A cat, a dating app that charges per chat: Waffle's growth isn't from the cat
What it is A dating app with a digital kitten that is really pay-per-message chat, with in-app purchases from $3.99 to $189.99.
Why it took off Paid acquisition pushed daily installs into the thousands. It rode the low barrier of the US Play dating category into the top 5 of the free chart, then a small group of men who were heavily approached by “women” and willing to spend big on coins pushed it onto the top grossing chart. The cat is just the skin used for review passes and creative.
DHow you could follow Not recommended to copy. What you can take away are two moves: “the US Play dating category has a low bar, good for cold-start testing of honest social products” and “use a mascot to package a crowded category”.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-10-20 · 11-07 installs 14,889
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.Android · Ratings count (cumulative) Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations)
Waffle launched on Google Play in Oct 20, and by Nov 6 had only 15k installs, yet already ranked #14 on the US dating top grossing chart, ahead of Badoo and OkCupid. The store page calls it “dating plus raising a little cat”, while user reviews say “you buy coins to keep chatting after a few messages”. This piece covers what drove its growth, who is behind it, where the money comes from, and why we don't recommend copying it.
One review: “This one is a cat, that one is a bird”
In Oct 30, a US user gave Waffle one star, writing:
"this app is identical to another one. this has a cat. that has a bird. same fake women…"
(This app and another one are identical. This one is a cat, that one is a bird, and the women are the same fake people.)
They're right. Waffle's developer is Silver State. The same account published a dating app called Rocco in Oct 13, with a mascot of a chick wearing flight goggles, and in Oct 26 published Luka. All three use the same Gmail contact address, and each follows the same structure of “a standalone domain + a single privacy policy page”. The same week also saw Blush and Synca, whose developer account names changed, but whose feedback emails all follow the “productname and feedback@productdomain” format, with identical in-app purchase price points. These are most likely two more accounts from the same team (inferred, unverified).
| App | Launched | Mascot | Installs (11-06) | Best on the US dating free chart |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rocco | 10-13 | A chick, with a mini-game | 35,131 | #3 |
| Waffle | 10-20 | A cat | 14,889 | #4 |
| Synca (another account) | 10-22 | — | 0 | — |
| Blush (another account) | 10-23 | None, focused on “real profiles” | 3 | #65 |
| Luka | 10-26 | Catches new faces in 30 seconds via a mini-game | 331 | #23 |
A new package every week, same engine with a new skin. Under Rocco someone wrote “This is the same deceptive app (rebranded)”, suggesting earlier versions existed before the chick.
What it is: dating is the shell, pay-to-chat is the engine
The store page is gentle: “Good connections often start with small things. A sunset on the way home, a favorite coffee shop, a shared love of pets.” Then it's swipe cards, feed posts, icebreaker posts, and that cat: feeding it fish treats, waving a cat wand, changing outfits, visiting “neighbors' pets”. System push notifications are dressed up as “Waffle picked this one”.
What users actually encounter is something else. Google Play reviews (10-25 to 10-31, US store):
- “app sucks send 5 free messages then paywall for 5 more messages” (5 free messages, then the paywall)
- “its like $10 for 500 sparks” ($10 for 500 Sparks)
- “Not allowed to see who your talking to unless you pay” (you can't see who you're talking to unless you pay)
- “it started off great until 900 people started messaging calling me” (it started off great until 900 people started messaging and calling me)
There are five-star reviews too: “Women actually video call you first … No other dating app does that” (10-25, women call you on video first, which no other dating app does).
Put together, it's the “pay-to-chat” model well known in overseas circles: new users have just set up profiles and are immediately approached by a wave of “women” messaging and video calling. After a few free messages, you buy coins to keep chatting, with in-app purchases ranging from $3.99 to $189.99. Many one-star reviews say the other side is bots, AI-generated photos, or professional chat hosts, “they just wanna keep you chating so you will buy more”. These claims can't be verified from outside, but they line up with the price points and the chart position.
