My two months on Raya
My review on the invite-only exclusive dating app
A warning: This was meant to be a quick Raya review that turned into a dating app rant. I apologise in advance.
I have a hate-hate relationship with dating apps, in so much as I don’t want to meet the love of my life on one. But I am a millennial and, occasionally, the pull is too strong, even for me. Especially when I see a Meet Cutes NYC x Hinge Reel pop up. But, of course, I refuse to admit that and instead double down, insisting each of my dating app forays having been for a ✨reason✨. For example, my first dating app date happened because my ex-housemates bet me to go on ONE date that year. That date continues to be the story I wheel out at parties (I would tell you here but then I would have nothing to talk about at parties). The second time I tried out a bunch of apps was because I was meant to write a piece comparing dating apps for Muslim women… although, I can’t remember writing it That period brought me the most inventive compliment I’ve received to date: a man compared my beauty to that of his university building.
And that brings me to the 2024/2025 season. I was at a work event when a friend comes up and says she’s read my Musly piece. We end up at the back cackling our heads off, whilst getting shot the occasional disapproving look. As she’s wiping away her tears, she tells me it’s time to join her on Raya. ‘You do realise I have like five Instagram followers,’ I say. She tells me it’s not like that anymore and it’s now ‘all about the referrals, darling’. ‘Plus,’ she says, ‘It would make for a great Brown Bodies piece.’ Ah, the magic words. So in October 2024 I download Raya.
For the uninitiated, Raya is an exclusive, invitation-only dating app. Originally, it was only for celebrities. It has since opened up for mere mortals like me. It’s also changed its positioning and describes itself as ‘a private, membership based community for people all over the world to connect and collaborate.’
Do you know how disgusting I felt messaging friends like, ‘Yo, do you fancy referring me to (barf) Raya?’ To which one replied saying, ‘I thought you were married.’
So my application was in, I had 11 referrals, and all that was left was to wait. I checked my status a few times over the next few weeks and, well, nada. As I began to fall for someone new I forgot all about it. Until that all died and then right on time, voilà, I was in.
I begrudgingly paid my £20 monthly subs and set up my profile.
Quick facts
Raya won’t say how many users it has but in August it said it was in it’s low six figures
Raya claims to have 2.5 million plus people on its wait list. The line that’s thrown around is that its acceptance rate is lower than Oxford’s (but it doesn’t publish official figures so who knows)
Once you’re accepted, it costs £20/$24.99 a month. There’s a premium option that costs double (ish)
There’s no endless scroll. You get a set of profiles to go through and when you’re done, you’re done. Unfortunately, you don’t know when you’re going to get the next batch which is pretty rubbish
The people
Because people are going to ask, let me beat you to it. Fun profiles I’ve seen include those belonging to Tom Felton (if you’re reading this, I would genuinely date you); Jamie Murray; a couple of famous singers and rappers; a bunch of footballers I wouldn’t recognise or be able to name if my life depended on it; and a few artists I actually quite admire. Yes, I’ve only mentioned two names but they’re publicly known for being on there. Let’s protect people’s privacy. Go ahead and call me boring.
But omg the number of tech bros. They’re all on there. They love a bit of faux exclusivity, don’t they? I thought I was on Raya to get away from that being the only pool I can fish in but nope! The number of VCs and founders I have met in real life that were on there was nauseating. I was tempted to message a couple of them on LinkedIn and be like, ‘Oh hey, I saw you on Raya. Some unsolicited advice but you might want to update your photos because it’s giving catfishing.’ I might have swiped right on a couple of them though. Sue me.
Location
The app lets you match with people from anywhere in the world. They’re just automatically in your pile but the majority tend to be from near-ish you geographically. The first guy I matched with, for example, was Arab from Toronto (friends, shut up). I actually knew who he was and I’d bought stuff from his company before. He was nice, we had a decent chat and decided to book a date in. Sadly, he cancelled on me because of a ‘work dinner’. It’s cool, we just won’t be buying from him anymore! (I’m joking. Sort of.).
