The Best 420-Friendly Dating and Friend-Finder Apps

Cannabis focused dating is very in right now. There are 21 million Google hits for “cannabis and dating,” cannabis-friendly dating services are offered by coaches like Molly Peckler, and if you’re technologically inclined — there’s an app for that. Several, in fact.

In the age of cell phones, it makes sense that singles would want a streamlined way to find prospective partners with similar interests. If you’re a cannabis consumer and you’ve ever dated someone who wasn’t, you’re familiar with the occasional frustration of navigating that interaction. It makes sense that one might want to find a partner with whom they can share their herbal indulgences.

To see whether they live up to the hype, I tried out three cannabis dating apps: High There, 420 Singles, and 420 Friends. I’ve been sporadically on Tinder for a couple years now, so that was my main basis for comparison.

App Review: High There

This was the best of the three I tested. The interface is clean and pretty streamlined. There’s a section called “Joints” where you can see and interact with posts from other users, follow trending hashtags, and post your own updates and pictures. It reminds me of Twitter in that way, and it’s probably the most useful networking feature of the app. Like Tinder (and most other dating apps at this point) it has the swipe left/right option when viewing profiles. It shows the user’s photo, name, distance from you, and their preferences. Each user has three areas where they can share their current needs:

• Current mood:
  • Go Out
  • Stay In
  • Chat
• When consuming cannabis I prefer:
  • Smoking
  • Vaporizing
  • Edibles
  • All kinds
• My energy level when using cannabis is:
  • Low
  • Medium
  • High

This is all pretty useful data for finding people to sesh with, but doesn’t give me much to go on in terms of how they’d work out as a partner. One might argue that even mainstream dating apps run into the same problem, but I am one of those stubborn people who won’t swipe right on a blank profile no matter how sexy the pictures. I love that High There offers the option of filtering distance, gender, and preferences. As a bisexual woman, I’m especially grateful that you can select “men and women” as an option.

App Review: 420 Singles

This app is a bit clunky. It feels more 2007 than 2017. The discovery preferences are limited to three options: age, distance, and gender. The gender filter requires you to select men or women (not both), which was disappointing. Also, none of these preferences stopped me from getting an influx of interest from people who lived in other states, which seems like a waste of both of our time since we can’t very well sesh together if you live in North Carolina. I also found a lot of repeat profiles even after I’d swiped left on them, presumably because of a low number of users in my geographic area.

App Review: 420 Friends

This site reminds me more of OkCupid than Tinder. There’s a browse feature where you can see usernames and pictures, then click on their profiles to learn more. The profile features on this one were the best of the three. The basic profile includes space for a headline, about me, about my match, hobbies and interests, and even a first date idea, which is unique and interesting. There’s also a section to select what you’re looking for: age, gender, and relationship style. For the last two, it’s a checkbox system, so you can select all that apply.

You can also share physical details (height, eye color, hair color, body type), as well as religion, language, education, and so on. It’s definitely the best app for creating a thorough profile. Unfortunately, I swiped right on a series of profiles, matched a few of those, and received the following (presumably canned) message in response to all of them: “Great profile. Let’s talk!” Seeing five of those messages in a row in my inbox caused me to make a vaguely disappointed scrunchy face. Like OkCupid, there’s a Tinder-style feature called Spark (very clever) where you can have the swipe right/left experience if you’d prefer to judge solely on looks.

Overall Experience

Honestly, I was a bit underwhelmed by my cannabis dating app experience. I think it is entirely possible to have dating success on any of these apps, but it will take some time and effort. The biggest issue that I can see is the limited size of the user base for any of these apps and the substantial number of dispensaries and vendors promoting their products or services through user profiles. High There was by far the winner in my experience, but even that app probably won’t stay on my phone for much longer. I’m hopelessly picky, even on mainstream dating apps. Plus, because I live in a medical (and now recreational) state and an area that hosts a lot of events, I tend to have better luck meeting cannabis-friendly people in person. If you’re in an area that rarely (or never) hosts events though, these apps could be exactly what you need to find sweet stoner love.