Why 15k installs was enough to reach #14 on top grossing
Numbers side by side (Google Play, 10-29 to 11-06):
- Installs: almost nothing was counted before 10-30, then 10-31, 2,113,11-02, 9,695,11-06, 14,889; third-party estimates put daily installs around 11-01 at the peak at ~3,800, then down to roughly 1,000 a day (est.).
- US store Dating Top Free: 10-29 #13 → 11-05 #4 → 11-06 #5.
- US store Dating Top Grossing: 10-29 #57 → 11-01 #29 → 11-06 #14.
- 11-06 made the Dating Top Grossing top 30 in 17 countries and regions at once: #12 in Nigeria, #20 in Saudi Arabia, #21 in Malaysia and Vietnam, #22 in the UAE and India...
Just over ten thousand users holding the US store's Dating Top Grossing at #14 can only mean one thing: the people paying are paying a lot each. The $189.99 band in the listing confirms there are big-ticket payers. This business doesn't run on headcount; it runs on a small group of lonely men willing to pay to feel answered.
Where the users come from: almost certainly bought
- Search "waffle dating app" on TikTok and you get nothing relevant. On X, 30 days with zero mentions. On the web, apart from a few automated app-data pages, there is no coverage at all.
- Installs jumped up in steps, with no organic buzz to explain thousands a day.
- The privacy policy (inwaffle.com) states that it collects the advertising ID and does "install attribution and ad performance measurement."
- A review of Rocco, from the same developer, mentions the ads: "ads saying women on here love to talk on video to show they are real."
Which platform they bought on (Meta, Google or AppLovin) and how much they spent is not visible from outside (unverified).
The other half of the traffic comes from the charts themselves. The bar for the US Google Play dating category is absurdly low: on 11-06, Luka sat at #23 on the Top Free chart with only 331 installs, and Blush at #65 with only 3 installs. Buying one or two thousand installs in a day is enough to break into the top 5, and once you're in the top 5 you get organic category traffic on top.
One more thing worth noting: between 11-04 and 11-05, five-star ratings rose from 73 to 105 in a single day, while one- and three-star ratings went down, and the average jumped from 3.68 to 3.97. This could be concentrated prompting for positive reviews, or Google removing a batch of negative ones (unverified).
Does the cat actually help?
It helps, but not for growth.
It works in three ways: first, it lets the same system pass Google Play's duplicate-content review with a different skin, since each app needs to show some "different feature"; second, it makes the store page and ad creatives look cute and harmless inside a "Dating and Chat - XXX" listing; third, it gives non-payers a reason to stay a little longer.
The evidence is the other apps in the same system: the chick-themed Rocco is more than twice the size of the cat-themed Waffle, while Blush, which has no pet, and Luka, which has a mini-game, never took off. Which app grows depends on which one launched first and which got the ad budget, not on which animal is cuter (inference).
Who it's competing with
| Competitors | Scale (Google Play installs) | How it differs from Waffle |
|---|---|---|
| Tinder / Hinge / Bumble | 530M / 41M / 130M | Real two-sided matching, subscription model |
| The Evermatch family (Dating and Chat - Evermatch, Maybe You) | 56M / 40M, each up 14–200k over 7 days | Veterans of the same paid-chat model, three orders of magnitude bigger |
| The Red Panda family (Only Spark, Lovector, Liketoo, DUO Chat, etc.) | Single app 1M–24M | Same matrix of packaged apps plus paid chat, all named "Dating and Chat - X" |
| iHappy / Talkie Live | 85M / 14M | Same category; Talkie Live leans toward live streaming |
| Tabby, FetchaDate and other "pet lover dating" apps | Small | Matches people who own pets, so the cats and dogs are real |
Few people know Waffle, but many know this business. What went unnoticed was the team, not the category: paid-chat dating is a red ocean long held by big players, and Waffle just swapped in a cat.
If it were you
The short verdict: understand it, but don't copy it. The part that makes money, a batch of "women" accounts that initiate conversations and charge per message, plus a mature paid-acquisition and packaging system, is either out of reach for followers or is itself what users call a "scam."
