No. Organic matching, unlimited messaging with your matches, unlimited circles, the full community feed, and audio and video prompts on your profile are all free. Free accounts get five match requests per day. Premium adds convenience on the dating side (skip the algorithm) — it is not required to meet anyone here.

Five match requests a day, unlimited messages with anyone you match with, unlimited circles, and the entire community feed. A full guide to using Hiki on a free account is at links.hikiapp.com/help.

The Likes tab, which shows you everyone who has liked you without waiting for them to come round in your match queue, tighter distance filtering, and other convenience features on the dating side. Premium is what pays our team and keeps the servers running. Hiki does not make a profit. We operate at a loss each year, and some of our team members work as volunteers.

The Likes tab is a shortcut, not a gate. Hiki has always worked as a blind double opt-in: you decide whether you are interested without knowing whether the other person already is. The Likes tab lets you skip that queue and see everyone at once, which is why it is a Premium feature. It was added alongside Premium — it was never free and then taken away. This is a common misconception.

Everyone who likes you is pushed to the front of your match queue, so they come round quickly — you just don't know they liked you (it's blind!). When they do, you send a heart or a smiley, and if the interest is mutual you match and a chat opens. No subscription is involved at any point in that. All of this, in addition to chatting with your match, is free.

Email help@hikiapp.com. Hiki for Everyone works with your actual budget, whatever it is — nobody who wants Premium is turned away over money. Details at www.hikiapp.com/dei.

Hiki's premium features are priced below every app in the category that we are aware of, including Bumble and Hinge. We also know that a comparison to other dating apps is not much comfort if the price is out of reach regardless, which is why Hiki for Everyone exists and why we will work with any budget. If you want it but can't afford it, just let us know.

Yes — you can buy Hiki Premium annually, which comes out to roughly $16/month depending on your country.

No. There are no ads in Hiki, and we do not sell your attention to advertisers. Some members have asked for an ad-supported free tier, and others have told us firmly they would leave if we added one — so we are hesitant to make any changes here.

The heart signals romantic interest, and the smiley signals friendship.

The daily limit is there to keep matching intentional rather than a volume game. We heard clearly that five was too few, so we recently increased it to seven.

Tighter distance filtering is a Premium feature.

Profiles can appear when your distance preference and theirs overlap, so someone who has set a very wide radius may reach you even when yours is narrow. If you are seeing people far outside any plausible overlap, that is not expected — send your settings and a couple of examples to help@hikiapp.com so we can investigate.

Passing hides someone temporarily rather than permanently. Active members cycle back after a randomised interval — roughly a month after the first pass, and many months after a second. This was a change made at community request. A permanent "never show again" option is something we are still looking at.

Not yet. Filtering is currently age, distance, and gender. Filtering by neurodivergence is one of the most requested features we have, and it is on our product roadmap.

Yes. Pausing your profile and pausing community requests are separate settings. Leave community requests on and you will still match with people you meet in the feed, without the match queue running.

Not today.

A human on the moderation team reviews every report. Some reports also trigger automated checks, removals, and bans (and then a human review); we do not publish exactly which, because publishing them makes them easy to game. Reporting is the fastest route to action and the only one that reaches us reliably.

Every ban sends an in-app notification and an email. Permanent bans include a detailed reason. Temporary ones have historically been vaguer, which we know is not good enough — making those reasons specific enough to actually learn from is work we are now committing to. If you received nothing at all, check your spam folder and then write to help@hikiapp.com. Over the next few months, we will be introducing more granular, detailed reasons for removals and bans. More coming soon here — we know we need to do better.

We are not able to disclose moderation action taken against another person's account — that protection applies to you as well as to them. We understand this is frustrating when you are the one who was harmed. What we can say is that every report is reviewed by a person, and that predatory behaviour results in a ban and, where appropriate, a report to the authorities.

Please report them instead — it is faster and it is the only route that results in action. Posting screenshots of other members is not allowed. Sharing a post using the app's own share function is allowed; if a shared link of yours was ever removed, that was our mistake and not a rule.

No. Criticism of the app, our decisions, and our moderation is welcome — we run an entire feedback channel for it and we act on it. What does get removed is personal attacks on staff or members, threats, and abuse. Those are treated the same regardless of who they are aimed at.

They are real, and they are one team. Moderators work from different parts of the world, and each has their own account so several of us can answer at once. We do not typically publish team details or individual identities, because staff have been doxxed and sent death threats. Everyone on the team is a neurodivergent adult.

Automated screening looks for mock locations, IP masking, and reused or fake photos. Accounts that trip it are blocked from using Hiki until they pass ID verification. You must be 18 to be on Hiki. The system is not perfect and some accounts still get through, which is why reporting matters — report the profile rather than engaging with it.

Report the profile and say so in the report. We have security steps intended to prevent this, and we treat evidence that they are being circumvented as a priority.

You can remove it yourself: tap the "…" on the comment and choose delete. The same sheet lets you block the person. Please also report them, so moderation can act on the account and not just the comment.

Blocking removes the conversation from both sides.

Hiki means "able" in Hawaiian.

Hiki launched for the autistic community and now welcomes neurodivergent adults more broadly. That change is some years old now, and we should have signposted it better. Filtering by neurodivergence is one of the most requested features from members who want the original focus back, and it is on our list.

No. There is no AI in the app today. If that ever changes, we will say so before it ships, not after.

No. Hiki has not been acquired by a dating conglomerate, and it does not "make money." Subscriptions are what pay the team and keep the servers running.

It is on the roadmap without a date. An earlier community survey put demand lower than other work, and we accept the fair criticism that the people who most want a web version are the least likely to answer a survey inside the mobile app. If you want it, tell us at help@hikiapp.com — that is what moves it up.

Yes. Open the chat and tap the video icon.

Videos can be sent in circles only — not in the community feed and not in individual chats.

A conversation only disappears if the other person deleted their account or blocked you. If messages vanish for any other reason, that is a bug — write to help@hikiapp.com with your device and app version.

Notifications for circle posts are opt-in per post, including for circle admins — you have to follow a post to be notified about it. If you have followed the post, enabled notifications, and still get nothing, that is a bug. Send your device model and app version to help@hikiapp.com.

Press and hold the emoji. In the community feed, you tap it instead — the difference trips people up, and we're going to streamline this soon after we survey everyone's preference.

Comment nesting has a depth limit, so past a certain point you can react but not reply. We increased the depth once already at community request, and we know the current limit makes long conversations hard to follow. We are working on a better answer and will ask the community before changing it again.

The specific one. Posting everything in General makes the feed harder to navigate for members who filter by category to manage what they see, and specific categories get just as much engagement. You can follow and unfollow categories (including General) to shape your own feed.

A Spark lets the person you send it to open your profile straight from your like, instead of waiting for the queue — normally a Premium behaviour, available without a subscription. The number next to Sparks is your balance. Clicking that opens the paywall. To use a Spark, click the button on someone's profile in the match screen.

Hiki follows your device's system text size.

From the landing page, tap your profile picture, open Settings, and scroll to the bottom — the delete account button is at the end.

No — never have, never will. Hiki is funded by subscriptions, not by advertising or data sales.