Sniffies Year-End Report Shows Cruising App is Dominated by Bisexual & Bicurious Users

When cruising platform Sniffies released its 2025 year-end download report, one data point immediately stood out: most of its users do not identify as gay. According to the company’s figures, 42.3% of people on the site identify as bisexual or bicurious, compared with 25% who identify as straight or straight curious, making the app a significant gathering point for men exploring sexuality outside traditional gay labels.

Sniffies describes itself as a map-based cruising service that emphasizes real-time, in-person connections among queer and questioning users through an interactive, location-driven interface. The platform’s map shows nearby profiles and meeting spots, positioning itself as a bridge between digital technology and physical queer spaces for users looking for casual encounters, group events, or community-oriented meetups.

The company’s 2025 download report, released this week, aims to summarize how users “cruised, connected, and explored desire” over the past year. Beyond identity labels, Sniffies highlighted the scale and format of in-person gatherings coordinated through its tools. According to the report, more than 2.1 million participants attended over 200,000 groups on the platform in 2025, an average of more than 16,000 groups per month. The most popular format was so‑called “pump and dump” group events, which together drew more than half a million attendees.

Sniffies’ Chief Marketing Officer Eli Martin framed these trends as evidence of a broad, curiosity-driven cruising culture that varies significantly by location. In a statement, Martin said that users are “turning curiosity into real-world experiences” and that each city develops its own distinctive cruising norms based on local desires and practices.

The report arrives after a high-visibility year for the company. Sniffies has been profiled in major outlets including The New Yorker and New York Magazine, which have examined both its cultural influence and its role in contemporary cruising communities. At the same time, the platform has faced heightened scrutiny after reports that Amtrak police allegedly used the app in a sting operation that led to the arrest of more than 200 queer New Yorkers earlier in the year, raising concerns among civil liberties advocates and LGBTQ+ community members about digital surveillance and entrapment.

The prominence of bisexual and bicurious users on Sniffies is consistent with broader research showing increased visibility of bisexual identities and a growing number of people who report attraction to more than one gender. National survey data in the United States have found that bisexual people now represent the largest share of adults who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, particularly among younger age groups. Within that context, Sniffies’ figures suggest that app-based cruising is serving not only gay men but also large numbers of men who describe themselves as bisexual, bicurious, straight, or straight curious while seeking sexual experiences with other men.

Technology commentators have argued that map-based hookup services such as Sniffies and similar platforms are reshaping how queer and questioning people access cruising spaces by making real-time, location-specific encounters easier to coordinate. Some LGBTQ+ writers have noted that these tools can help sustain or recreate physical cruising cultures at a time when many traditional queer venues, such as bars and bathhouses, have closed or been displaced by gentrification.

Alongside its growth, Sniffies has been drawn into broader debates about substance use and harm reduction on hookup apps. A 2024 feature from Uncloseted Media and Queer Kentucky, based on data provided by Sniffies, reported that 18% of users selected “No PNP” in their drug-preference fields, indicating that a notable subset actively seeks to avoid encounters involving substances. In the same report, Sniffies said its users were more likely to engage in chemsex and methamphetamine use than users on some other platforms, and that a portion of users had deleted their accounts over drug-related concerns.

In response to these concerns, Sniffies has introduced Profile Fields that allow users to specify boundaries and list safety tools they use, an approach the company says is meant to support informed consent and facilitate clearer communication about risk. Public health experts working with LGBTQ+ communities have emphasized that features that surface boundaries, preferences, and harm-reduction practices can be useful in reducing conflict and supporting safer encounters, particularly in app-mediated spaces.

The platform has also announced new identity and age-verification tools aimed at strengthening user safety. In coverage of Sniffies’ 2025 updates, LGBTQ+ outlet Pride reported that the service is rolling out enhanced ID verification that uses government ID checks, real-time facial verification, and blacklist validation to keep underage users and known bad actors off the site. According to Sniffies, the system is designed so that personal data used in verification is deleted immediately after the process, apart from a user’s date of birth, which is retained to ensure ongoing age confirmation.

The Sniffies year-end report highlights how cruising apps are operating at the intersection of desire, identity, and risk. For many users—especially bisexual, bicurious, and questioning men—the platform serves as a space to explore attraction and community outside rigid labels. At the same time, the alleged law-enforcement stings, concerns over substance-related harm, and the need for robust safety tools underscore that digital cruising spaces remain deeply shaped by policing, stigma, and health inequalities experienced by LGBTQ+ people.

As app-based cruising continues to evolve, advocacy organizations and public health experts are likely to focus on ensuring that platforms used predominantly by men who have sex with men—regardless of identity label—integrate harm-reduction resources, consent-centered design, and protections from discriminatory policing, while affirming the autonomy and diversity of all LGBTQ+ and questioning users.