Badoo Review: Is It Legit & Worth It?

What is Badoo, and who owns it?

Badoo launched in 2006, which makes it older than Tinder, Hinge and Bumble. It’s owned by Bumble Inc. (NASDAQ: BMBL), and the two apps run side by side as separate products under one parent. So yes, same company as Bumble. No, not the same app, and not the same crowd.

Here’s the number most reviews skip. In Bumble Inc.’s Q2 2026 results (quarter ending 30 June 2026), “Badoo App and Other” brought in $38.8 million, down 17.1% year on year, from 1.08 million paying users — also down from 1.28 million a year earlier.

Translation: Badoo is still big, but it’s shrinking, not growing. That’s worth knowing before you invest three months of swiping into it.

And it matters where you live. Badoo’s strongholds are Brazil, Poland, France, Spain and Italy — Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. In the US it’s a minor player next to Tinder and Hinge. If you’re in Chicago, you’ll notice how quiet it feels. If you’re in Warsaw or São Paulo, you’ll notice the opposite. 🌍

How Badoo actually works

Badoo gives you two ways to find people, not one, which is a nice change from apps that are just a swipe deck.

Encounters (the swipe deck)

One profile at a time, yes or no. Both say yes, you match, you can chat. Free accounts get a daily allowance of votes rather than unlimited swiping.

People Nearby (the grid)

A photo grid of people currently in your area, sorted by distance. You can tap into any profile and like it or start a conversation without waiting for a match first — this is the bit Tinder doesn’t do, and it’s the reason some people prefer Badoo. It also means anyone can start a conversation with you, which cuts both ways.

Chat, video and voice calls

Badoo has in-app video chat and voice calls. Use them — seeing and hearing someone before you hand over your number is the best fake-profile filter there is, and it’s free.

What happened to Badoo Live?

Badoo Live — the livestreaming feed where people broadcast to strangers — is gone. Badoo removed it to push people back toward actual conversations. If you’re searching for it because a guide told you it exists, that guide is stale. The 1:1 video and voice calls inside chat are what’s left, and honestly they’re the more useful feature anyway.

Signing up for Badoo: what it asks for

Takes about three minutes. You can start with a phone number, email, Google account, Apple ID (iOS only) or Facebook (in-app only). Then it asks for your name, what you’re looking for, your date of birth and gender, and your photos.

Two things to know before you start:

• You’ll likely need to verify a phone number. Badoo may ask at sign-up, at login, or later as a random security check. It’s how they tie one profile to one real person, so there’s no getting around it long term.
• 18+ only, and the date of birth you enter is not easy to change afterwards. Type it carefully.

Do the photo verification straight away — you copy a pose in a selfie and Badoo matches it to your pictures. It takes a minute, it gets you the blue check, and it roughly doubles how seriously anyone takes your messages. Plenty of women filter for verified-only, so an unverified profile is quietly invisible to a chunk of the app.

Badoo free vs Premium: what you actually get

This is Badoo’s genuine strength, so let me be precise about it — because “free messaging” gets oversold everywhere.

You can message your matches for free, with no cap. That’s real and it’s rare; Tinder and Bumble both gate meaningful contact behind a match plus limits.

You can also message people who haven’t liked you back — but only twice. After two unanswered messages, you have to stop until they reply. If they reply, the cap lifts and you chat normally. Credits can buy you more messages before a reply, which is exactly where Badoo makes its money.

That two-message rule is the honest version of “Badoo has free messaging.” It’s still more generous than the competition. It’s just not unlimited cold-messaging.

How much does Badoo cost in 2026?

Badoo is one of the cheapest major dating apps, and I don’t just mean the sticker price. Bumble Inc.’s own Q2 2026 filing puts average revenue per paying Badoo user at $11.21 a month, against $27.55 on the Bumble app. People spend less than half as much here. That’s a real fairness signal, not marketing.