Who it suits: companies already doing social apps for going global, with an existing chat backend, a supply of hosts, and a paid-acquisition team. For them, the only new thing Waffle offers is the packaging method of swapping mascots for distribution, which they can test.
Who it doesn't suit: indie developers and small teams. You lack the supply side (real hosts or companion teams cost money and management, and using AI to impersonate real people is fraud), you don't have a matrix shipping one package a week, and you can't withstand the risk of mass one-star reviews, Google delisting, and user complaints to the FTC that come with apps like this.
What you can take:
- The bar on the US Google Play dating category chart is very low: a few hundred to a few thousand installs a day can put you in the top 25, or even the top 5. If you're building an honest social or dating product, this is a cheap cold-start and exposure test ground.
- Giving a commoditized category a mascot, and personifying system recommendations ("Waffle picked this person for you"), is a packaging technique you can use in a compliant product.
- "Dating + virtual pet" has never been seriously built. But if you do build it, the hard part is the two-sided cold start, and a cat doesn't solve that.
How to acquire users: if you're riding on the low bar of the dating chart, spend a small budget to push a US dating Top Free ranking into the top 20, measure the share of organic traffic that comes from the chart, then decide whether to spend more (inference).
When to move early: no rush. Skin-swapping matrices like this have always existed; the window isn't about this one app.
What would show you read it wrong: ① Waffle and Rocco are still listed and still in the US dating top grossing top 30 after January 2027, which would mean this model survives delisting better than expected and is even lower-barrier; ② an honest "dating + pet" app grows through organic content (TikTok, Xiaohongshu) rather than paid installs. Then the cat is more than just a skin.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Tinder / Hinge / Bumble Android 2012–2014 Play installs 530M / 41M / 130M Real two-sided matching, subscription; Waffle charges per message, with "women" who reach out first The Evermatch family (Dating and Chat - Evermatch / Maybe You) Android 2019–2020 56M / 40M installs, each up 14–200k over 7 days Veteran paid-chat players, three orders of magnitude bigger; no pet skin, unified "Dating and Chat" naming The Red Panda App family (Only Spark, Lovector, Liketoo, Pheromance, DUO Chat, etc.) Android 2023–2026 1M–24M installs per package Same matrix of packaged apps plus paid chat; Waffle uses a pet IP for brand differentiation iHappy / Talkie Live(ihappydate) Android 2020 / 2024 85M / 14M installs Same category; Talkie Live leans toward live streaming with no virtual pet Rocco / Luka (same developer) Android 2026-10-13 / 2026-10-26 35,131 / 331 installs Same system, mascot swapped (chick + mini-game / face-grab mini-game) Blush / Synca (likely the same team under other accounts) Android 2026-10-23 / 2026-10-22 3 / 0 installs Pet removed, pitched on "real profiles" Tabby, FetchaDate and other pet-lover dating apps iOS 2020s Small (unverified) Matches by "people who have pets"; Waffle's cat is an in-app virtual pet, unrelated to matching - Where users come from
- Inference Paid acquisition (platform unknown): installs rose in stepped spikes with no organic buzz at all; a review of the sister app Rocco mentions "ads saying women on here love to talk on video"; the privacy policy says it collects the advertising ID for install attribution and ad performance measurement. Not in the Meta, Google or TikTok ad libraries (not on our tracking list).
- Verified Store chart (low bar in the US Dating Free chart): 11-06 US Dating Top Free #5; the same day, Luka at #23 with only 331 installs and Blush at #65 with 3 installs (googleplay.chart_rank)
- Verified Matrix of shell apps: same developer Rocco/Luka plus Blush/Synca with the same email format, one package a week; a user review: 'this app is identical to another one. this has a cat. that has a bird'
- Inference Likely incentivized reviews: rating distribution shifted by 11-04→11-05 in one day. 5-star +32, while 1-star and 3-star counts dropped, and the average went 3.68→3.97 (googleplay.app_snap)
- Inference TikTok/X/media content channels: no relevant TikTok search results, x-radar shows zero mentions for 30 days, and the web only has data sites.
