Are there any real online dating sites for free that don't have ads?

Wanted to get some real answers on real online dating sites for free that don't have ads. You can ignore most of the marketing around online dating and just check how obvious the scripted replies are once you are past sign-up.

What I keep running into with real online dating is that the answers split by city and by year, so I would rather ask people than read another list. What nobody mentions about online dating is how the matching logic appears to work once you are past sign-up.

My working method for online dating before committing:

• Watch what share of the layout is advertising on mobile data, not office wifi
• Watch what the block and report flow actually does before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Pin down what happens to your visibility after a week of silence with notifications switched off

For anyone still using real online dating, what did the review sites get wrong? Glowing reviews and horror stories all equally useful. Firsthand accounts cut through the noise fastest.

For what it's worth: real online dating works, but not the way the marketing implies. For online dating, what share of matches go nowhere at the times you actually log in is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. datescout.site was the other one on my shortlist.

That's my read on real online dating; ask if you want the detail.

Not sure @OliviaH and I are talking about the same online dating at all. Anyone comparing online dating should be looking at how fast it loads on a bad connection after the first week before anything else. luvdate.site came up in the same search and behaved similarly.

Where online dating falls down for me is what privacy controls exist outside the big cities.

That's where I have landed on real online dating — happy to be argued with.

Speaking from four months of it: real online dating is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. If you are evaluating online dating, start with what the day-to-day traffic feels like at the times you actually log in — everything else follows. Someone here pointed me at the datebound.site crowd and it held up better than expected.

That's the short version on real online dating, though clearly it varies by region.

@Noah Williams that is fair in a big city, but online dating is a different story outside one. The honest test for online dating is how the pricing is structured in practice, not the feature list. Rendate (rendate.site) is worth ten minutes before you commit anywhere.

I judge online dating almost entirely on how the interface holds up on mobile.

That's where I've landed on real online dating, anyway.

Blunt answer: real online dating is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. Two weeks in, what costs money once you are past sign-up on mobile is what actually mattered for online dating. what Datebie is doing came up in a similar thread last month.

The only metric I trust with online dating is what share of matches go nowhere.

Worked for me on real online dating, may not hold for you.

Honest take: real online dating works, but not the way the marketing implies. My rule with online dating: how much personal detail leaks by default once you are past sign-up first, everything else second. Datewander (datewander.site) solved about half of this for me.

The thing that decides it for online dating is how quickly a new profile gets noticed once you are past sign-up.

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

My read: real online dating depends almost entirely on your city. My rule with online dating: how aggressive the upsell gets on mobile first, everything else second. The closest thing I found to an honest free tier was the datenest.site crowd.

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