Actual prices move around a lot by country, by device, and by whatever promo Badoo is running on you personally. Treat this as the shape of it, then check your own purchase screen:

Credits are separate — pay-as-you-go currency for boosts, gifts and extra messages:

Are Badoo credits worth it?

Mostly no. Credits buy you visibility (Spotlight puts you in front of people nearby) and virtual gifts, and neither fixes a weak profile or a thin local pool. If your photos aren’t landing, paying to show them to more people just gets you ignored faster.

Mina’s money rule for Badoo: run it free for two weeks. If you’re getting matches and just want to see who liked you, one month of Premium is a reasonable $10. If two free weeks got you nothing, that’s the app telling you the pool near you is empty — and no amount of credits fixes empty. 💛

Is Badoo legit and safe?

Legit, yes — unambiguously. It’s a 20-year-old product inside a publicly listed company that files quarterly results with the SEC. Nobody is running off with your card details.

“Safe” is a longer answer.

The safety tools Badoo actually ships

• Photo verification — selfie-in-a-pose matching, blue check, and you can filter Encounters to verified profiles only.
• Deception Detector — AI screening for fake, spam and scam accounts. Badoo says it auto-blocks 95% of them, with human moderators reviewing what’s flagged.
• Private Detector — automatically blurs suspected nudes in chat and asks whether you want to see it. You decide, not him.
• Selfie Request — if a woman exchanges 10+ messages with an unverified man, Badoo automatically asks him to prove he’s real.
• Screenshot Block — blocks screenshots on Android, warns on iOS.
• Video and voice calls in-app — talk face to face without giving out your number.
• Unmatch, block and report — reviewed by a human safety team.

On paper that’s a stronger safety stack than most apps twice its price.

The fake-profile problem, honestly

And yet: the complaints are relentless, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Badoo sits at roughly 2.9 out of 5 on Trustpilot across ~15,000 reviews, and its regional domains (badoo.co.uk, badoo.fr) score far worse at around 1.2–1.3. The same three complaints repeat: fake profiles, dead profiles, and conversations that die after two lines. Google Play users give it 4.0 stars across 6.6 million reviews, which is the more forgiving read — but Trustpilot is where people go when they’re angry, and a lot of Badoo users are.

Two things are true at once. Badoo is not a scam, and Badoo has more junk in it than a smaller, pickier app. That’s the tax you pay for a huge, free, easy-to-join platform — low barriers let everyone in, including the bots. The shrinking user base makes it worse: fewer active people means the profiles still sitting there are more likely to be abandoned accounts than someone who’ll reply tonight.

Scam moves to walk away from

If any of these happen, you’re being worked, not flirted with:

• They want to move to WhatsApp or Telegram within the first few messages.
• They send you a link to “verify” yourself on some other site. Badoo verification never happens off Badoo. Never.
• Model-grade photos, an instant “hey gorgeous,” and zero specific questions about you.
• Anything about crypto, an investment tip, or a sick relative. Ever.
• They refuse a 30-second video call but are very warm in text.

Filter to verified profiles, insist on a quick video call before you meet, and tell a friend where you’re going. That covers 95% of it.

Who Badoo is great for — and who should skip it

Download it if:

• You’re in Europe or Latin America, where the app is genuinely busy.
• You’re travelling and want to meet people in a new city — People Nearby is built for exactly this.
• You refuse to pay to send a message, on principle. Fair enough, and Badoo is your app.
• You want casual, low-pressure, high-volume browsing.

Skip it if:

• You’re in the US or another market where Badoo is thin — try Tinder or Hinge first for raw numbers.
• You want a serious relationship and hate wading. Badoo will make you wade.
• Aggressive upsell prompts wind you up. They are everywhere here.
• You’ve got low patience for unanswered messages. The reply rate is not kind.

Badoo vs Tinder, Bumble and Plenty of Fish

Worth knowing: Bumble is the same parent company, and it’s where Bumble Inc. puts its energy and its money — paying users there spend more than double what Badoo users do. If you want the polished version of this company’s product, that’s the one. If you want the free version, you’re already looking at it. Plenty of Fish is Badoo’s closest match on the “generous free tier, messy user base” spectrum, and it’s stronger in North America. Comparing more than these four? Our dating app directory lines them all up.

