How to read this page: most large surveys combine lesbian, gay and bisexual respondents, and the strongest public figures below come from a 2022 US survey. They should not be treated as WLW-only, Australia-specific, or current-user counts. Source dates and populations matter.
Online-dating use
Pew Research Center surveyed 6,034 US adults in July 2022 and oversampled lesbian, gay and bisexual respondents before weighting the results. It found that 51% of LGB adults had ever used a dating site or platform, compared with 28% of straight adults. Among LGB women specifically, 46% said they had ever used online dating.
The same research found that 24% of partnered LGB adults said they met their current significant other through online dating. These findings show that online dating is an important connection route for many LGB adults. They do not tell us how many people are active today, how many are WLW, or how much activity exists in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, or any other city.
Safety and unwanted behaviour
Pew also reported that 33% of LGB online-dating users had been called an offensive name. Among LGB women who had used online dating, 41% said they had encountered someone they thought was trying to scam them. These are self-reported experiences; they do not confirm every suspected scam or establish the rate on a particular service.
That distinction matters. Platforms should take reports seriously, but a broad safety claim needs evidence. Human application review, authentication, reporting, blocking, moderation, and enforcement can add useful layers. None of those controls proves identity, predicts future conduct, or removes the need for member judgement.
Local dating pools: what the data does not show
There is no reliable universal percentage for the size of a WLW dating pool relative to a heterosexual dating pool in a regional city. Population, age, orientation, relationship status, platform adoption, search radius, and recent activity all affect the result.
Global membership totals are not local-activity guarantees. A useful city claim should come from privacy-safe, current first-party measurement and should still avoid promising matches, replies, events, or a minimum number of profiles. Verve therefore does not publish an unverified member count for Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, or any other place.
The Australian population evidence
The ABS estimate includes people who described themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or another term such as asexual, pansexual, or queer. It reported 1.5% gay or lesbian, 1.7% bisexual, and 0.4% using another term. The figures are not a count of WLW dating-platform users and should not be converted into an invented city pool or a claim about current Verve activity.
Verve is Australian-founded and independently operated. Its local profiles, conversations, communities, venues, and events depend on approved members and current content. The website works through supported browsers across common devices, but access does not guarantee local activity.
Ownership and product comparisons
HER announced in May 2025 that it had joined Match Group. That is a documented ownership change. This article has not identified reliable public evidence that quantifies user migration, churn, or behaviour caused by the change, so it does not assign a numerical “acquisition effect.”
If ownership matters to you, compare the current operator, privacy policy, business model, subscription terms, moderation information, and data practices of each service. Network size, independent ownership, community features, and pre-access review are different product choices; none is a substitute for checking current local results and safety information.
What to compare before joining
- Eligibility and review: what is checked, whether a person is involved, when access is granted, and what approval cannot prove.
- Reporting and blocking: where controls appear, what context can be supplied, and whether any response-time promise is actually documented.
- Privacy: what profile, location, review, message, and payment information is processed, who receives it, and how retention and deletion work.
- Free access: the real daily and active-use limits, not only the phrase “free to join.”
- Subscription terms: the price, currency, tax treatment, billing frequency, automatic renewal, cancellation path, continued access, and refund terms.
- Local usefulness: current profiles and community activity in the area you actually search, without relying on a worldwide member total.
Verve's published position: applicants submit a current selfie; automated checks assess one-face presence and apparent consistency with the moderated profile photo; every submission remains pending for human review before member access. Approval cannot guarantee identity, age, gender, intentions, safety, or future conduct. Free members receive unlimited Orbit profile browsing and active one-to-one chats, up to 10 outgoing likes per day, a shared 10-space public-group/non-general-community limit, community participation, venue-map browsing, and event browsing and RSVP. Verve does not and will not show ads inside the member experience.
Sources and limitations
- Pew Research Center: Online dating among lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans — nationally representative US survey conducted in July 2022.
- Pew Research Center: From Looking for Love to Swiping the Field — full online-dating report and methodology.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics: Estimates and characteristics of LGBTI+ populations in Australia, 2022.
- HER: The next chapter in HER's story — the service's May 2025 ownership announcement.
Survey categories, geography, dates, sampling error, and self-reporting limit comparison. This page does not turn combined LGB results into precise WLW prevalence, infer a person's identity from behaviour, or claim that one service's global total predicts local availability.
Compare the published details
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