Why Your Tinder or Hinge Export Won't Upload to RizzStats (And How to Fix Each One)

Photo: Amanz, via Unsplash

Why your Tinder or Hinge export won't upload (and how to fix each one)

You requested your data, waited, downloaded a file, and RizzStats rejected it anyway. That's not a bug report, it's usually one of five predictable snags, and each has a fast fix.

1. The download link already expired

Both apps put a clock on this. Tinder's data-request tool sends a download link by email that self-destructs 24 hours after it's issued, so if you requested your file last week and only just got around to uploading it, the link is dead. Hinge is a little more forgiving: your export stays available for 48 hours after it's ready, and you have to resubmit the request if you miss that window. Neither app warns you loudly when this happens. If your download page just spins or 404s, that's the answer. Request again and upload the same day.

2. You picked the wrong file out of the zip

Tinder's export is a zip with a single data.json at its root. Hinge's is a zip containing two separate files, matches.json and account.json. RizzStats' upload step looks for those exact filenames inside whatever you hand it, at any folder depth, and ignores macOS junk like __MACOSX folders. If you unzipped the archive yourself and only kept one file, or renamed something along the way, the uploader won't find what it needs. Easiest fix: don't unzip anything. Upload the .zip file exactly as it came from Tinder or Hinge and let RizzStats open it.

3. The file is a JSON, but not the right JSON

If you're uploading a loose .json instead of the zip, it has to be Tinder's actual data.json or, for Hinge, the account.json/matches.json pair. A generic export, a screenshot saved as text, or a partial copy-paste won't parse. And it has to end in .json specifically, not .txt or .json.zip with a weird extension.

4. The file is too big, or suspiciously empty

RizzStats caps a raw .json at 50 MB and a .zip at 250 MB (the zip allowance is bigger because Tinder and Hinge sometimes bundle photos and media alongside the data). Most exports are nowhere near that, so hitting the ceiling usually means something got zipped twice or a media folder got duplicated during download. On the other end, a genuinely empty zip or a 0-byte file, which happens if a download got interrupted, gets rejected immediately too. Re-download rather than trying to patch a partial file.

5. Your account is too new for the file to make sense

This one's less obvious. Tinder's extractor checks that your file has at least some usage history or at least one match before accepting it, because a file with neither usually means something went wrong upstream, not that you're a brand-new user with nothing to show yet. If you made your account and requested an export within the same day or two, Tinder's own data pipeline may not have caught up. Give it a few days of normal swiping first, then request again.

If none of that's it

Double-check you're logged into the account you actually swipe from. Tinder and Hinge both build the export around whichever account received the request, and it's easy to trigger one from an old or secondary login. And remember: however you got your file, the raw export never leaves your browser once you're on /upload. RizzStats parses it locally and only sends the derived, privacy-filtered result to the server, according to whatever choices you made in the upload wizard (conversation anonymization, opting bio and city in, opting into research). None of the troubleshooting above changes what gets shared. It's purely about getting the file itself to open.

Most upload failures aren't RizzStats being picky. They're a 24-hour link nobody warned you about, or a zip that got half-extracted along the way. Fix the file, not the app.