What is Anketta?
Anketta is a dating app where compatibility is determined by how someone writes, not by how they look in photos. You write an essay — a short text about yourself, your values, and how you live — and the algorithm finds people whose answers are semantically close to yours. When you and another person have both liked each other's writing, you have 48 hours to start the conversation; after that, the match expires and you can't re-match for 30 days. That's a deliberate constraint, not a missing feature.
If you landed here from search trying to figure out what this brand is, how to spell it, and what the deal is with "anketka," the short answer is below. The long version is the rest of the page.
Write your manuscript — and see who the algorithm finds- Anketta (Latin script) — double "t" in the middle, stress on the second syllable: an-ket-ah.
- Анкетта (Cyrillic) — the same word in Russian.
- Common typos: anketa, anketka, anketta dating, anketo. They all lead to the same site — this one.
"Anketta" is not "anketa." Anketa is the Russian word for a printed form you fill in with blank fields. Anketta is a service where your own writing becomes the point of compatibility.
Every classic dating app — Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OkCupid — starts with a photo. You see a face, make a snap judgment, and swipe. The whole interaction takes less than a second. Anketta inverts that sequence: text first, everything else after. Here's how it works, step by step.
- You write an essay. Not a CV, not a list of hobbies — free-form text about what you value in people, what matters in a relationship, how you spend your unstructured time. Long enough that your writing actually reveals you.
- The algorithm reads your text. Anketta builds a representation of what your essay means and finds people whose writing lands close to yours. This isn't "match on shared interests" the way old OkCupid did it — even if two people use entirely different words, the algorithm recognizes when they're talking about the same thing. The match then sharpens around what you highlight in other people's essays: phrases that resonate pull similar writing higher.
- You browse a curated feed. Not infinite swiping: the free tier gives 3 cards, then 6 more after you publish your own essay, then a paywall. Each card is a person's profile, their highlights, and the lines they responded to. Photos do not appear during matching.
- 48 hours after a mutual like. If both of you highlighted what mattered in each other's writing and matched, you have 48 hours to start the conversation. After that the match expires and you can't re-match for 30 days. This isn't punishment — it's protection from the paradox of choice and from the "decide later" habit every dating service trains into you.
This is slow dating or intentional dating — terms used in research and consumer journalism for the small post-Tinder counter-movement.
A 2017 study in Psychological Science found that couples who met through text-based communication reported stronger initial connections than those who started with photos. The reason is in how the brain processes the two inputs — a photo and a paragraph trigger very different kinds of recognition.
A photo activates the same neural circuits as celebrity culture: you form an impression of someone you've never met and project a personality onto a face. Psychologists call this a parasocial relationship — a one-sided connection that feels real but isn't.
Text works differently. When you read someone's essay, you're not building a personality; you're recognizing one. The words show how a person thinks, what they notice in the world, what they avoid. A thousand characters of someone else's writing tells you more than five photos.
The mechanism is unpacked in detail in Why Text-Based Dating Works.
Russian-language search results often surface anketka.ru — a Russian paid-survey site that has been running since the early 2010s. Sometimes search engines suggest "did you mean: anketka" as an autocorrection. That is not us.
| Anketta (anketta.app / anketta.ru) | anketka.ru | |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Dating app, essay-first matching | Paid surveys |
| What users do | Write an essay, browse a curated feed, message after a mutual like | Fill marketing surveys for cash |
| Business model | Freemium subscription | Pays participants per completed survey |
| Audience | People looking for intentional relationships | People looking for survey-based side income |
| Founded | 2026 | early 2010s |
| Brand | Anketta | Anketka |
The names are similar. The companies and the products are not.
If you're searching for "anketka dating" or "anketka знакомства" because you confused the two: you're in the right place — the dating service lives here.
Tinder withdrew from Russia in 2022; Bumble and Hinge never had a full Russian market. The vacuum is being filled by local projects — Mamba, Twinby, VK Dating, Pure. All of them inherit the photo-first swipe mechanic from 2014. Anketta started as an answer to a specific problem: swipe fatigue and an unwillingness to evaluate people by photos in a region where text culture — Telegram channels, long-form posts, personal essays — has grown sharply over the last five years. The market context is detailed in Tinder Left Russia: What Comes Next.
If you're tired of:
- infinite swiping without consequences,
- profiles with five identical photos and one line about loving travel,
- the feeling that the app is built to keep you in it rather than help you leave it for a relationship,
— Anketta is built for the opposite outcome. The feed is curated and small. After a mutual like you have 48 hours to start the conversation; after that the match expires and you can't re-match for 30 days.
Stop scrolling faces — start with the wordsAnketta matches people by the meaning of their text, not by surveilling their chats. An embedding model builds a mathematical representation of writing and finds close ones — the same math you'd find in an NLP textbook, not "AI reads your messages and decides for you." We can explain it, and here's where the lines are drawn.
What we do not do:
- sell your essays to third parties;
- use your text to train external models;
- show photos without a mutual like;
- pass data to messengers or ad networks.
What we do do:
- store essays encrypted at rest;
- give you a one-click account delete that purges data within 30 days;
- run the matching embedding model (
bge-m3) on our own infrastructure. Automated content-safety moderation uses external LLM services — disclosed in our privacy policy.
More in Privacy and Data in Dating and the legal page.
- Web: anketta.app — runs in any modern browser, no install. You can start right now.
- Mobile apps: iOS and Android in development. Sign up for the launch via waitlist.
- Telegram: news channel @anketta_dating — product updates, dating research breakdowns, user stories.
Anketta was founded by Evgenii Rodionov in 2026. The product came out of several years of watching photo-first dating turn partner search into feed-scrolling — and watching people end up with fatigue and parasocial attachments instead of relationships.
The core principle: the product is built so you don't stay in it. If it's working, you leave it for a real relationship. If it isn't working, we've done our job badly. More on the approach on the About page.
What is Anketta in plain terms?
It's a dating app where compatibility is decided by your writing, not your photos. You write an essay about yourself, the algorithm finds people whose writing is close in meaning, and after a mutual like you have 48 hours to start the conversation.
Is Anketta the same as anketka.ru?
No. Anketta (anketta.app / anketta.ru) is a text-based dating app. Anketka.ru is a Russian paid-survey site running since the early 2010s. The names are similar; the companies and products are not.
Do I need photos to use Anketta?
No photos appear during matching — compatibility is computed from your essay. A photo is only revealed after a mutual like, and only if you choose to share one. This is dating without photos in its purest form.
How much does Anketta cost?
There's a free tier: 3 cards, plus 6 more once you publish your own essay. After that it's a subscription. Real prices are published openly on the pricing page.
Why does a match expire after 48 hours?
So the conversation starts while interest is real instead of being deferred. If neither of you discards the match within 48 hours, it becomes permanent. If someone discards it, the pair can't re-match for 30 days.
Does Anketta work outside Russia?
Yes. The web app runs in any modern browser at anketta.app. iOS and Android apps are in development — sign up for the launch via the waitlist.
If you arrived here from a search for "anketta," "anketta dating," or "what is anketta" — you're in the right place. From here you can write your first essay, read the guides on how the mechanic works, compare us to Tinder and the rest in comparisons, or find dating in your city. Anything else is covered in the Q&A. The face can wait — start with the words.
Unsure about writing? Try reading first.