How to cancel Badoo Premium or delete your account

These are two different things, and doing one does not do the other. Cancelling a subscription leaves your profile up. Deleting your profile does not always stop the billing. Do both if you’re done.

Cancel the subscription where you bought it:

• iPhone: Settings → your name → Subscriptions → Badoo → Cancel Subscription.
• Android: Play Store → profile icon → Payments and subscriptions → Subscriptions → Badoo → Cancel.
• Bought on the website: log in on badoo.com, open your Settings, find the payment/subscription section and unsubscribe there.

You keep your paid perks until the end of the period you already paid for — cancelling doesn’t refund the current month.

Delete the account: open your Profile, tap the gear icon for Settings, go to Account, and choose Delete account at the bottom. Badoo asks why you’re leaving, then asks for your password to confirm it’s really you (this is a good thing — it stops anyone else nuking your profile). You may get a confirmation email with a link to finish it off.

Cancel the subscription first, then delete. That order saves people a surprise charge every single month.

My verdict: Badoo scores 3.4/5

Badoo is the honest budget option in online dating. The free plan does what it says, the paid plan is genuinely cheap for what you get, and the safety tooling — Deception Detector, Private Detector, verification, Selfie Request — is better than the app’s reputation suggests. That’s why Badoo gets a 3.4 out of 5 from me instead of something lower.

What holds it back is real too. The user base is shrinking — down 17% in revenue and 200,000 paying users year on year — the fake and abandoned profiles are a genuine slog, and outside Europe and Latin America the pool is thin enough that the app can feel like an empty room. The upsell prompts don’t help.

So: download it, verify your photos, run it free for two weeks, and let the results decide. If your city is busy on Badoo, it’s the best value in dating apps. If it isn’t, no subscription is going to change that — and you’ll have found that out for free, which is the whole point. 💛

Badoo FAQ

Is Badoo legit or a scam?

Badoo is completely legit. It’s been running since 2006 and is owned by Bumble Inc., a company listed on NASDAQ that reports its Badoo revenue publicly every quarter. The app itself isn’t a scam — but individual scammers do use it, so verify before you trust.

Is Badoo really free?

Yes, more than most. You can browse, swipe in Encounters, use People Nearby, video call, and message your matches with no cap and no payment. You can also send two messages to someone who hasn’t matched you; after that you wait for a reply or spend credits.

How much is Badoo Premium?

Roughly $10–$13 a month in the US, dropping to about $8 a month on a six-month plan, with a one-off “lifetime” option around $60–$80. Prices vary a lot by country and device, so check the purchase screen in your own app.

Are Badoo profiles real?

Many are, but fake and abandoned accounts are Badoo’s most-complained-about problem — it sits around 2.9/5 on Trustpilot largely because of it. Filter Encounters to verified profiles only, and treat anyone who won’t do a quick video call as unproven.

Is Badoo the same as Bumble?

Same parent company, different apps. Bumble Inc. owns both. Badoo is older, cheaper, more generous for free, and far bigger outside the US; Bumble is more polished, more US-focused, and its users spend more than double per head.

Is Badoo good in the US?

It’s the app’s weakest big market. Badoo’s strongholds are Brazil, Poland, France, Spain and Italy. In most American cities you’ll find far more active people on Tinder or Hinge, so use Badoo as a free extra rather than your main app.

Does Badoo still have live streaming?

No. Badoo Live was removed and hasn’t come back — Badoo pulled it to push people toward conversations instead. What you get now is 1:1 video chat and voice calls inside your messages, which are free.

How do I stop Badoo charging me?

Cancel through wherever you subscribed — Apple Subscriptions, Google Play Subscriptions, or the payment settings on badoo.com. Deleting your Badoo profile does not automatically stop an app-store subscription, so always cancel first, then delete.