Extramarital Dating in India 2026: The Numbers, Fact-Checked

Every few weeks a headline announces how many Indians are on extramarital dating apps, which city "leads", or how fast married women are signing up. Almost all of these numbers come from the apps themselves. That does not make them false, but it does change what they can tell you. Here is what has actually been reported in 2025–26, who reported it, and what each figure can and cannot support.

A note on our position: we run a platform in this category too. We do not publish user numbers, and we are not quoting anyone's numbers to make the market look bigger. The point of this piece is the opposite.

The one thing to know first

None of the headline figures below is independent. User counts, city shares and growth rates are released by the platforms, usually through press releases that are then rewritten by many outlets. Nobody outside the company audits them. Surveys are usually commissioned by the platform and run by a polling firm — better, but still chosen and framed by an interested party.

Claims, sources and caveats at a glance

Claim	Who reported it	Caveat
Gleeden has 4 million (40 lakh) users in India	Gleeden, via Business Today, Mar 2026	Self-reported; "users" is not defined as active accounts
Gleeden "hits 40M subscribers in India"	Connected to India headline, Apr 2026	The article's own body says four million. The headline is a lakh/million slip
"4.5 crore Indians" used discreet apps; "16 million" joined in a year	The Tribune, Jun 2026	No named source, platform or methodology for either figure
Women users up 148% in two years; about 65% men, 35% women	Gleeden, via Business Today and others	Percentage growth with no base figure given
Bengaluru 18%, Hyderabad 17%, Delhi 11%, Mumbai 9%, Pune 7% of Gleeden's Indian users	Gleeden, via Business Today, Mar 2026	Share of one app's users, not a rate of infidelity
Kanchipuram tops Ashley Madison's India city list	Ashley Madison, via Global Dating Insights, Jun 2026	Per-capita sign-ups for one month (May 2026); company calls it seasonal
53% of surveyed Indian adults admit to ever having an affair	Ashley Madison-commissioned YouGov survey, via MediaInfoline	13,508 adults across 11 countries; India sample size not published

40 lakh, not 40 million

The most repeated number is Gleeden's India user base. The company has given a steadily rising figure over the years:

• January 2023: 2 million Indian users, described as 20% of 10 million worldwide (DNA Hindi).
• 2024: 30 lakh (3 million) active Indian users (Oneindia Hindi, Jan 2025).
• March 2026: 4 million (Business Today).

Four million is 40 lakh. At least one outlet headlined it as "40M", which would be 4 crore — ten times the company's own claim. The same 40 lakh figure also appeared in the April 2026 complaint that led the NHRC to issue a notice to MeitY; The News Mill attributes it to the complainant, the Sewa Nyaya Utthan Foundation. We explain that notice in Is Gleeden safe?

Two further cautions. A cumulative sign-up count includes people who registered once and never returned, so it is not the number of people using an app today. And the Tribune's "4.5 crore" and "16 million in a year" figures, published in June 2026, cite no platform, report or survey at all, so we have not treated them as data.

Which Indian city has the most affairs?

Honest answer: nobody knows, and no dataset published so far can tell you. What exists are two different platforms' figures measuring two different things.

Gleeden: share of its own users

Gleeden's March 2026 breakdown puts Bengaluru (18%) and Hyderabad (17%) ahead of Delhi (11%), Mumbai (9%) and Pune (7%), with growth reported in Lucknow, Noida, Chandigarh, Surat, Coimbatore, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Guwahati and Raipur (Business Today). This mostly tells you where Gleeden's marketing and brand recognition are strongest. Large, young, tech-heavy cities will top almost any app's user list.

It is also not stable. A January 2025 report of Gleeden's figures listed Bengaluru 20%, Mumbai 19%, Kolkata 18% and Delhi 15% (Oneindia Hindi). Mumbai dropping from 19% to 9% in about a year is more likely a change in how figures were cut or reported than a change in human behaviour.

Ashley Madison: per-capita sign-ups, and why Kanchipuram keeps appearing

Ashley Madison ranks districts by sign-ups relative to population. For May 2026 its top four were Kanchipuram, Coimbatore, Tiruvallur and Chennai, and it said India had moved from 8th to 3rd globally for sign-ups (Global Dating Insights). The company itself said the rankings reflect short-term seasonal interest rather than long-term outcomes.

Kanchipuram also topped the June 2025 list after ranking 17th the year before, in a list the company said combined sign-ups with "activity intensity and engagement data" (WION). A jump from 17th to 1st in a year is what per-capita rankings do in smaller districts: a modest number of sign-ups divided by a smaller population produces a large rate. It is a statistic about one app's marketing reach in one month, not about the people of a town.

We will not call any city a "capital" of anything. Nothing here measures relationships, only app registrations, and a registration is not an affair.

Married women on dating apps

Gleeden says female participation grew about 148% over two years and that women are about 35% of its Indian users (Business Today; Connected to India). Without a starting number, a percentage increase says little about scale: it could be a large or a small base. The male-majority split, meanwhile, is typical of this category — which is why free access for women is standard across it. For the human side of this rather than the numbers, see why married women have affairs.

The surveys, and who is in them

• Ashley Madison / YouGov (fieldwork 24 Feb – 6 Mar 2025): 53% of surveyed Indian adults said they had ever had an affair, joint highest of 11 countries. The total sample was 13,508 adults across all countries; the India sample is not stated. The same release mixes in a separate poll of 2,743 Ashley Madison members, so "members" figures are not general-population figures (MediaInfoline).
• Gleeden / Ipsos (March 2026): 1,500 respondents, described as singles in tier-1 and tier-2 cities; 49% said they had chosen AI intimacy over a partner at least once (Global Dating Insights). More in is an AI relationship cheating?

Online panels of 1,500 people drawn from cities are useful for spotting attitudes, not for estimating how common something is across the whole country.

How to read the next headline

1. Who released it? If it is the app, read it as marketing until shown otherwise.
2. Is it users, active users, or sign-ups? These can differ by several times.
3. Lakh, million or crore? 40 lakh = 4 million. 4 crore = 40 million.
4. Share or rate? "18% of our users are in Bengaluru" and "Bengaluru has the most affairs" are different claims.
5. What is the sample, and who was in it? No published India sample, no conclusion about India.

Behind the numbers are real people, often lonely ones. If that is you, loneliness in marriage may be more useful than any statistic. And if you are exploring anyway, check any platform — including Parda, which labels its AI companions and never counts them as members — against the questions in our Gleeden app explainer.