Waffle — the cat has them all (com.prism.waffle): why it could run
Channel: Google Play | Developer: Silver State | Store launch 2026-10-20 | Research date 2026-11-06 Sources: our googleplay database (app / app_profile / app_day / app_day_ext / chart_rank / review / app_snap, 2026-10-29 to 11-06), the metaads / googleads / tiktokads libraries, the Google Play store page, the inwaffle.com privacy policy and terms of service, AppGoblin / AppInsider / AppBrain / AppGazers pages, Jina / Exa search, TikHub TikTok search, x-radar.
One line
A "dating + raise an e-pet" app on Google Play. The core is pay-per-message/per-minute paid chat run on coins (IAP $3.99–$189.99). It's the second in a reskin matrix run by one team (Silver State, likely a going-global paid social outfit): Rocco (the chick) a week earlier, Luka a week later, plus Blush and Synca under different developer accounts but with the same feedback-email format. It's getting traction from paid acquisition + a low bar on the US Dating top-charts + the proven high-spend model. The pet is just a skin.
1. Data: how big it is now
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cumulative global installs | 14,889(11-06) | googleplay.app_day |
| New installs over the last 7 days | 14,884 (almost all installs came in these 7 days) | googleplay.app_profile |
| daily installs | 11-01~02 about 3.8k/day, 11-03 about 2.1k, 11-04~06 about 1.0k/day (AppstoreSpy estimate) | googleplay.app_day_ext |
| Score | 23(10-29)→ 199(11-06), daily adds rising from 11 to 33 | googleplay.app_day |
| US Dating Top Free | 10-29 #13 → 10-30 #7 → 11-03 #5 → 11-05 #4 → 11-06 #5 | googleplay.chart_rank |
| US Dating Top Grossing | 10-29 #57 → 11-01 #29 → 11-03 #22 → 11-06 #14 (ahead of Chispa, Seeking, Badoo, OkCupid) | googleplay.chart_rank |
| Other top grossing charts | 11-06 in ng 12, sa 20, my/vn 21, ae/in 22, id 23, hk/th/ph 24… top 30 Dating Top Grossing in 18 stores | googleplay.chart_rank |
| In-app purchases | $3.99 – $189.99 per item | googleplay.app_snap |
| Rating | 3.68(11-04)→ 3.99(11-06) | googleplay.app_snap |
Note: 10-29/10-30 shows only 5 installs in the library, yet already has 23/49 ratings, so Play's install counter hadn't refreshed early on. Real first-week installs are unknown; the install curve is jumpy (Play refreshes the count every few days).
Key point: with only 15k installs it already ranks #14 on the US Dating Top Grossing chart, which means each paying user contributes a lot. That matches reviews saying "you have to buy coins after a few messages", "$10 buys 500 Sparks", and "video 150 coins/minute".
2. Who's behind it: Silver State's reskin matrix
Cross-referenced by developer name, email, privacy-policy template and IAP tiers (googleplay.app, 11-06):
| App | Developer account | Launched | Mascot | Installs | Best US Dating free rank | IAP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rocco(com.roccoko.app) | Silver State | 10-13 | A chick in flight goggles, with Egg Catch / Pipe Fly mini-games | 35,131 | #3 | $3.99–$99.99 | [email protected] |
| Waffle(com.prism.waffle) | Silver State | 10-20 | A kitten (feeding, cat toys, dress-up, "the neighbor's pet") | 14,889 | #4 | $3.99–$189.99 | [email protected] |
| Synca(com.magicic.syncamore) | IronRain | 10-22 | ? | 0 | — | $3.99–$99.99 | [email protected] |
| Blush(com.dometech.blush) | DOMETECHONE | 10-23 | None (sells itself on "real profiles") | 3 | #65 | $3.99–$189.99 | [email protected] |
| Luka(com.lukapet.app) | Silver State | 10-26 | "30-second new-face catch" mini-game | 331 | #23 | $3.99–$189.99 | [email protected] |
- Three Silver State apps use the same Gmail and the same "standalone domain + /privacy-policy" structure. Synca and Blush switched developer accounts, but their feedback emails follow the "<product name>andfeedback@<product domain>" pattern, the IAP tiers are identical, and they launched the same week. Highly likely a multi-account matrix run by one team (unverified, an inference).
