16k installs and it's in the German and French dating Top Grossing charts: HERZY doesn't sell dates, it sells someone chatting with you, one message at a time

HERZY looks like an ordinary German dating app, and in France it renamed itself ÉPRIS. It only launched in September, has under 16k global installs, yet it charted in the top 50 of the dating Top Grossing charts in both Germany and France on Google Play. The reason is spelled out in its own terms of use: the profiles in the app are fictional, the people you chat with are staffed by the operator, and each message costs a coin. This setup has run in Germany for over a decade; HERZY is just the latest sign on the door. Below: how it makes money, what drove its traffic, how many competitors there are, and whether there's anything here you can take.

A French complaint, answered in German

In 2026 Sep 22, French user Jocelyn Lgn left a review on ÉPRIS's store page: "The woman might be hired to keep you chatting and make you buy coins. Be careful, don't spend too much 😉". 9 people marked it helpful. The day before, another French user was blunter: "Always having to pay, and all the profiles are fake."

On Oct 9 another French review complained that "chatting costs money, put me off". A week later the developer replied, in German: "Hallo, es gibt bei uns keine Anmeldegebühr für die App." (Hello, our app has no sign-up fee.)

That German sentence shows who is behind this French brand. On the German side, a user Robin D wrote in Sep 30: "You are the biggest scammers I've dealt with, reply or I'll take legal action." On Sep 15, the launch date the store shows, the first negative review was already up: "Don't touch it, it's just a way to take your money, and those women aren't from the places their profiles claim."

Its terms say something different from its store page

The German store page reads "Echte Profile mit Steckbrief, Interessen & „Über mich"" (real profiles with a bio, interests and an "about me") and "nur echte Begegnungen" (only real meetings). The website herzy.app has the headline "Dating, das sich echt anfühlt" (dating that feels real), with a small line beside it: "Profile mit Moderation" (profiles with moderation).

Section 2 of the terms of use (legal.herzy.app/agb, August 2026 version) is titled "Contract subject matter and fictional profiles". The original text says:

Herzy ist ein Unterhaltungsdienst … Im Dienst werden ausdrücklich fiktive Profile eingesetzt … Ein persönliches Treffen mit den hinter fiktiven Profilen agierenden Personen ist nicht möglich … kein Kontakt-, Partnervermittlungs- oder Dating-Dienst.

In plain terms: Herzy is an entertainment service that explicitly uses fictional profiles; the people behind the profiles cannot meet you; it is not a dating or matchmaking service. Section 5 prices by "each message or each service", with coins bought first and then spent. The store lists in-app purchases from $0.59 to $289.99 per tier (Google Play, 11-06). The Nov 4 update added just one thing: in settings you can see which of the last seven days you claimed the "daily coins".

So the "Moderation" in "Profile mit Moderation" doesn't mean review. In this context it means people on the back end playing those profiles. Germany's Verbraucherzentrale (consumer advice centre) has written about this type of platform: the people chatting with you are "Moderatoren / Controller / Animateure", and it lists the wording commonly used in terms to hide this. Courts in Berlin and Flensburg have also ruled that a sentence in the terms is not enough; it must be clearly disclosed before sign-up.

16k installs, how did it hit the charts?

The Google Play numbers (11-06): 15,854 total installs globally, +1,985 over the last 7 days. In the German dating category it ranks #41 on Top Free and #46 on Top Grossing; in France it ranks #27 on Top Free and #32 on Top Grossing, and it first entered the French Top Grossing chart on Nov 6. The French Top Free chart 10-29 it climbed from #40,11-03 to #24.

The apps next to it are on a completely different scale: Flirtduo, #45 on German Top Grossing, has 26k installs, and CSL, #47, has over twenty million. HERZY reaches the same spot with a tenth or even a thousandth of the users, which can only mean one thing: each paying user pays a lot. Reading the reviews, almost all the writers are men, and the complaints are about having to pay to chat. A product that charges per message and promises someone will reply probably earns most of its money from a few people who can't stop (inference, no revenue is public).

It also shows up on the top charts of more than a dozen countries, including Vietnam, India, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong, with ranks hovering around 100 and changing daily, with the same handful of apps nearby. This looks more like a roundup of the dating Top Grossing long tail than real revenue in those countries. The money is in Germany and France.

