Dating apps for adults over 18: Bumble and Badoo
Dating apps for adults over 18: what this page brings together
This page brings together two guides about dating apps used in Brazil: the Bumble and the Badoo. Both apps are restricted to users over 18 years of age, offer free access to their main features, and sell extra functions within the app itself. Badoo also displays advertisements.
Each guide describes how the app works and what's available in the free version. The idea is to provide enough information to compare the two options before deciding which one suits your needs.
What the guides explain
Privacy controls
Both apps allow you to adjust who sees your profile, limit the photos displayed, and block or report accounts.
What is free in each one?
Creating a profile, liking, matching, and chatting are free on both apps. Features like profile highlights and additional filters are part of in-app purchases.
Profile verification
Bumble uses selfie verification, while Badoo verifies photos and social media profiles—two different approaches to reducing fake profiles.
Who sends the first message?
On Bumble, in connections between men and women, only the woman can initiate the conversation. On Badoo, anyone who has matched can write first. That's the most visible difference between the two.
Search filters
Distance, age range, and interests are filters available in both apps. The guides indicate which ones work without a subscription.
Listing on Google Play
Each guide includes the app's information on Google Play, with its rating, number of reviews, size, and download volume, as well as a link to the official store page.
Common questions
The risk exists and doesn't disappear. What reduces the problem is using well-known apps, not giving out personal data in initial conversations, and activating the blocking and reporting features as soon as something seems strange.
Not for the main functions. Both Bumble and Badoo allow you to create a profile, like, and chat without paying. Subscriptions and individual packages serve to give more visibility to the profile and unlock extra filters.
Verified profiles receive a badge within the app. Few photos, generic text, and rushing to move the conversation to another app are warning signs. A video call before meeting helps confirm who is on the other side.
Yes, and also friendships. Bumble has separate modes for friendship and for professional contacts, and Badoo is used both by those looking for a relationship and by those who just want to chat. What you write in your profile guides the type of contact you receive.
Yes. Both apps are for users 18 and older, and registration requires a date of birth. It's also possible to filter the age range of the people who appear to you.
Choose a public place, let someone you trust know where you'll be, and keep your own transportation. No app security feature replaces these precautions.
What to look for before installing
- What is free and what is paid for?. Almost all of them let you create a profile and like comments for free, and charge for features like seeing who liked you or undoing an action.
- Who actually uses the app?. Each platform has a dominant audience profile — age range, intent, and city. This is the factor that most determines the outcome.
- Privacy and location policy. See if you can hide the exact distance and if the profile can be made invisible to people you didn't like.
- Base size in your region. An app with many users abroad and few in your city simply won't work, no matter how good it is.
What these apps don't solve
Before installing, it's worth managing your expectations: there are things that no app in this category delivers.
- They don't check anyone's background. Photo verification confirms that the person is who appears in the image, and that's all.
- They don't protect against romance scams. Asking for money, even with a convincing story, is the clearest sign of fraud.
- The feature to see who liked your posts is usually a paid service — when it appears for free in a third-party app, it's fake.
- There's no way to prevent someone from using another person's photo; reverse image search remains the best way to check.
