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INTRODUCTION

With so much speculation on this topic, I thought to myself: why not just do a little original research and find out for myself? Some dating sites allow you to search for prospects see how many results come up; a search for women followed by an equivalent search for men reveals the M:F ratio. Easy enough.

Unfortunately, the most popular apps (Tinder, Bumble) do not allow for this. But some other fairly popular ones (Match, OKCupid, and POF) do. POF I just don't give a shit about because its user base is so repulsively trashy, so it is excluded from this study. OKCupid doesn't display "X search results found," which required me to manually count them, AND it hides a search result if your profile doesn't fit what he/she is looking for (so, for example, to capture all the 25 y.o. men in NYC, I had to change my [fake] profile to be a 25 y.o. woman in NYC), so because it's such a pain I only recorded a couple searches on OKC, which I describe at the very bottom. Match, on the other hand, is easy and straightforward to do this with, so almost all of my findings below are based on Match.

So what's the short answer? What are the ratios really like on dating sites? The best short answer I can give is this: Online dating ratios are unbelievably, outrageously lopsided; the degree to which is highly dependent on age and location. Here's the breakdown:

LOCATION

I played around with a lot of different locations on Match, and it makes a huge difference. As I stated, the ratios are highly unfavorable to men no matter where you go, but in terms of degree, some consistent patterns emerged. I'll just summarize those patterns below; if you're curious about a specific locale, you can PM me.

MORE FAVORABLE FOR MEN >>> LESS FAVORABLE FOR MEN

Major city centers >>>>>>>> Second tier city centers > Suburbs, spread out "uncool" cities >> rural areas

Chicks flock to where the action is in a way that men do not. That much is extremely clear. Note that for the major cities, search radius made a HUGE difference. 5 mile radius from downtown always had incomparably better ratios than a 10 mile radius. Again, girls crave to be in the heart of things.

There was a pattern in terms of region too (note- this is all US based):

Northeast >>> West coast > South > Midwest >>>> Mountain west

If you live in the mountain time zone, God help you. Seriously I couldn't believe how consistently bad those locations were.

Also, DC people need to quit yer bitching. It has one of the best ratios in the country. But not THE best.

From the above information, the #1 best location for men should be no mystery. The majorest of major urban centers, which also happens to be located in the northeast, takes the cake and it's not even close: NYC has by far the best Match.com ratios of any place in the country.

From here on out, I'll be providing numbers from both NYC (your “best case scenario” in the US) and another location I won't disclose that falls in the middle of the pack, which reflects the typical man's experience with online dating.

AGE

Remember how I said the ratios are highly dependent on age? Well, here's a great visualization of that:

NYC Match Users By Age

X axis- Age
Y axis- # of Match profiles within a 5 mile radius of Lower Manhattan; blue=men, red=women

Ouch, pretty bleak if you happen to like women younger than their late 20's . But remember, this is NYC, the best dating location in the nation for men. What does this same graph look like in an average location?

Typical Location Match Users By Age

X axis- Age
Y axis- # of Match profiles within an undisclosed 25 mile radius; blue=men, red=women

It gets worse. What do these graphs look like when we filter out overweight people?

AGE WITH BODY TYPE FILTER

Match allows you to filter searches by body type. The body types are self-reported and must be taken with a grain of salt, but the data is still informative.

There are two body types among the options listed that are likely to be reported by people who aren't fat; “slender” and “athletic and toned.” The other options consist of obvious euphemisms for fat, along with “average” and “curvy” which aren't SUPPOSED to be euphemisms for fat, but in my experience are typically used that way. So let's see these same two graphs above, only including men and women who self-report as “slender” or “athletic and toned.”

NYC Match Users By Age, Non-Fat Body Types

X axis- Age
Y axis- # of Match profiles within a 5 mile radius of Lower Manhattan reporting as “slender” or “athletic and toned”; blue=men, red=women

Typical Location Match Users By Age, Non-Fat Body Types

X axis- Age
Y axis- # of Match profiles within an undisclosed 25 mile radius reporting as “slender” or “athletic and toned”; blue=men, red=women

NOW we're really shedding some light on why it's so difficult to meet quality women via online dating. But wait, remember that the latest graph is a *middle of the pack* location. It is not especially bad compared to most. What does an especially bad location look like? Just for fun, gentlemen, I give you the worst ratio I could find- El Paso, TX:

El Paso Match Users By Age, Non-Fat Body Types

X axis- Age
Y axis- # of Match profiles in El Paso, TX reporting as “slender” or “athletic and toned”; blue=men, red=women

Yes, that really is 67 men and 1 woman at age 20, and 41 men and 0 women at age 24.

ACTIVE USERS

Match allows you to only include users “online now” in your search, which if repeated at a bunch of different times, gives you a sense of the ratio of ACTIVE users, rather than just the number of profiles created, most of which are no longer in use.

If there's one silver lining, it's that the female profiles appear much more likely to be active users than the male profiles. I suspect that many men create a profile, realize they're fucked, and quickly give up.

Below are average numbers of “online now” users, ages 21-29, checked a bunch of different times hours apart:

NYC (5 mile radius of lower Manhattan) Average # of “Online Now” Match Users, Ages 21-29:
ALL BODY TYPES: 33 men, 42 women
“NONFAT” BODY TYPES ONLY: 17 men, 18 women

Typical Location (25 mile radius) Average # of “Online Now” Match Users, Ages 21-29:
ALL BODY TYPES: 91 men, 52 women
“NONFAT” BODY TYPES ONLY: 44 men, 14 women

OKCUPID FINDINGS

As I allude to in the intro, despite it requiring manual counting and being a royal pain in the ass, I did a couple of searches on OKCupid. To get a sense for the entire spectrum of 20-somethings without counting every single age, I only searched ages 22, 25, and 28, and only for NYC and the same “typical location” used above.

The interesting thing here is that, unlike on Match, the ratio held roughly constant at all three ages. Thus, I'll only report totals for all three ages:

OKCupid users, online in the last week, ages 22, 25, and 28:
NYC (5 mile radius of lower Manhattan): 1715 men, 979 women, Ratio=1.75 men per woman
Typical location (undisclosed 25 mile radius): 1240 men, 378 women, Ratio=3.28 men per woman

Okay I lied, I did search one more location. OKC allows for international searches, and while NYC is the US's version of a “pussy paradise,” I was curious about the whole world's premiere location for getting laid...

OKCupid users, online in the last week, age 25:
Manila (5 mile radius of city center): 419 men, 378 women, Ratio=1.11 men per woman

There you have it: NYC is closer to Manila than to the rest of the US in terms of OKCupid ratio.

CONCLUSION

I neglected to provide a ton of commentary/interpretation, because I think the graphs and numbers speak for themselves. One thing I will say is: looking at that graph of non-fat body types at the “typical location” (yeah it's where I live, that's why I won't disclose it) made me feel a lot better. I went from thinking “why do I sometimes struggle on these things, what's wrong with me?” to thinking “how do I ever have success on these things, geez I must be fucking superhuman.” Not that I predominantly use Match, but I'd think Match numbers are highly indicative of online dating as a whole... actually Tinder and Bumble are probably MORE male-skewed if anything, due to their hookup reputation. I'm hoping this post will help other men feel better about their struggles, too.

Also, if you're wondering why I didn't slice-and-dice the data this way or that way... there are infinitely many ways to slice-and-dice this data, and I wanted to keep this post from getting long and boring. If you have a specific question I didn't address, feel free to PM me.