Connie Collins, a 25-year-old sex educator, walked through the unlocked door of a stylish apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to find a man lying naked and face down on a bed. “I put on a strap and just started strapping away at him,” she says. “It was just super crazy. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
The pair didn’t know each other’s names, nor had they seen each other’s faces. Though they’d later develop a brief friendship, they had met only hours earlier, under pseudonyms, on an app named Pure, billed as “the open-minded dating app.”
Even as mainstream dating apps scramble to respond to dwindling subscriber s and Gen Z skepticism, 12-year-old Pure—which presents itself as an alternative to traditional services like Hinge and Tinder, and as an even less inhibited version of kink-friendly Feeld —has been on a tear. In February, the company reported that it had reached $100 million in annual revenue. Pure tells Fast Company that it has now reached . . .
a $220 million run rate—and is forecasting to double that figure next year. Over the past year, Pure’s revenue has more than doubled in the U.S, its biggest market.
The sex-forward dating app is free to download but men and nonbinary users must pay for a subscription ($13.99 a week, $648 a year) to initiate chats and maximize their visibility. Women have access to most features on the app for free, though the Pure Queens subscription (starting at $4.99 a week) gives them access to more controls. Pure says that its users are split 60-40 between men and women—and most are Gen Z and millennial. (Tinder, which appeals to the same demographic, has a ratio of roughly 75% male, 25% female.)
“People are getting a bit tired of all the traditional swipe-based dating apps and they’re looking for something different,” says Pure’s CEO, Luka Dremelj. He credits Pure’s success to its unique interface and user experience. Users on Pure don’t swipe through profiles, accepting and rejecting matches. Instead, they scroll through a feed of “personal ads” posted by other users, expressing interests, desires, or provocative come-ons. That feed is full of individuals who have identified similar turn-ons—everything from music and massage to one-night stands, foot fetishes, and dominant and submissive relationships.
Though it facilitates in-person connections, Pure is just as much about chatting and sexting, allowing users to share explicit photos and videos, which disappear after viewing, and engage in video calls. As dating apps contend with Gen Z users who are either uninterested or too anxious to meet in person, Pure offers a different proposition: allowing them to explore their sexuality behind a screen, with limited human contact.
The app’s unorthodox approach to privacy—all users are anonymous, even to the app itself, which doesn’t verify identity—is one of its biggest draws, reducing barriers to connections and letting people explore their turn-ons without inhibition. But, as a recent lawsuit in Texas indicates, it may leave some users exposed.
A new design language
Pure’s approachability starts with its design language, which is filled with bright colors and playful, hand-drawn illustrations after a redesign earlier this year. “We’re bringing this human touch to the user experience,” says Dremelj, who joined the company in 2022, shortly after RM Equity Partners, a European private equity firm, bought the app. “There’s a bit of humor in there.”
[Image: Pure]
Users first experience this humor during the onboarding process. They begin by choosing their gender and sexuality on screens that feature whimsical drawings. Then they create their “ad,” which serves almost like an old-school newspaper personal, enticing people to click on their profile, which can be customized with photos and different background colors and designs.
To make it easier for users to share their desires, Pure allows them to select from a list of more than 20 turn-ons to display on their profiles—each portrayed by illustrated icons. Those options include feminism (tagline: “let’s dismantle the patriarchy together”), outdoor hangs (“fresh air, dirty thoughts”), home video (illustrated by a clapperboard with “take 69” on it), and therapy (“mindful of my relationship with myself and others”). Others are kinkier and include edging, cuckolding, and wax play.
[Image: Pure]
Users’ turn-ons are also displayed on their personal ads, which include a brief tagline stating what they’re looking for and optional photos. Users discover one another’s ads in a feed that Pure can adjust. “Sometimes, instead of leading with photos, we will put someone’s turn-ons as the first thing users might read about them in the feed,” Dremelj says. When two users express the same desires, the app might inform them that they have mutual turn-ons to give them a conversation starter.
Crucially, users can always go back and look at profiles they may have initially passed on. There’s no such thing as a “hard pass” in the open world of Pure.
Private parts
While Pure’s visual design sets it apart from other apps, its approach to privacy shapes virtually every interaction. An app designed for casual encounters and sexting has to walk a thin line between offering users anonymity while keeping them safe.
To start, every user is assigned a random username, though they can use their real name if they choose. They’re not required to share any pictures or answer any prompts about themselves.
[Image: Pure]
Most dating and hook-up apps take an à la carte approach to privacy. A user might fill in their profile, then toggle over to settings to make sure that location services, or features that detect mutual friends, are turned off. By contrast, Pure’s settings default to anonymity. “The traditional discourse around sharing information on dating apps is that we have to make the online world smaller, more controlled, and less anonymous,” says Sergej Vujanović, Pure’s chief product officer. “I feel that some level of anonymity at the start is great, and then you can decide on your terms when you want to share. We’re not prohibiting sharing more.”
Dilara Doshi, a Berlin-based, 31-year-old content creator, joined Pure two years ago to explore her sexuality. She says that she usually meets up with someone within hours of beginning a chat on the app. “I display pictures of my face. I have a picture in a bikini, so you can see my body shape,” she says. “I use my real name and my real age. Some other users actually hide their faces on their profiles with a cap, or put an emoji on top, or sunglasses, or they write, ‘Hey, if it’s a vibe, I can send you pictures of me.’”
