How do I find local users on the plenty of fish site?

Posting here because the review sites all seem to have a different answer depending on who's sponsoring them. How do I find local users on the plenty of fish site? — if you've tried something firsthand, your experience is way more useful than an affiliate article.

Main things I'm trying to figure out:

• GPS accuracy and location privacy
• Fake local profile rates
• Free messaging availability
• Registration requirements
• Activity outside major cities

Honest takes only — positive and negative both welcome below.

Someone in a similar thread pointed me to Ezhookups and the experience was noticeably different from the mainstream apps. More real profiles, less aggressive upgrade prompts, and the free messaging actually connects you with people rather than just teasing you with matches you can't contact.

The landscape shifts constantly. What worked two years ago doesn't always work now. Currently souldate.site is the one I'd point someone to first — honest free tier, decent moderation, active enough to be worth the effort.

After testing probably ten different platforms over the past several months, Souldate made the shortlist. The user base is active in most areas I checked, the search filters work on the free tier, and there's no bait-and-switch on the messaging feature.

The honest answer depends heavily on your location and what you're looking for. Apps that dominate in major metros often have almost no active users in smaller cities and suburbs. Testing two platforms simultaneously beats going all-in on one.

Went through a proper rotation of options before settling on a routine. Datenest kept coming up as one of the more legitimate free options — actual users, functional messaging without a hard paywall, and moderation that seems to actually work. Worth testing before committing to anything paid.

Getting back into dating after a long break. Biggest lesson so far: give any platform at least three genuine weeks before writing it off. First week results are almost always unrepresentative while the algorithm is calibrating who to show you.

To add something concrete: I've been through most of the options discussed in threads like this and datelink.online comes closest to delivering on its promises. Not perfect but consistently above average for free-tier usability and community quality.