Stop swiping on people. Start deciding on real plans.
Which one would you actually go to?
Your Top 5.
You never rejected anything. You never scrolled. You made nine small choices and ended up with a ranked list — and that is the entire app, except the list is people, and the last step is an invitation.
Android is live now. iOS is coming. We’ll tell you the day it lands.
We’ll write once, when iOS lands. In the meantime, Android is live and it works the same way.
Most apps in this category are described by their features. This one is easier to explain by what is missing from it.
Swipe right and they go on your Bench. Swipe up and you keep both of them. Swipe left and they are paused, not deleted — they drop out of Discover for a while and then come back round. No gesture in this app removes a person for good, which is the one thing swiping does everywhere else.
Say no to Saturday and the connection is still there — something else can be suggested next week. Everyone you swipe right on lands on your Bench and stays there. If you truly never want to hear from someone again you can say so, and it’s absolute — but that’s a decision you make on purpose, not the thing that happens by accident.
You don’t match, you invite — to dinner, a run, a gallery, a meeting. You can invite someone who isn’t on the app at all. And we count it as working only once the two of you are in the same room.
Two people, side by side. You choose. That’s the whole decision, and it’s the one you already make every time you decide who to text back.
Nothing to fill in, no sliders, no compatibility quiz. The ranking is a by-product of choices you already made. Ten, because ten is roughly how many people anyone can actually make plans with.
Not “hey.” An actual plan, on an actual day. They can say no to the plan and stay on your list. When they say yes, you have somewhere to be on Thursday, which was the point.
And one thing you can do everywhere else, which we deliberately left out.
| What you can do | Top 10 | Tinder | Bumble | Hinge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Choose between two specific people, head-to-head | Yes | No | No | No |
| Express preference as a ranked list | Yes | No | No | No |
| Decline an invitation and keep the connection | Yes | No | No | No |
| Hold someone in an explicit “not now” state | Yes | No | No | No |
| Invite someone who isn’t on the app to a real event | Yes | No | No | No |
| Keep dating, friendship and work on one graph | Yes | No | No | No |
| Permanently reject a person by swiping left | No — left is a pause | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Every other app in this category is paid by the hour. A user who finds someone stops opening the app — which shows up on somebody’s dashboard as a problem. We decided to be measured by the opposite thing.
“We count dinners, not messages. If people spend more time in Top 10 this year and have fewer plans, we’ve failed — and we’ll say so.”
Alex Bäcker founded QLess, whose app has been used by hundreds of millions of people for over a decade and holds a 4.9 rating — software built on the premise that the best thing an app can do is give you your time back. Top 10 is published by Ab Inventio, LLC.
Android is live today. iOS is on the way. Leave an email and we’ll write to you once — the day it lands.
We’ll write the day iOS lands.
No newsletter. No digest. We’ll write when there’s something to say.