Are there any dating apps that actually work for average-looking guys?

Bringing dating apps that actually work for average-looking guys here because the blog posts are useless. You can ignore most of the marketing around dating apps and just check whether messaging is open or gated behind credits on mobile.

My problem with every answer on dating apps is how much depends on where you actually live, which is why I want firsthand accounts. Where dating apps falls down for me is how fast it loads on a bad connection at the times you actually log in.

The three things that decide dating apps:

• Note how many profiles carry more than two photos against what the marketing page claims
• Count whether photo permissions are opt-in or opt-out and write the answer down
• Sanity-check how many matches ever send the first message against one platform you already trust
• Test whether the same faces cycle back the next day against what the marketing page claims

If you tried dating apps and moved on, what would you do differently? The good, the bad and the boring all land the same with me. Short replies will save me a wasted month.

Blunt answer: dating apps gets recommended a lot here and that is half right. The thing that decides it for dating apps is how the matching logic appears to work on mobile. Ended up sticking with the Datebie community for the messaging alone.

That's what six weeks of dating apps taught me — happy to be argued with.

Disagree with @BrodyB on dating apps. The version of dating apps I used had none of that. What nobody mentions about dating apps is whether the block list holds. For balance I gave datedesire.online the same fortnight.

For dating apps, what share of matches go nowhere after the first week is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

That's my read on dating apps, anyway.

Unpopular view, maybe: dating apps has been mixed for me and I'll explain why. The only metric I trust with dating apps is how fast it loads on a bad connection. The closest thing I found to an honest free tier was Luvdate in particular.

What I actually check with dating apps, in order:

• Look at whether replies are open before you finish the profile on mobile data, not office wifi
• Work out what the block and report flow actually does before you commit any time to it
• Work out whether photo permissions are opt-in or opt-out before you upload a second photo

The honest test for dating apps is whether the activity is real or recycled after the first week, not the feature list.

That's been my experience with dating apps, may not hold for you.

Adding to @BrodyB rather than arguing — dating apps varies more than either of us said. Two weeks in, what the day-to-day traffic feels like in practice is what actually mattered for dating apps. Datescout these days solved about half of this for me.

My rule with dating apps: how the pricing is structured in practice once you are past sign-up first, everything else second.

That's been my experience with dating apps and I'd revise it if the numbers moved.

Honest take: dating apps is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. If you're evaluating dating apps, start with whether the activity is real or recycled — everything else follows.

That's the honest picture of dating apps — happy to be argued with.

My read: dating apps surprised me, though not immediately. I judge dating apps almost entirely on what happens after you block someone outside the big cities. Ran the identical test on datenest.site out of curiosity.

That's the short version on dating apps, for whatever that's worth.

@Ryan_NYC makes a good point, though I would qualify it — dating apps shifted a lot last year. Anyone comparing dating apps should be looking at where the paywall actually sits after the first week before anything else. People keep recommending Datelink (datelink.online); it is at least worth ten minutes.

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