Sign-up and profile
Badoo is one of the oldest dating apps that still matters today, and sign-up is correspondingly polished. Upload photos, add a few basics, pick some interests, done. A longer bio is possible, but it is rarely asked for and even more rarely written.
In practice you see a lot of faces and very little about the people behind them. Whether someone wants a relationship or just some company is often not on the profile. You have to settle that question in the chat, and early.
The card stack and people nearby
Badoo gives you two routes. In the card stack you see one profile after another and decide with a tap whether you are interested. If you both like each other, it is a match. Alongside that there is an overview of people near you that you can browse freely.
Reach is the app’s big strength. In our test Badoo is level with Bumble here and behind only Tinder. Profiles keep appearing outside the big cities too, and in the Balkans Badoo has been one of the best-known apps of all for years.
Usability only gets a middle score. The app has a lot of sections, a lot of icons and a lot of pop-ups competing for your attention. If you open Badoo for the first time, it takes a while to learn where everything is.
Conversations and intentions
Badoo draws a very broad crowd, and you notice it in the chats. Next to people searching seriously, many are there to chat, flirt or simply look around. That is why it only gets 2 out of 5 for seriousness.
That is no reason to avoid Badoo, but it is a reason to ask openly. If you say what you are looking for in your first few messages, you save yourself and others time. If you wait for hints, you can wait a long time here.
The gender balance is mid-table. It is not so lopsided that one side is left with nothing, but it is not as even as on Bumble or Hinge either.
Safety, verification and privacy
Badoo offers photo verification: you take a selfie to confirm you are the person in your pictures, and verified profiles are marked. Reporting and blocking work straight from a profile or a chat. That adds up to a solid middle score and no more, because verification stays optional.
On privacy, Badoo shares the weakest score in our test with Tinder. The app uses your location, your behaviour in the app and your profile data, and Badoo belongs to the same group as Bumble, which does not make it easier to follow where your data goes. Set location access deliberately and do not link other accounts unless you have to.
Pricing and fairness
Badoo makes money in two ways. The subscription buys convenience, above all the list of people who already liked you. Credits buy visibility, such as a profile that sits further up for a while. You will be offered both often.
That is why it only gets 2 out of 5 for pricing fairness, level with Tinder. You can start conversations without paying, but the app keeps reminding you of everything you could buy. And a model that sells visibility favours the profile that paid, not the one that fits.
Badoo and the Albanian community
Badoo is the only big international app in our test that does not score 1 for Albanian fit. The reason is simply how widely it is used: in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia, Badoo has been familiar for years. If you live there or spend your summers there, you will find a big local pool.
It does not go beyond that, though. Background, language and family have no place of their own in the app, and if you are in Germany, Austria or Switzerland looking specifically for Albanians, you will only meet them on Badoo by chance. For that search, Dua is the established option, and embla will be the second once it launches.