There is also a section in the app where you can specifically go and look at profiles in different cities globally or neighbourhoods near you. This is limited though unless you upgrade to premium. Closer to home, I had a peek into Hackney, Hampstead, Shoreditch… I did try and have a look south of the river but I don’t think there was anything aside from Clapham. This does check out though as, generally, the diversity is rubbish. Although, from what I could tell, it seems like the pool is bigger in the UK than it is in the US. It’s still dire. There’s also no filters a more diverse audience might want like faith, lifestyle, plans, etc. You can get around it by using interest tags but it’s not a filtration system.
It is annoying that you can’t filter for people by your city. I get that it was designed for celebrities for whom a quick flight or whatever isn’t a big deal — or for people like me who seem to love the inconvenience and annoyance of long distance — but for most people, this is just stupid. it wouldn’t even require a big fix. It’s just a weird choice for it to not be an option.
Photos
Who told all of these men to post the exact same thing? If the Hinge profile cookie cutter is photo with baby, with pet, skydiving near the Burj Khalifa, and at the gym (bonus points if it’s shirtless); then Raya’s template is shirtless, shirtless by pool, shirtless by beach (you get the point), and in a private jet or a Range Rover (or both). Bonus points for a pic with granny. I wisssh I was joking but I got a secondary source to confirm this is the case. IT BOGGLES THE MIND.
It’s funny because actual celebrities on there don’t tend to have that vibe at all. A very well known singer’s profile was just art, his dog, and some random forest walks. I guess they can afford to be a bit more real. All of which is to say, there’s quite a bit of posturing going on on Raya.
Bios
Almost nobody has a bio and I hate it. There’s literally nothing to learn about them? You’re just meant to go off of the photos and the basic information which includes:
Profession
Location
Age
City you live in, city you’re from, cities you visit most often
Profile song, which is cool but not everyone has one. Mine was obviously Baile Inolvidable by Bad Bunny, if you're wondering.
Mixtape, which is also cool but not many people put together (including me).
A link to an Instagram profile. To have a Raya account, you have to verify yourself through Instagram. But even this doesn’t always get you anywhere because, clearly, some were just created for the app and then deleted. I know this because I was met with a few dead links.
Plus, you have the option to link to your Places profile — the Raya universe’s answer to Corners (or, if you’re still a loser like me, Google Maps saves/lists).
Conversations
The chat was a bit dead. Everyone I’ve asked says they’ve also experienced it to be very quiet. And I get it: when you have no bio to go off of, what are we chatting about? Plus, there are people on there trying to do business. I kid you not, there are people with ‘looking for models/videographers/editor to collab with’ in their bios.
The silence makes you question why certain people are paying for the app (the answer is potential work and more Instagram followers, by the way).
When I did chat though, I did find that there was a quicker baseline understanding and acceptance of my work/life than I’ve found on Hinge. There was also less of an immediate need to be embarrassed about something coming across as pretentious. I’m going to try not to digress too much here but, my Lord, we really need to get over this fear and embarrassment of how we come across because we read, write, watch certain things. It’s truly so silly — life is too short to not do the things that bring us joy.
To sum it up
I would say it’s definitely better than its closest competitor, The League, but I still don’t think I would recommend it.
I’m not saying it’s entirely a shit show on there, it’s just boring AF which is, in part, due to the cookie cutter profiles, the lack of bios, and the all quiet. The other part is the not knowing when you’re going to get more profiles to sift through.
I’m also surprised by the lack of openness around sex. I thought Raya might have had interest tags or filters that are about sex. We talk openly about wanting someone who, say, exercises but are so shy when it comes to discussing desire. I find it odd that there’s still that prudishness built into apps that are designed for intimate relationships.
