Coffee Meets Bagel

Coffee Meets Bagel is an online dating app designed “for people who are sick of swiping.”

The service claims to use a smart algorithm to connect you with quality matches while restricting the time available for conversations to get you going on real dates more often.

You’ll see a curated list of matches (bagels) chosen for you at noon each day, and the app offers plenty of options for spring-boarding conversations so you can develop real connections quickly.

Are you likely to find love with Coffee Meets Bagel? This analysis will show you how it differs from other dating apps in order to help you decide whether it’s the one for you.

Features and Details

This app works by introducing you to new matches every day at noon, and it claims to have made almost 100,000,000 matches.

You’ll need to share your full name, the kind of relationship you’re interested in, your gender identity, current location, and whether you’ve tried online dating before.

If you make an account for Coffee Meets Bagel through the web rather than the app, you’ll need to sign up with Facebook. Making an account through mobile lets you use either a phone number or Facebook.

Next, you’ll begin to put your profile together. This includes basic demographic information like your height, ethnicity, religious preferences, highest education level.

You can specify the same details for your preferred matches, choosing the top three that matter most to you.

You’re also asked to include at least three fun facts about yourself. These don’t appear publicly on your profile but are used as “icebreaker” questions to prompt your matches to start a conversation with you.

You’ll get an email soon after that your account is live. At this point, the app will show you that day’s “bagels,” or that day’s suggested matches.

You can browse photos and read their profile information, but names aren’t shown until you sign up for a premium account (more on pricing later).

Once you and a bagel have both liked each other, you can start chatting immediately, either by responding to each other’s ice breakers or a different conversation topic.

All chats will expire after seven days. This is the app’s way to encourage face-to-face communication and to encourage you to share contact information.

What Are Coffee Beans?

The app works with a currency called coffee beans. You can use these beans to get others to see your account sooner, “like” people outside your daily bagels, and otherwise, bring attention to your profile.

For example, once I liked a popular member’s account, I was given the option to “skip the line” for 360 beans so that he could see me faster. If I didn’t, I was told it would take up to nine days for him to see my profile.

You’ll earn more beans by logging onto the site regularly, by signing up for a subscription, or by purchasing them outright.

Pricing ranges from $1.99 for 100 to $24.99 for 3,000. You can also earn beans by following Coffee Meets Bagel on social media or inviting friends to the platform.

Pricing and Plans

Though it’s possible to connect with others through the free version, you’ll get the most functionality out of the service by paying for premium.

You’ll get extra features like more beans, the ability to know when others have reviewed your profile, more likes to use on your discovery page, and other functions.

Note that the premium features you have access to will change slightly depending on whether you are using the app on an Android or iOS device.

Pricing changes depending on how many months you commit to at once:

• Six months: $120 ($20/month)
• Three months: $75 ($25/month)
• One Month: $35

Each of these plans is offered on an auto-renewing subscription basis, and you’ll need to cancel your account ahead of time to prevent it from auto-renewing.

You can delete your account, put it on hold, or deactivate your membership at any time by sending an email to customer service or through your profile on the app.

You won’t be reimbursed for any unused time when you cancel your subscription.

Analysis of Customer Reviews

Here’s a snapshot of what users are saying around the web, including our website.

Compliments:

• Many users successfully found long term relationship success

Complaints:

• Lots of scammers, hard to go on real dates
• The site doesn’t take stated preferences seriously
• Fewer options for matches than similar dating sites
• Many people had their messages and likes wholly ignored by other users

Popular Alternatives to Coffee Meets Bagel

Coffee Meets Bagel brands itself as the dating option for those who want to foster real connections without endless swiping. Two other dating apps that make similar claims include Bumble and Hinge. How do they compare?

Bumble is a women-focused dating site where the ladies have to reach out to start the conversation. But even so, the app claims that over 60% of matches result in conversation and more than 50% of users are male.

This helps keep things simple for women who regularly get inundated with messages, but some users complain that they can only message potential matches within 24 hours of swiping right on each other—otherwise, the option for contact is lost.

Using Bumble is free, and users can upgrade their membership to access premium features like profile boosts and “SuperSwipes”. The price per month ranges from less than $15 to over $25, depending on your service length.

Hinge works a little differently by putting the focus on quality connections over quantity.

You need to have at least six photos on your profile before you can start “liking” others, and you can like just ten users a day on a free account.

This is a popular app for millennials who want to meet people beyond a quick hookup, though it can be slow going until you sign up for premium and get unlimited daily likes and extra filter features.

Plan to pay between $4.99–$12.99 per month for Hinge, depending on how many months you commit to.

Choosing between these three services comes down to personal preferences. Many women will appreciate the extra control that comes with starting conversations on Coffee Meets Bagel, and the slower pace of Hinge may give members more time to explore each match before moving on.

You might want to sign up for free accounts on all three platforms to see which one seems like the best fit for you, what each app’s dating pool looks like, and where you see the most potential in finding the right match.

The Bottom Line

Coffee Meets Bagel makes big promises about streamlining the dating process, so you spend more time in real conversations with potential love interests.

Setup is simple, the app offers a lot of functionality with a free account, and it’s designed to get you talking with quirky conversation prompts.

However, customer reviews indicate that scam accounts are a significant problem on this site. You might find yourself chatting up a potential prospect for days, only to have them turn around and request money for an “unexpected emergency.”

Though scammers are a common problem on dating apps, the issue comes up far more frequently on Coffee Meets Bagel than other dating sites we looked at.

That’s not to say you can’t find success with Coffee Meets Bagel. Real people exist on the app, and it’s set up to get you talking right away to potential interests.

Our advice is to be cautious before becoming too trusting of your matches and to meet them in the real world as quickly as possible if you start to feel a connection.