Is Tinder Elo score still a thing? According to Tinder’s official statement, not anymore, they don’t rely on Elo score in their algorithm. However, this does not mean they don’t use a similar metric to rate profiles, so it is still important to know how the Tinder Elo score is calculated and what is the basic logic behind it.
In this Tinder algorithm guide, we are going to explain to you what the Tinder ELO score is, how it is calculated, what role it plays in the Tinder algorithm, how Tinder changed its matching system and how you can hack this attractiveness rating score to be able to match with as many profiles as you can.
What is Tinder Elo Score?
Tinder Elo score is an attractiveness score used by the Tinder algorithm to rate users’ relative attractiveness to each other so they can match users in an easy and in a consistent way.
Tinder no longer relies on the exact Elo score but they are using a similar rating system to rank users by attractiveness (even if they didn’t acknowledge this publicly).
The Elo system has been developed by Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physicist and chess grandmaster and the system is most famous for rating and ranking chess player. It has also been used in other sports and games and – most importantly for us – in Tinder to rate player or in our case users and their relative attractiveness.
How does Tinder Elo work?
Tinder has used Elo and is still using a similar score to Elo to rate the attractiveness of every Tinder profile.
It is important to calculate somehow how popular Tinder profiles are relative to each other as attractiveness is an important factor in the algorithm. Tinder algorithm will match profiles who are similarly attractive as this is usually also how in real life attraction works.
So when you have an Elo score of lets say 2700 (it is very high, so it means the opposite sex finds you really attractive) your profile will get shown most often to profiles that have an Elo score in a similar range.
On the contrary if your Elo score is not high enough, it will be really difficult for you to match with attractive profiles as your profile will show up in their swiping deck very rarely.
There are of course other factors in the algorithm that Tinder uses to match profiles but Tinder’s attractiveness score is still an important one so you’d better try and improve it. (see later what you can do)
How is Tinder Elo score calculated?
There is a quite complicated mathematical formula behind the calculation of Elo score. If you are interested in all the details you can read this Wikipedia article. But don’t worry, we will explain the gist of it, so you know the basic idea behind it.
Tinder Elo score is a dynamic measure that changes every time someone swipes your profile. When your profile is swiped left you lose points, when it is swiped right you gain points.
This is a pretty standard score until now, here comes the exciting part that made Elo score so interesting. The number of points you lose or gain depends on the Elo score of the profile who swiped your profile. If she has a high Elo score and you are swiped left, you won’t lose that many points as she is out of your league, but if she likes your profile you can get a lot of points as she is a really popular Tinder profile.
Tinder Elo and the Tinder algorithm – Does it still matter?
Based on this official blog post of Tinder, Tinder no longer relies on Elo score in their matching algorithm. Does this mean, you should ignore everything about Elo?
I think what happened here is that using the Eloscore for rating the attractiveness of people was too controversial is today’s climate.
So Tinder decided to make some changes to its matching algorithm so they could say that they no longer rely on Elo. However, we believe the underlying algorithm still rates profiles and tries to match profile with similar attractiveness score, because this system has been working for a long time.
Because we don’t know the name of the current measure they use to rate profiles secretly, we will still use the term, Tinder Elo to refer to the attractiveness score of Tinder algorithm in the rest of this article. (Although as we said they do not use an exact Elo score formula on Tinder anymore.)
How to boost your Tinder ELO?
If you have been getting fewer and fewer matches on Tinder one of the main reasons can be that your Tinder Elo score got so low that you are shown to only unattractive profiles that you are swiping left instantly.
However, don’t worry, there are techniques and tips that you can try to use and apply to your profile that will help you increase your current Elo score.
However, there aren’t really magic tricks when it comes to your Tinder Elo score. The first one is to improve the desirability of your profile and the second one is being selective in your swiping.
Increase Tinder Elo score – Improve your profile
Let’s be honest, you can use any Tinder hacks, buy a lot of premium features if you don’t have at least a decent profile you can do anything you won’t get a lot of Tinder matches.
Therefore, it is of utmost importance to always try to improve the two most important parts of your profile: profile photos and your bio. Tinder profile pictures are the most important. A left or right swipe is decided 80% by how much the other person likes your profile photos. Another 15% is your bio but most of the time you just have to make sure you don’t write any stupid thing there.
When you are swiped right more often, you will be able to improve your Tinder Elo, so your profile will be shown to more profiles and you will be able to get not just more matches but a higher number of attractive Tinder matches.
Improve Tinder Elo score – Selective swiping
The other tactic that you can use very easily that will help you indirectly to get a better Elo score is to be more selective in your swiping.
A huge mistake a lot of people make is they try to like as many profiles as they can as they believe that is the best way to maximize their match number.
However, what happens this time that Tinder will think that they are happy with not so attractive profiles as well. Additionally, you won’t be able to increase your Elo score very much when you are swiped right, but you can lose a lot when are you swipe left.
So if you are swiping right too often, your Elo score will decrease in the long term and the number of new matches you get will also decrease at a parallel pace.
How to hack Tinder Elo?
Even if your attractiveness is low, there are still ways to hack the Tinder Elo score and get a higher number of profile impressions regardless of your low Elo score.
In these cases, you will manage to manipulate the Tinder algorithm and still show up in attractive profiles’ swiping decks.
Here are some tricks and we would use, some of these are free, some of these you have to pay for. We have written comprehensive articles about all of these hacks, so you can read more about them if you are interested.
- Tinder Passport (for premium subscribers)
- Tinder Boost and Tinder Super Boost (paid, one Boost per month free for Gold and Plus subscribers)
- Tinder Swipe Surge (free)
How to reset Tinder Elo score?
As you can see, there are many techniques and hacks on how you can still be shown to a lot of attractive high Elo score profiles if your ELO score is not high enough.
Even if you improved your profile and applied the techniques we outlined above to increase your Elo score, your Elo score might be still so low that it would take you months to get back to a level that is necessary to be shown to the most attractive profiles.
If you are not patient enough you can also do the ultimate hack of Tinder: resetting your Tinder account. When you reset your Tinder account, you will also delete your previous Tinder account, so your Elo score will be reset.
When you successfully reset your Tinder Elo, you will start with a fresh account with an empty Elo score (as you have no swiping history, there is no way to calculate an Elo score to your profile).
When you do an account reset, you should also change your profile photos especially your first one as explained in this video:
One of the reasons that your account gets a newbie boost when you reset your account is that Tinder wants to find out how attractive your profile is so it shows your profile to a lot of accounts. (the other one of course is to get you a lot of matches and get you addicted to Tinder.)
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Find Tinder Elo score?
Unfortunately, there is currently no way to find out what your current Tinder Elo score is. Although Tinder doesn’t use the exact Elo score anymore they must use a similar measurement score. Not seeing your exact Elo score however doesn’t stop you from optimizing your profile and swiping behavior to maximize your profile visibility to other attractive profiles.
Does Tinder uses the exact Elo formula?
In a 2019 official blog post, Tinder has announced that they no longer use the Elo score to measure the attractiveness of the profile. However, they most likely use a similar measurement score to gauge the relative attractiveness of profiles.