There’s something I’m not entirely sure about but I think it’s important I mention it. I don’t know where the company stands on Palestine. The founder, Daniel Gendelman, started the app while he was studying in Tel Aviv which immediately set off internal alarms but I can’t find any current links to Israel, aside from Tel Aviv still being one of the featured cities on the app. I have scrolled the founder’s entire activity on LinkedIn and there are no red flags that I can see. Most of the team sits in LA. I question it on the basis that Raya supposedly stopped its services in Russia after it invaded Ukraine — there have been anecdotal reports but the company has never publicly confirmed taking a stance which aligns with its general public silence — but has taken no such action in Israel. The Match group (more on those lot below) did the exact same thing but were public about it. Selective engagement…
Look, in general, I’m not a fan of dating apps — not just because of wanting the meet-cute thing — but, like the above, I take serious issue with their corporate structures. More so than I do with most companies, if I’m honest, because they affect something so central to the human experience: love.
Firstly, there’s our data. Even if apps aren’t selling it, we know it’s being used to drive our behaviour. They know how to keep us engaged and convinced that there’s something better a swipe away.
Then there’s the inbuilt racism. It’s disguised as user choice but I truly feel like if exclusion feels frictionless, the structure is part of the problem. At the end of the day, preference doesn’t exist in a vacuum — we are entirely moulded by social perception of race where race so often becomes a trend. Look at the cultural dialogue around that viral Inde Wild TikTok at the Tyla concert in India: ’South Asian women are baddies? Who knew?’ We did. We’ve always known. It’s the same thing when it comes to brown men who are so often desexualised in the media.
There are engagement-based ranking systems which decide who is desirable and who gets shown more and who isn’t. The algorithm is built to reinforce the centring of whiteness and Eurocentric beauty standards, without questioning the users motive or giving them a more diverse offering (why would you question those who are paying you?). It ends up with people of colour and other marginalised users being shown less, so they match less and then get ranked lower. It’s a just a never ending self perpetuating cycle.
The, there’s fetishisation of women of colour: ‘You’re exotic,’ ‘You’re the first X I’ve been with,’ or ‘No offence, but I’m not into Asians but you’re different though ;)’ Alongside slurs and stereotypes disguised as flirting: ’I thought brown girls were meant to be submissive?’ ‘Wow, I thought you’d be more conservative,’ or ‘Latinas are just more passionate.’ There’s no real way to report this, no education on why this might be wrong, and definitely no consequences for the perpetrators. Platforms don’t need racist intent to perpetuate racist outcomes.
There’s also the lack of platform choice that makes it harder to have a voice in what we want. The Match group (match.com) owns a huge share of the market including Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, and The League, to name a few of the 45+ that they have under their umbrella. It’s been accused and sued for a whole bunch of bad behaviour, including by the US Federal Trade Commission who essentially claimed that Match was allowing and enabling fraudulent accounts to show interest to non-subscribers, therefore encouraging them to subscribe. It’s also been criticised for potentially backing weaker privacy protections in its backing of the US’ bipartisan Earn It Act aimed at combatting online child sexual exploitation. Also, a group of women accused them of not removing accounts of sexual predators. Amongst other things.
Finally, there’s the addiction by design component. Most of these apps operate on users remaining on the app and not leaving. In defence of Raya, the higher membership fee for all members — i.e. no freemium model — might explain why it can afford to not have an endless scroll. A reminder from tech Anisah here: even if a service is free you will always be paying for it somehow, whether it’s with your attention or your data.
Anyway, this was just meant to be a quick Raya review. Oops.
I’m not saying I’m done with apps entirely. Although there are currently none on my phone, there are still a few I want to try including Thursday (although I’m worried it’s too preppy for me), Timeleft (too drink centric for me?) and Feeld (too open for me?). I feel like they’re all quite misunderstood platforms that I’d quite like to write about.
More than that though, I’d love 2026 to be the year we see more pressure put on dating apps. I’m tired of the big conglomerates not being taken seriously by the public because dating is still seen as a silly industry. It’s how fast fashion used to be seen until we began to understand how destructive it is — it being responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions went a long way in changing public perception. We need more direct action to ensure loneliness and the desire for intimacy aren’t exploited. We could also do with some more indirect action, like people deleting apps and calling for more IRL experiences, to get companies to sit up and pay attention.
Until then, I’m going to continue to believe that when there’s a person for me, and we’re both ready, I will find them out in the big wide world.
I’d love to hear what you think!