What do you use?
Tap the apps you use, then tell us how you pay for each one.
I pay for it
Nothing here yet.
It's free
Nothing here yet.
Dating apps hold some of the most private things you'll ever share. Paying hides the ads, but Tinder's privacy policy is the same whether you pay or not. Norway fined Grindr and the ad company it sent data to. In the U.S., OkCupid gave nearly 3 million photos to a face recognition company and paid no fine.
Meta AI has no off switch in the U.S. In Europe, the law doesn't allow this. Rules work.
Scored on default settings, because that's what most people have.
Based on typical daily use. Labels are for the U.S.
Your receipt
Your kids and your time
Apps that take your attention are built to keep you in them. Add your youngest child's age to see what that time adds up to by the time they turn 18.
We count a weekend as two days of 16 waking hours, and a year of waking life as 365 days of 16 hours. Your child's age stays on this page and is never shared.
Explaining this to your kids
When an app is 'free', someone else is paying instead of you. Usually it's companies that want to show you ads. So the app tries to keep you watching.
And for you: imagine walking into a coffee shop where a stranger in the corner pays for your coffee, every single time. Would that feel strange? The apps we use every day shape our thoughts and habits, and they matter far more than a coffee. Yet for the most part we let someone else pay for them without asking why.
What you can do tonight
Switching protects your family. Rules protect everyone. EFF
If you live in California, one request asks over 600 data brokers to delete your data.
See alternatives
Showing browsers, search and AI assistants.
| Category | Free | Paid | Notes |
|---|
How we decide
- Shows you ads: the app shows you ads, so your attention is what it sells.
- Ads follow you: by default, the app uses what you do to pick the ads you see, here or elsewhere.
- What you write trains AI: by default, what you type or upload is used to train the company's AI.
- Apps count by typical time spent in them each day. We never give any kind of app extra weight.
- Only time looking at the screen counts. Music in the background doesn't.
- We score the default settings. If a company lets you turn something off, we say so.
- Turning off AI training protects what you write from now on. It doesn't remove what was already used, and some companies still keep chats flagged for safety.
- Rules differ where you live. We describe the U.S. For example, Apple Maps shows ads only in the U.S. and Canada, and in the EU apps can't use profiling to target ads at kids, so TikTok and Snapchat for kids only show them ads.
- If we found nothing taken whether you pay or not, we don't ask. Those apps count as paid with your wallet.
- We never put dating apps in your receipt or link by name, because just using some of them reveals private things about you.
- Dating apps count 20 minutes a day, split across the ones you pick. This is our estimate.
- Paying for a dating app usually removes the ads. If we found nothing else taken, it counts as paid with your wallet, the same rule as every other app.
We use typical daily times, not yours. If you use several apps of one kind, we split that time between them. The only question that changes it is whether you work at a computer, because that is where most browser time happens.
| Kind of app | Minutes a day | Basis | Source |
|---|
We only label what a company's own settings or policies say, or what independent tests show. Customer means you pay and we found nothing taken, not that a company is safe. Promises can change.