Sugarbook – the Asian app for “sugar daddies” and “sugar babies” – sells itself with the gloss of “mutually beneficial” dating, but in Singapore the pitch lands in a uniquely pragmatic city where a high cost of living meets a culture of discretion. Founded in Kuala Lumpur in 2016 by Darren Chan (full name Darren Chan Eu Boon), the app targets two groups it knows well: older, wealthier “daddies/mummies” and younger “babies,” often students or early-career workers who are upfront about wanting both companionship and financial support. Chan’s arrests and the Malaysian clampdown gave the brand notoriety across the region, but Singapore remained one of its hottest markets—enough for Sugarbook to tout rising local sign-ups and university-linked traffic even before the pandemic accelerated interest.
On the ground, the user journey isn’t mysterious. Profiles signal expectations (“allowance,” “mentorship,” “travel companion”), private chats move quickly to encrypted apps, and first meets are staged in hotel lobbies and private clubs. During COVID-era restrictions, agencies and users told reporters that arrangements shifted to “virtual dates” and monthly stipends for digital companionship until in-person meetings resumed. The app’s own marketing flatters Singapore as a prime market and pushes safety features and verification, while critics see sales copy wrapped around old dynamics.
Who are the women? Press interviews and first-person accounts sketch a mix: polytechnic students juggling part-time jobs, undergrads managing tuition bills, and young professionals chasing lifestyle upgrades—or simply financial breathing room. One widely read case involved a 23-year-old Singaporean, Felice Ang, who described a S$3,000 monthly allowance and insisted she wasn’t a sex worker; others, like a Yahoo profile of a part-time nurse/medical student, spoke of living a quiet double life and setting rules around intimacy, time and gifts. Not all stories are aspirational; Reddit threads and local features are thick with buyers’ remorse and emotional fallout.
Who are the men? Court filings and anecdote suggest older professionals—finance, tech, property—along with a visible expat slice. The State Courts have seen a steady trickle of cases at the edges and outside of what Sugarbook markets: men meeting minors, secret filming, fraud and extortion. In January 2024, a man who paid a 15-year-old and secretly recorded others was jailed; in December 2024 and February 2025, separate men were convicted for paying 16-year-olds. These aren’t the majority of arrangements, but they shaped the public conversation and sharpened the legal lines.
And the law? Singapore hasn’t followed Malaysia in banning Sugarbook. Instead, authorities have taken a watchful, enforcement-first posture. As far back as 2018, the Ministry of Social and Family Development warned that platforms such as Sugarbook “commoditise and devalue relationships,” and said police would monitor closely and act under the Women’s Charter where sexual services are procured for payment—including action against a site and its owners. CNA’s 2025 legal explainer distilled the current view: consensual adult dating per se isn’t illegal, but if a platform is found to be facilitating prostitution, liability could attach to the platform even if individuals insist the arrangement is about “companionship.” Meanwhile, other dating platforms have been banned in the past on morality grounds (Ashley Madison, 2013), a reminder that regulators have the tools if they choose to use them.
What about feminist and advocacy voices? Singapore’s leading women’s group AWARE hasn’t run a campaign squarely on Sugarbook, but its research on online misogyny and gendered harms frames skepticism about industries that monetise women’s availability. Sex-workers’ rights group Project X, for its part, has engaged media on “sugar baby” rights and risks, emphasizing consent, safety and recourse when things go wrong—pragmatic concerns that mirror the headlines.
The testimonies split along a familiar fault line. Pro-Sugarbook users say the clarity is refreshing—no coyness about money, clear boundaries, and, at best, mentorship and longer-term companionship. “Not all of them are asking for sex,” one local interviewee stressed; some just want company and polish for public events. Yet against the glossy narratives are the court cases, the ghosting over unpaid “allowances,” and the age-verification gaps that the platform says it now patches with AI, facial checks and phone verification. In the end, Singapore’s deal with Sugarbook is transactional too: the city tolerates grey-zone arrangements between consenting adults, but it prosecutes harm, keeps a wary eye on platforms, and leaves the moral arithmetic—like the monthly stipend—up to the people swiping.
Ah, Sugarbook. The dating app that says the quiet part out loud. Auntie has lived long enough to know that relationships have always involved negotiation—of time, money, affection, expectations. But here, the negotiation is simply moved to the front of the conversation, printed big and bold like a menu price at Din Tai Fung. And honestly? Auntie respects the transparency, even if the whole thing tastes a bit… saccharine.
Now, let me be clear: this is not my kind of romance. I’m old-school in some ways. Auntie still believes in the slow burn—the lingering texts, the flirting with eyes, the long dinners where you talk about life, trauma, gossip, and stupid things you believed at 23. But I am also modern enough to understand: the world is expensive, tuition fees are barbaric, rent is criminal, and young women are tired of being told to “hustle harder” when the system is built on the backs of those who hustle the most.
So if two consenting adults—adults, ah!—want to make a deal where one has resources and the other has youth, beauty, attention, confidence, presence… who am I to shout moral authority from a balcony like some Victorian grandma? Auntie does not clutch pearls. Auntie has lived.
But you know who I will judge? The men.
Because tell me, my rich uncles, my corporate tigers, my crypto bros and “self-made” property moguls—what happened? Too tired to learn how to talk to a woman without waving cash? Too busy closing mergers to figure out how to ask someone out for laksa? Too self-conscious to park your Porsche in Geylang and negotiate like your father’s generation, who at least had the honesty of vice?
You want intimacy without vulnerability. Companionship without effort. Youth without responsibility. A pretty woman who smiles but doesn’t make demands. A relationship you can exit by simply cancelling the allowance.
Convenient, yes. Romantic? Don’t play with Auntie.
Meanwhile, the girls—please, just make choices from strength, not panic. Do it because you want to, not because you must. Know your boundaries. Know your exit plans. Know your worth beyond the allowance.
Because money ends. Beauty fades. But your dignity, your voice, your story—that stays. And Auntie is watching. Not judging you, darling. Judging them.