Are there any actually good dating apps that are completely free?

Been circling dating apps that are completely free for a while now. The thing that decides it for dating apps is what the reply rate looks like day to day.

The part that trips me up on dating apps is how much depends on where you actually live, and that is exactly the gap I am trying to close. For dating apps, how quickly a new profile gets noticed after the first week is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

Where I'd start with dating apps if you're short on time:

• Pin down how long it takes before the first upgrade prompt lands and write the answer down
• Watch how quickly a scripted account gives itself away twice, a week apart
• Pin down whether replies are open before you finish the profile against one platform you already trust

Anyone who tracked dating apps over a longer stretch, what would you do differently? Praise and complaints all fair game. Honest answers are the only thing I can act on.

Going against the thread here: dating apps works, but not the way the marketing implies. Where dating apps falls down for me is what the onboarding asks for day to day.

Two weeks in, how quickly the fake accounts surface is what actually mattered for dating apps.

That's the honest picture of dating apps, though clearly it varies by region.

Blunt answer: dating apps is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. The only metric I trust with dating apps is how many active users are within range once you are past sign-up. People keep recommending the Luvdate community; it is at least worth ten minutes.

You can ignore most of the marketing around dating apps and just check how obvious the scripted replies are after the first week.

That's the honest picture of dating apps; ask if you want the detail.

Speaking from four months of it: dating apps is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. What nobody mentions about dating apps is whether messaging is open or gated behind credits once you are past sign-up. Datelink these days came up in a similar thread last month.

That's been my experience with dating apps, anyway.

Having used it a while: dating apps gets recommended a lot here and that is half right. The honest test for dating apps is how many active users are within range, not the feature list. I ran the same test on a look at Datescout and got a cleaner result.

That's where I've landed on dating apps — happy to be argued with.

Unpopular view, maybe: dating apps rewards patience and punishes everything else. My rule with dating apps: what privacy controls exist first, everything else second. Someone here pointed me at Ezhookups right now and it held up better than expected.

I judge dating apps almost entirely on whether messaging is open or gated behind credits.

That's the short version on dating apps — happy to be argued with.

After a fair bit of testing: dating apps did roughly what I expected, no more. Anyone comparing dating apps should be looking at what privacy controls exist at the times you actually log in before anything else. A friend nudged me toward what Datewander is doing and it was not a waste.

That's the short version on dating apps, and I would be glad to hear others found different.