Preface
Tinder has no public, documented developer API. Even so, for more than a decade hundreds of developers have studied how the app talks to its own servers, taken notes and written libraries. That knowledge is now scattered across dozens of GitHub repositories, old gists and issue threads, and much of it no longer holds.
This handbook brings that knowledge together. It is more than a list: every endpoint was compared against at least one piece of source code, each fact is marked with the period it belongs to, and contradictions are called out explicitly.
Who this book is for
- Developers curious about Tinder's client–server architecture
- Students who want to see how a reverse-engineered API evolves over time
- People who want to run small experiments on their own account data
- Security and privacy researchers
There is nothing here for anyone who wants to create accounts in bulk, unlock paid features for free or collect other people's data. The reasons are in Responsible use and the law.
How to read it
| Your goal | Reading order |
|---|---|
| See the big picture | 1 → 2 → 10 → 11 |
| Write a client | 1 → 2 → 3 → 4–9 → 12 |
| Pick an existing library | 11 → Appendix A |
| Look up an endpoint quickly | 10 (reference matrix) |
Markers
Throughout the book, the freshness of each fact is marked like this:
| Marker | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 🟢 Current | Used in at least one client maintained in 2025–2026 |
| 🟡 Uncertain | Only seen in 2020–2024 material; it may still work |
| 🔴 Historical | Pre-2020 and very likely broken |
| 💳 | Requires a paid subscription (Plus, Gold, Platinum) |
Important: None of the requests in this book were tried against a real Tinder account. The material is based on the code and documentation of open-source projects. It was last verified on 12 November 2026.
Not affiliated with Tinder
Tinder is a trademark of Match Group, LLC. This book is not approved, endorsed or supported by Match Group and has no connection to it. The name is used only to identify the system being described.
— Bahri Yilmaz