Is Kippo Worth It? An Honest 2026 Review of the Gamer Dating App

Quick disclosure before anything else: we make Midnight Lobby, a competing dating app for gamers, so weigh our take accordingly. Everything below about Kippo comes from its own website, its two store listings and press coverage, all linked in the sources. Ratings, prices and review patterns were checked on November 10, 2026.

The short verdict: try the free tier, don’t pay yet

Kippo was one of the first apps built around dating as a gamer, and some of its ideas still hold up, especially its personality-card profiles and the fact that it runs on iPhone. The 2026 picture is rough, though. Both store ratings are low, neither app has shipped an update in about two years, and the most common complaint in recent reviews is that the app stops showing new people after day one. If you’re curious, the free version costs nothing to try. Paying is a different question.

What Kippo is and where it came from

Kippo is a dating app for gamers made by Covalent Inc. Its website describes matching people on their favorite games and other interests, profiles built from a customizable card deck that shows off your personality, and chat where you can send GIFs and invite a match to play together. The store descriptions say people use it for three things: finding love, making friends and finding a gaming partner. You can browse people near you or anywhere in the world. Kippo’s terms say the service isn’t meant for anyone under 18.

It has real history. GamesBeat reports that CEO David Park started Kippo in 2019, and Droid Life covered the Android release in September 2020, when the iOS app was already out. In January 2022, Kippo 2.0 added avatars, a customizable virtual home and an arcade where avatars could play games together on a date. At that point GamesBeat reported about 180,000 monthly active users, roughly 70% of them there to date.

That virtual world didn’t last. The App Store version history shows a 3.0.0 update on October 31, 2023 announcing that the original Kippo was back, and both store descriptions still open with that message. Several 2026 reviewers mention the old virtual world by name and ask for it to return.

How matching works

It’s a swipe-style deck. You fill in your profile with photos, games and personality cards, then like or pass on profiles in a daily batch. When two people like each other, they match and can chat. Free users get a limited number of profiles per day; reviewers describe hitting a screen that says they have finished their daily batch.

Two design complaints come up again and again in reviews from 2023 to 2025: you can’t search or filter people by the games they play, and people who only want friends end up in the same pool as people who want to date. For an app built around games, the missing game filter is the one reviewers find hardest to forgive.

Free vs Kippo Infinity

Kippo’s store listings say browsing, matching and chatting are free, and its support page says the app is free and always will be. Kippo Infinity is the paid subscription on top of that. In 2020 Droid Life described the premium tier as removing the browsing limits, and reviewers mention unlimited likes as part of it.

On the US App Store, the in-app purchases section lists three Kippo Infinity options at $13.99, $52.99 and $78.99 (as listed on November 10, 2026). The listing doesn’t say which duration each price covers. The US Google Play listing shows in-app purchases ranging from $13.99 to $79.99 per item.

One thing to know before paying: Kippo’s terms say subscriptions are managed by Apple or Google, you cancel through the store you bought from, and deleting your Kippo account does not end the subscription.

Ratings at a glance (checked November 10, 2026)

What reviewers complain about

We read the 100 most recent Google Play reviews (December 2025 to early November 2026) and the 50 most recent US App Store reviews (April 2025 to October 2026). On Google Play, 84 of the 100 were one star and only one was five stars. On the App Store, 37 of the 50 were one star. The patterns repeat across both stores:

• The daily batch never comes back. This was the biggest theme, appearing in roughly a third of the Google Play reviews. People say they swiped through one batch on their first day, then saw nothing new for days or weeks. Several say reinstalling and clearing the cache didn’t help, and some paid subscribers report the same thing.
• It feels abandoned. About one in five Google Play reviews call the app dead, abandoned or empty. Reviewers point to the 2024 update dates and say support is hard to reach, mainly through X or email.
• Bots and scammers. Reviewers on both stores describe fake profiles and scammers who push the conversation to Discord. More than one warns not to put your Discord name on your profile.
• Profile bugs. Games that won’t save, photos that crash the app, preferences that reset, and location settings that show people hundreds of miles away.
• Paying didn’t fix it. A recurring thread is people who bought Infinity, still saw few or no new profiles, and in a few cases say they lost access to a paid account after being logged out.

What reviewers like, and what Kippo does better

The concept gets praise even in one-star reviews, and some things are better than what we or other small apps offer:

• It’s on iPhone. Kippo has both an iOS and an Android app. Midnight Lobby is Android only, so if you’re on iPhone, Kippo is an option and we aren’t.
• A longer track record. Kippo has been around since 2019, and a handful of reviewers say they made friends or met partners there in earlier years.
• Expressive profiles. The personality cards and quizzes come up as a highlight, including in negative reviews.
• A friendship mode. If you’re open to friends or a gaming partner as well as dating, Kippo is built for all three, even if reviewers who only want to date see that as a drawback.
• Moderation is part of the pitch. The listing says Kippo’s team reviews reports in real time and uses AI to filter unwanted content.

Is Kippo worth it in 2026?

Give the free version a real test. Build your profile, swipe your first batch, and check back on the following days. If new profiles keep appearing where you live, it’s working for you, and you can decide whether Infinity is worth it from there. If you hit the empty daily-batch screen for days, which is what a large share of 2026 reviewers describe, paying is unlikely to change much based on what other subscribers report. Either way, keep your Discord handle off your profile until you’ve actually talked to someone.

Alternatives if Kippo isn’t working for you

There’s no perfect gamer dating app yet, so it’s worth knowing the options.

• Boo is the other app people usually compare with Kippo. We reviewed it separately in our Boo review for gamers.
• Mainstream apps plus gaming in your profile work for plenty of people, especially in areas where gamer-only apps feel empty. Our gamer dating guide covers how to write a profile that gets the gaming part across.
• Communities first, dating second. Discord servers, subreddits and local events are another route; we compared them in where to meet gamers to date.
• Midnight Lobby is our app: free, Android only, out of beta since November 10, 2026. Messaging is free for everyone with no daily message limit, DuoFit orders the profiles you see by when and how you play, and Duo Breakers are short two-player games inside the chat. It’s around 4.2★ on Google Play. The honest catch is that the community is still growing, so some areas can feel quiet.

For a side-by-side feature table, see Midnight Lobby vs Kippo vs Boo.

How we checked, and corrections

Everything above comes from Kippo’s own pages, its store listings and the public reviews on them, as they stood on November 10, 2026. Ratings and features change, so check the listings before you decide. Review patterns describe what reviewers wrote, not our own testing of every feature. If you work on Kippo and something here is wrong or out of date, tell us through our press page and we will correct it and note the change.