actually use Tinder to make friends?

Technically yes, some people do, but Tinder has no dedicated platonic mode, so you're relying on your bio to signal intent inside an interface built entirely around romantic and sexual matching, which produces frequent mismatched expectations.

Is Bumble for Friends better than using the regular dating app for platonic connections?

Yes, meaningfully. It segments the user pool so everyone in that mode opted in for friendship specifically, which removes most of the guessing that off-label use on a fully romantic app requires.

Why do dating apps struggle to work well for friendship?

Their ranking and interface are built to surface attraction, a fast, largely visual judgment, while friendship compatibility depends on slower signals like communication style and conflict handling that a photo and swipe can't capture.

Sources

Pew Research Center, dating app usage and motivations research: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/02/02/online-dating-in-the-u-s/

Alice Binder, Anja Stevic, Jörg Matthes, Marina F. Thomas, "Dating algorithms? Investigating the reciprocal relationships between partner choice FOMO, decision fatigue, excessive swiping, and trust in algorithms on dating apps," Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2025: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448241270542

TechCrunch, "Bumble BFF's revamped app is here, focusing on friend groups and community building," September 2025: https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/18/bumble-bffs-revamped-app-is-here-focusing-on-friend-groups-and-community-building

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