Luxy Dating App Review

Over the years, many dating apps and sites have promised exclusivity, high-quality singles and a superior online dating experience. Few have been able to deliver. 

It’s understandable — for a long time, online dating was what you did when you had few real-life prospects, the domain of geeks, weirdos, and outcasts. Not to mention the fact that, at any given time, the people who are most likely to find dating success are the people who least need outside help. 

However, as more of our lives moved online, so, too, did dating, and in normalizing online dating, it was easier to find the most eligible and attractive people on dating sites, and later, apps. 

But the question of how to both attract and retain the world’s most attractive singles, while keeping everyone else out, remains. A new app, Luxy, claims to be doing just that, but is there any substance to their claims? And if so, how are they pulling it off?

Let's find out.

Key Features

• Luxy Black
• Luxy Platinum
• Roses and Fire Roses 
• Coins
• Gifts
• Highflyers and Charmers
• Visitors
• Popularity Meter and tips
• Verified, Hot, Nearby, Online and Newest
• Match feature
• Likes and Super Likes

Luxy Review

Luxy’s method of screening potential users (and rigorously rejecting any photos that don’t clearly show your face) has led to its user base being uniformly better looking than nearly every other dating app or site out there, both when it comes to men and women. 

That’s not to say that the most beautiful person on Luxy is hotter than the most beautiful person on Tinder, but that the least attractive people on Luxy would still be average at worst on a more popular app. 

However, this is a bit of a double-edged sword as the beauty that proliferates on Luxy is a very uniform one. It’s a very straight site — few users self-identify as queer — and the general ambiance is pretty normative. If you’re into people who are odd, strange or different, you might struggle to find a good match on Luxy. 

If, however, you’re looking for someone attractive who’s just as mainstream as you are, Luxy could be just what you need. 

It’s more or less a buggier Tinder clone with typos rampant on the app’s copy, the desktop and mobile versions oddly disconnected in a few ways, and seemingly random notifications at times. But it has just a broad enough user base in major population centers to feel worth it for anyone to whom its high fees aren’t prohibitively expensive, and, presumably if you’re rich enough to use Luxy, you might be comfortable traveling for love if need be anyway. 

(It should also be noted that Luxy seems to have more or less successfully stamped out the trend of users using so-called “elite” apps as a sugar daddy/sugar baby-style site, which a semi-competitor like Ashley Madison seems to have given up on.)

Signing Up

In order to sign up for Luxy, you can use pre-existing Google/Facebook accounts, or create an account from scratch. Luxy asks you to identify your gender and what you’re seeking — “man looking for a woman,” “man looking for a man,” etc. — then your name, birthday, email address and a password. 

That’s when the fun starts. In order to retain its cachet as a site for “high-end” singles only, Luxy asks you to upload six clear photos of yourself in a process called “Vouch.” Your profile is then reviewed by the Luxy team and selected members; you will get in if more than 50% of the members voted for you.

In order to qualify, the photos need to show a clear view of your face — no sunglasses, hats or masks, and shots from the side are out, too. You must be the only person in the picture, and there can’t be any text on the photo, including on your clothing. It also can’t be too close and crop some of your head out. Luxy will flag any photos that don’t conform to these strict guidelines. 

Once you’ve got a set of six usable pictures, it takes 24 hours for the Vouch process to finish, after which you’re notified whether you’re in or out, but you can boost your chances by verifying a photo of yourself — recreating a pose Luxy shows you with your laptop or smartphone camera. This grants you a 15% boost in the Vouch ratings, meaning you technically only need to hit 35%. 

If you’re worried about your chances, you can bypass Vouch entirely by signing up for the premium Luxy Black option. During the Vouch process, you can also fill out the rest of your profile, which Luxy prompts you to fill out to 100% completion.

In addition to your six photos, this means selecting an ethnicity, indicating your income (it starts at $200,000 a year, although you can also fill out “non-disclosure”), indicating your religious views, which languages you speak, your smoking and drinking habits, sexual orientation, what you’re looking for in terms of seriousness, your educational background, occupation and height, filling out a brief “about me” paragraph, as well as one about your ideal match, and picking a handful of “tags” that you like, such as your favorite artists and luxury brands. 

What it costs: Unsurprisingly considering it bills itself as a dating app for the elite, Luxy’s paid options aren’t cheap, and because the amount of swiping you can do for free is so constrained, the app isn’t terribly fun unless you do upgrade. One month will set you back $99.99, three-months will cost you $79.99 a month, and if you ante up to six months the cost comes down to $58.99 per month. Payment can only be made via PayPal. 

Sign up for Luxy here

How Does Luxy Work — Searching for Matches

Luxy lets you search for other users in a variety of ways. The first is by using the Tinder-like "Match" functionality, where you swipe on users near you (or, on desktop, near the city you put in your profile). 

This is pretty standard and you can toggle it to show various age preferences (though Luxy will only let you choose 10 years as a minimum age range, i.e. you can search for users 27-37 but not 27-34). The upper limits are 18 to 80. 

Further, unlike some sites, Luxy lets you easily switch between seeing men’s profiles and women’s profiles, and you can see both at the same time if you like. Luxy Black members can also search by specific locations, such as Dubai or London, even if they’re not in those cities. 

As well, you can search for members without swiping by going to the Search tab on mobile or the Browse tab on desktop, with both letting you see Hot, Nearby and Online users, and mobile also letting you see Verified and Newest members. 

How to Start a Conversation on Luxy

In order to start chatting, you either need to match with another user using the Match function, or pay to upgrade to Luxy Black, where you can message any user you want. 

However, Luxy also gives you one free Black message a day even as a free user, and you can send a single free “Rose” to as many users as you like. 

You send messages by navigating to a user’s profile and clicking on the speech bubble — on desktop, next to the profile picture and on mobile next to the Super Like and Like buttons. 

Once inside the chat space, you can send photos, videos, emojis and Roses in addition to texts. 

Safety & Security

In part because of its rigorous image screening, in part because of the Vouch system, and in part because so many users are verified, Luxy feels like a relatively safe community, especially considering wherever there’s a promise of rich users there’s bound to be people attempting to scam them. 

As well, because of Luxy’s brand image and the fact that there aren’t any nudes on it, you don’t really need to be worried about your photos being leaked, unlike with racier online dating options. 

On the technical side of things, Luxy uses SSL encryption. You can check out its safety and privacy pages here.