- Users spotted it too: 10-30 one 1-star review reads "this app is identical to another one. this has a cat. that has a bird. same fake women…" (googleplay.review). Under Rocco, another comment says "This is the same deceptive app (rebranded)…", meaning there was an even earlier version.
- The privacy policy (inwaffle.com, effective 2026-09-23) and terms of service (2026-09-09) mention "days you've spent with your companion", "Sparks, gifts, Waffle+ membership", "call-minute metering and billing", and "install attribution and ad effectiveness measurement", and use Azure OpenAI to generate post titles. Section 10 of the terms has an AI-generated content disclaimer.
3. Growth: where users come from
- Paid acquisition (highly likely, creatives not captured in our library)
- A Rocco review: "ads saying women on here love to talk on video to show they are real" (10-31). Ads are running, and the pitch is "women initiate video calls".
- The privacy policy says it collects the ad ID and does "install attribution and ad effectiveness measurement".
- Installs rose in sudden stepped jumps. Searching TikTok for "waffle dating app" turns up nothing relevant organically, X (x-radar 30 days) has zero mentions, and web search only surfaces data sites (Apptopia, AppBrain, Similarweb, Appfigures chart pages). No organic buzz, so the installs were almost certainly bought.
- Our Meta / Google / TikTok ad libraries don't index it (it's not on our tracked list, and TikTok only covers Europe), so the specific channels (Meta, Google UAC, AppLovin, etc.) are unverified.
- The US Dating category bar is low, and rank brings organic traffic: the same day Luka had only 331 installs and still ranked #23 on US Dating Top Free, and Blush with 3 installs ranked #65 (googleplay.chart_rank 11-06). At 1–4k installs a day it's enough to reach the top 5; once in the top 5 it picks up category-chart browsing traffic.
- Volume matrix: a new package each week under a new developer account, so one package being reported or delisted doesn't hurt the whole operation. The same backend and the same pool of "female profiles" are reused across apps (reviews: "same fake women").
- Suspected incentivized reviews: rating distribution went from 11-04 to 11-05. In one day 5-star ratings rose from 73 to 105 (+32) and 4-star ratings gained +6, while 1-star went 32→31 and 3-star went 9→5, which fell rather than rose (googleplay.app_snap histogram). The average jumped from 3.68 to 3.97. This could be a concentrated push for good reviews, or Google could have removed a batch of bad ones. Unverified.
4. Why users are willing to pay
- The core mechanic reviewers describe: a new user sets up a profile and gets "900 people started messaging", with many "women" initiating contact. After a few free messages you need to buy Sparks to keep chatting, you pay to see the other person, and video is billed per minute from your coin balance. One reviewer: "Women actually video call you first … No other dating app does that" (5 stars, 10-25).
- This is the classic going-global "paid chat / 1v1 video" model. The supply side is female accounts that many negative reviews call bots, AI or professional chatters. The demand side is male users in the US. Many 1-star reviews say "fake profiles", "bots", "AI generated", "keep you chatting so you will buy more coins" (googleplay.review, 10-25 to 10-31). These claims are unverified, but they line up with the IAP tiers, the chart position, and the "no exchanging contact info" rule (a Rocco review).
- Where the revenue comes from: high-ticket lonely men in the US, the Middle East (sa, ae), Southeast Asia and Nigeria. The $189.99 large pack points to whales.
