Raya Waiting List: Some Applicants Wait Years to Join

There is a unique kind of torment in being stuck in limbo. Time stretches endlessly, and the finish line never seems to get any closer. For millions of people today, that agony is embodied by the wait to join Raya, the notoriously exclusive, members-only dating app.

Gaining access to Raya isn’t as simple as downloading an app. You need an invitation from a current member, and even after submitting your application, you cannot log in until it is approved. This creates a bottleneck reminiscent of the line outside a high-end nightclub: a few lucky souls breeze past the velvet rope while the masses linger outside. Right now, roughly 2.5 million people are waiting to get in, with many of them stuck in that holding pattern for years.

“My application is stuck in purgatory,” says Gabriela Mark, a 23-year-old law student and model based in San Diego. “Like, she’s never escaping.” Mark has been on the waiting list for five years. Frustrated and confused, she finally emailed Raya in January. “I am beginning to believe you guys genuinely hate me or are bullying me,” she wrote in a pointed letter. “Is my application just floating in the abyss somewhere or a running gag to you guys???” She never received a reply.

Mark’s experience is far from unique. The people interviewed for this story, despite their professional credentials, have waited anywhere from two to seven years. They have watched friends get accepted, date, break up, and cycle through the app entirely, all while their own status remains unchanged. “It’s a bit of a mental fuck,” says Jennifer Rojas, a 40-year-old UGC creator in South Florida who applied in 2020 while working as an actress. “You start to look inward. Like, maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s this or that. I was opening it every day to check my status.” She is now going on year six of the waitlist, despite having 17 referrals on the app.

Originally launched in 2015 as a kind of SoHo House for creative professionals, Raya was built around aspiration. Over time, however, it has evolved into a platform where many of those same creatives find themselves unable to participate at all. There is no exact science to escaping the waitlist. The app, which charges $25 per month (or $50 for a premium membership), receives up to 100,000 applications monthly. The process is not first-come, first-served. Instead, approval depends on factors like how trendy your city is on the app or whether you have secured a referral from a current member, who each have a limited stash of “friend passes.”

Raya declined to comment for this story. After an initial call to schedule an interview with Ifeoma Ojukwi, the vice president of global memberships who oversees applications, the company stopped responding. As is common in the world of online dating, WIRED was ghosted.

The exclusivity of Raya was part of its initial appeal for Mark. She wanted in because she heard it was full of “cool people who seem untouchable.” Known as the celebrity dating app, Raya has hosted everyone from actors Dakota Fanning and Channing Tatum to Olympian Simone Biles, who met her husband on the platform. Mark had tried other apps: Hinge was “just OK,” Tinder was full of men who “seemed like they wanted to literally bone anything with a hole in it,” and the rest offered “nothing but trap boys and creatures.” But after five years of waiting, the allure has faded. “I don’t know what their deal is,” she says, “but there’s a reason I’m trapped on this waitlist and I needed to find out what it was.”