All content from Pure chats disappears after 24 hours, though both users can agree to remove the time limit. Photos and videos also disappear after 24 hours, and can be opened only once.
[Image: Pure]
“Sometimes people ask to move the conversation to WhatsApp, but I don’t usually say yes to that because it’s sexting,” Doshi says. “I like that our communication disappears on Pure. I don’t want footage being saved.” ( Grindr provides some comparable safeguards, including self-destructing imagery alongside settings that allow members to obscure their physical distance and opt out of appearing in local discovery feeds.)
Screenshots are also banned on Pure, and if a user tries to take one, the other party is notified. When she started using the app, Collins attempted to take a screenshot of a conversation to send to her friends. When the app informed the person she was chatting with, Collins was embarrassed but also relieved: “Knowing that I, a well-intentioned person, tried to screenshot a conversation and couldn’t, made me feel really safe.”
Someone could still use a separate device to photograph whatever is on the phone, as Aaron Rose, a cybersecurity expert at Check Point Software Technologies, points out. He also notes, “Without identity verification, you don’t necessarily know offhand that who you’re talking to is an actual human being. It could be a bot.”
Pure encourages users to keep all their interactions within the app until they meet up in person. “When you get into a chat with somebody, if you share a social handle with them, we’ll send you a notification asking, Hey, are you sure you want to share that? Because then the other party can usually identify you,” says Vujanović, the chief product officer.
Before meeting up with another user, Collins will often video chat with them within the app to make sure they’re representing themselves accurately. “I did it with somebody recently,” she says. “We got to have a preliminary conversation about what we would want if we were together.”
Doshi uses the app in her native Turkey, where many users are anonymous to protect themselves. But anonymity can be a double-edged sword. “Because I talk openly about sex, sometimes I have hateful comments from Turkish men on social media and on the app,” she says. “When I see a Turkish man matching me and he wants to meet me, I’m like maybe he’s very conservative, and maybe it’s just a trap. Sometimes gay men or young women get catfished on [dating and relationship platforms], and then something happens to them.”
The risks of prioritizing anonymity
Pure doesn’t require photo or video verification for users nor does it have an age verification process, except in regions where local laws mandate such proof, like the U.K. “We believe the best thing would be that the verification process would be done already at the level of Apple and Google in their app stores,” Vujanović says. “The app is built around privacy, so when you ask users to upload their ID, they’re sometimes feeling a bit reluctant.”
This approach sets it apart from Tinder, which introduced Face Check for all new users in every territory last year. The tool doesn’t ask for a government ID, but does compel all new users to go through a video selfie verification process. Match Group, Tinder’s owner, told Congressional investigators that pilots of the tool reduced user interactions with scam accounts by 70% in the U.S.
Pure offers a similar feature, but it’s not required for users. Once a user is approved, a verification badge is displayed on their profile. Pure also has a feature called True Photos, which verifies photos taken in the app at a particular moment. Users can request a True Photo from someone while chatting; a photo will then appear with a verification checkmark proving that it was taken recently within the app. A feature called Safety Signal also lets a user share their last known location and their date’s Pure profile photos with a trusted person through a password-protected link.
Still, the lack of identity and age verification introduces risks, and makes it difficult for the app to police bad actors. A lawsuit filed in Harris County, Texas, in October alleges that, in March, a 35-year-old former police officer posed as a 16-year-old on Pure, where he connected with and arranged to meet a 13-year-old. The suit says he brought her to his home, gave her drugs, and sexually assaulted her.
The company says it has yet to be contacted by U.S. law enforcement and learned of the incident through an article in the Houston Chronicle . “We are waiting for either law enforcement or the lawyers of the plaintiff to get back to us and tell us the details so that we can actually just check what happened,” Vujanović says. Pure adds that until it hears more, it can’t verify that either individual was ever on the app.
Something for everyone
I joined Pure while reporting this article, uploading three pictures of myself, including my reporter headshot. I also clearly designated in my bio that I was a journalist looking to learn more about the app.
Within an hour, I had more than 500 likes. When I matched with other users to ask them questions, I was often greeted with an ephemeral picture. I made the mistake of opening a few; they were all dick pics.
My experience is common for many women on the app. Doshi tells me that sometimes the volume of interest on the app can be overwhelming. Upon joining, she received 900 likes in a day, compared to 40 on Hinge.
Collins says that the app has been validating for her as a queer woman of color. “I’ve never had these many matches before in my life. It felt like I was being shown to any and everyone, and my profile didn’t feel so thrown at the bottom of the pile,” she says.
She pays for a Pure Queens subscription, which she considers worthwhile for customizable filters that let her set her match radius and age range. She dislikes some subscriber perks other users pay extra for, like the one that gives them direct access to her inbox without matching with her first. She values the block feature.
Vujanović says that the app has tested AI -driven features that help users choose appealing pictures and help them fill out their bio (features available on Match Group apps and Bumble). The initiatives were nixed when they didn’t increase user interactions or connections. What does help with connections on Pure: when people use their anonymity to frankly describe their turn-ons in hope that someone will share them.
Sometimes they strike out. When a user messaged me asking if I enjoyed the idea of multiple male partners peeing on me, I responded no. I added that I wasn’t on the platform to discuss such things.
But perhaps someone else was out there. “People have very, very, very specific kinks,” Doshi notes. “I hope they get lucky on Pure because I imagine it’s hard to find people who share them.” One thing she is clear on: “I don’t think AI can help so much.”