The install curve (third-party estimate) shows the timing of the spend. By Sep 10 it already had about 1,100 installs, earlier than the launch date the store shows (a third-party site lists it as live from August 2026, so the launch date was likely reset). On Oct 4 it added about +2,383 in a day, and on Oct 9 another +1,056, then it settled at 200 to 500 a day.

Where users come from: Meta ads, which the website itself says

No trace of it on TikTok, X, Reddit or in the media. This product doesn't spread through content; it works because Meta receives every purchase amount and can then go looking for the next person who spends. High spend per user is what pays for the not-cheap paid acquisition in Germany and France.

At least ten competitors, many on the same back end

On the German dating charts on Google Play, a long list of apps run the same model. Several have stated on their websites or in their terms that they use fictional profiles, and most sit under offshore company names:

Data: Google Play, 11-06. In the web era there were older sites like Herzoo.de, and review sites and Trustpilot are full of "Abzocke" (rip-off) discussions.

New brands have appeared several times a year: 2025-10 Flirtduo, 2026-01 ZumDaten and Ludessa, 2026-09 HERZY. HERZY's pattern also shows it's a reskin: within 7 weeks of launch its version number was already at 1.3.51, the package name com.nyu has nothing to do with the brand, and the company is a "digital marketing" firm in Paphos, Cyprus with an almost empty website. When an old brand attracts bad reviews and consumer-group attention, they swap in a new sign and register a new company to keep selling (inference, consistent with how competitors launch).

The one visible difference between HERZY and its peers: it also went after France. Germany is the home base of this model, France has few similar apps, and HERZY ranks better in France (free #27) than in Germany (free #41).

If it were you

Verdict: Worth knowing about, not worth copying. HERZY got going on a model that has run for over a decade, where fictional profiles and human-staffed chat keep a small group of users topping up, plus skilled Meta ad buying. The model itself depends on misleading users: Germany has court rulings, consumer groups have named it publicly, there are at least ten rebranded apps using the same play, and the product itself has nothing new.

Who it fits: Only someone who understands this business and then builds an open, compliant version: an entertainment chat product that clearly says the other side is AI or a writer. But that's a different market, and the AI companion app space is just as crowded.

Who it doesn't fit: Anyone who wants to copy it. The store page says "real profiles", the terms say "fictional profiles"; that could mean a lawsuit at any time, or removal by Google Play for deceptive practices, and once it's pulled, the ad spend goes with it. It's also not for anyone counting on organic growth, because without ads it has no traffic.

How to do it: What you can take is the playbook, not the product. ① Give each language its own brand and store page instead of a translated English name; HERZY ranked better in France after switching to ÉPRIS than it did in Germany. ② Connect the website to the Meta Conversions API and feed purchase amounts back so ads find people who will pay. ③ Use hooks like a "daily coins" check-in to pull people back. These three moves work for any pay-per-use product.

How to get users: Its approach is Meta ads with purchase feedback, plus store search in both countries. If you're building a compliant version, first test payback periods on a small budget in a language market with few products like this (France is an example), work out how much one paying user is worth, and only then decide whether to scale.

Is there a window: No time window here. This business has existed in Germany for years; it won't vanish overnight or suddenly empty out. What's more likely to change is regulation: if Google Play or EU consumer protection starts a coordinated crackdown, this whole batch of rebranded apps could come down together.

Signs this analysis is wrong: ① HERZY or a peer puts "fictional profiles, entertainment service" prominently on the first screen of the store page and its rank and revenue hold, showing a compliant version can still make money, so the open route works; ② a new large language market beyond France, Italy and Spain appears with no one serving it, and similar apps easily reach the top 30, showing there's still room in other regions; ③ six months from now HERZY is still around and installs pass 100k, showing this round of ad efficiency is higher than estimated here.

Data and sources

• Google Play store page com.nyu.herzy (Germany and France, 2026-11-06): description, reviews, developer replies, in-app purchase prices, update notes.
• Installs, daily new installs, and German and French dating Top Free / Top Grossing ranks, plus other countries: public Google Play data (10-29 to 11-06); the install curve since launch is a third-party estimate.
• Terms of use legal.herzy.app/agb (2026 August version), official site herzy.app/de (11-06).
• German Consumer Advice Centre page on fictitious dating profiles; the Berlin and Flensburg court rulings are cited from that page.
• Facebook page "Herzy: Dating App" (search snippet); ad creatives not seen, ad spend not verified.
• Where it says "estimated" or "inference", those are estimates and inferences.