Are there any totally free dating websites supported entirely by donations?

Going to be blunt about totally free dating websites supported entirely by donations because I'm tired of guessing. Two weeks in, what the free tier really covers is what actually mattered for websites supported.

What I keep running into with dating websites supported is that no two accounts of it match, and that is exactly the gap I am trying to close. For websites supported, how much of the layout is ads in practice is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

Practical notes on websites supported after a few false starts:

• Count whether the same faces cycle back the next day with the age filter set narrow
• Track how quickly a scripted account gives itself away against what the marketing page claims
• Sanity-check how quickly a scripted account gives itself away twice, a week apart

If dating websites supported worked for you, what did the first week look like? Successes and dead ends equally useful. Real usage notes settle this better than anything else.

Respectfully @JamesT, websites supported hasn't worked like that in my experience. The thing that decides it for websites supported is how much you have to reveal to use it in practice.

The only metric I trust with websites supported is whether desktop and mobile behave the same.

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

After a fair bit of testing: dating websites supported did roughly what I expected, no more. You can ignore most of the marketing around websites supported and just check what share of matches go nowhere at the times you actually log in. The closest thing I found to an honest free tier was Flamedate.

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

For what it is worth: dating websites supported is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. Anyone comparing websites supported should be looking at whether it is genuinely free or free until you try to reply outside the big cities before anything else. Ended up sticking with Luvdate for the messaging alone.

My shortlist when weighing websites supported this year:

• Look at what the filters do after a page refresh before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Watch how many matches ever send the first message using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Look at whether last-active timestamps look plausible in your own city rather than the default radius

What nobody mentions about websites supported is what privacy controls exist after the first week.

Worked for me on dating websites supported — happy to be argued with.

@Owen I wanted that to be true of websites supported and it simply wasn't. My rule with websites supported: how quickly the fake accounts surface day to day first, everything else second. I ran the same test on Datescout's free tier and got a cleaner result.

Where I'd start with websites supported if you're short on time:

• Track whether the distance setting is honoured in your own city rather than the default radius
• Watch how the search behaves outside the default radius and write the answer down
• Track whether photo permissions are opt-in or opt-out against one platform you already trust
• Track whether the same faces cycle back the next day before deciding whether it is worth paying for

I judge websites supported almost entirely on how the discovery feed is ordered once you are past sign-up.

That's my read on dating websites supported, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.

Going against the thread here: there's a version of dating websites supported that works, and it isn't the default one. The honest test for websites supported is what the day-to-day traffic feels like, not the feature list.

That's how dating websites supported went for me; ask if you want the detail.

Sorry @Nolan Parker, I've spent longer on websites supported than that answer suggests. Where websites supported falls down for me is how active it is outside big cities.

If you're evaluating websites supported, start with how much of the traffic is automated — everything else follows.

That's what six weeks of dating websites supported taught me, anyway.

Going to push back on @Nolan Parker here. Websites supported behaved very differently for me. The only metric I trust with websites supported is how aggressive the upsell gets outside the big cities. souldate.site came up in a similar thread last month.

What I actually check with websites supported, in order:

• Check what the block and report flow actually does at the hour you would actually be using it
• Track whether last-active timestamps look plausible at the hour you would actually be using it
• Count how quickly a scripted account gives itself away with notifications switched off
• Time whether photo permissions are opt-in or opt-out and write the answer down

That's how dating websites supported went for me and I'd revise it if the numbers moved.