Raya 17+

Love Raya only had it a few months but I personally think it’s great even tho it costs £20 a month I feel like this means people take it a bit more seriously. Only annoying thing is i screenshotted forgetting I’m on Raya and not another dating app and I really don’t want to get banned. I wish you could design the app so if you screenshot it covers the conversation anyway and you don’t ban people cos I feel like I’m gonna accidentally do it again and then get banned 😪

I design and build apps so I tested this one.

It seems the ‘like’ component doesn’t work ethically. It states you’re given a limit on ‘likes’ per day when the reality is you have a limit on people served to you. You could reject every person but only like one and still hit your limit of ‘likes’ so the naming and explanation on why there is a limit (to encourage you to talk with your connections) is incredibly misleading.

This prompted me to also test what happens if you use the rewind button on the same person and whether your like limit could be reached simply repeating that with one person. It did. Which shows that Raya does not discern between who and how you have engaged with others historically. All it accounts for is the engagement of the app, not the individual.

Without that, you lose the expected range of potential people to match with and will ultimately be served the same people - which you’ve already probably noticed, right?

It’s also suspicious that you cannot set and then be served anyone who matches your desired criteria. You are simply given random people from a pool of age groups, gender, and location. How is that not a fundamental feature in 2024?

These aren’t bugs. This is intentional design to minimise your chances of finding a meaningful connection. This app is gamified and costs you your time and money.

Like all dating sites, the first 24 hours seem great and then it goes downhill from there. As a woman (especially one of colour) don’t hold your breath. Very small pool of swipeable men. You also have to wait up to 12 hours before you’re shown a new set of members. Honestly seems they let anyone on there, absolutely not the premium experience you’d think. You’re so much better off on Hinge or any other site.

The subscription fee is SO ridiculously high at £17 per month. Maybe the experience is better if you’re paying the premium fee of £45, but judging from the cheaper version definitely not worth it. Maybe it was good in 2020 or so but it’s definitely had a downfall and I wish I’d been warned of this before WASTING my money. 0/10. Absolutely not worth the hype.