5. Competitors
| Competitors | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Waffle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tinder / Hinge / Bumble | Android/iOS | 2012–2014 | 530M / 41M / 130M installs (Play) | Real two-sided matching, subscription-based. Waffle charges per message, with "women" coming to you |
| The Evermatch family (Dating and Chat - Evermatch / Maybe You) | Android | 2019–2020 | 56M / 40M installs, each up 14–200k over 7 days | Veteran paid chat-mode apps, also in the top 25 of the US store's Dating category; no pet skins |
| Red Panda App family (Only Spark, Lovector, Liketoo, Pheromance, DUO Chat, TheSoulMatch…) | Android | 2023–2026 | 1M–24M installs per package | Same matrix-of-packages plus paid-chat play, with a uniform "Dating and Chat - X" naming. Waffle switched to pet-IP naming |
| iHappy / Talkie Live(ihappydate) | Android | 2020/2024 | 85M / 14M installs | Similar; Talkie Live leans toward live streaming |
| Rocco / Luka (same team) | Android | 2026-10 | 35k / 331 | Same product with a different mascot (chick, face-catching mini-game) |
| Blush / Synca (possibly the same team on separate accounts) | Android | 2026-10 | 3 / 0 | Drops the pet, sells "real profiles" |
| Tabby, FetchaDate, mingle.pet and other "pet-lover dating" apps | iOS/web | 2020s | Small. mingle.pet's website 404 | Matches people by "owning a pet". Waffle's cat is an in-app e-pet unrelated to matching |
| Big-company features | — | — | — | No major company has put an e-pet inside a dating app |
Takeaway: plenty of people run paid-chat dating, at a scale two or three orders of magnitude bigger than Waffle. Almost nobody runs dating + e-pet, and the only batch of those is this team's own reskins.
VI. What the differentiation is, and whether it's why it took off
- Surface-level differentiation: each package gets a playable e-pet and a branded name (cat Waffle, chick Rocco). "Waffle picked this one" dresses system pushes up as pet recommendations, and a Discover feed uses AI-written post titles.
- Its real purpose is more likely: (1) getting past Google Play's duplicate-content review. The same paid-chat system is reskinned and republished, so each one needs features that look different. (2) Giving ad creatives and the store page a "cute, harmless" hook, distinct from a wall of "Dating and Chat - XXX". (3) Giving free users a reason to stay.
- It isn't why it's working. Blush (no pet) and Luka are both small on the same system, and Rocco (chick) is bigger than Waffle (cat). The difference comes down to who got ad budget and when each launched, not the pet. What's working is paid acquisition + a low-bar category chart + high-ticket paid chat.
7. Visibility
- Revenue isn't public. No TrustMRR listing, no founder identified, zero X mentions, no organic TikTok content, no media coverage. It only shows up in auto-generated pages and charts on third-party data sites (Apptopia, AppBrain, AppGazers, AppInsider, Similarweb, Appfigures). → Hardly anyone knows about it yet.
- But the model itself (paid-chat dating) is a red ocean, and Evermatch and Red Panda have already scaled. So the "nobody knows" applies to this team, not to the business.
VIII. What to take from it
- The US Google Play DATING category bar is very low (a few hundred to a few thousand installs a day can reach the top 25/top 5), which suits cold starts and exposure tests.
- The matrix playbook: one backend, many packages, one new one each week, each with its own developer account, standalone domain and feedback email. Each is dressed up as a different product with a different playable mini-feature, which spreads review and reporting risk. Test which skin converts best, then add budget.
- Use an IP/mascot to differentiate a commoditized category (store page, icon, creatives). Framing system recommendations as pet recommendations is a way to personify an operational action.
- Heads up: this business has poor retention and reviews (lots of "scam / bots" 1 stars), and a high risk of Google delisting or FTC complaints. What's worth borrowing is the distribution playbook, not the supply-side tactics.
IX. Uncertainties
- Which channels the paid acquisition runs on, how much is spent, and the ROI (our ad libraries don't index it).
- Whether the "women" users are real people, professional chatters or AI. Reviews disagree, unverified.
- Whether Silver State, IronRain and DOMETECHONE are really the same company and which country it's based in (inferred to be a going-global team, unverified).
- 11-05 rating-distribution shifts: review incentives or Google deleting reviews?
- Real installs in the early days (10-20–10-28); can it survive Google's crackdown on deceptive dating apps?