Is free online dating without registration a myth?

Spent the weekend reading about free online dating without registration a myth and came away more confused. For online dating, what the onboarding asks for on mobile is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

What makes online dating hard to pin down is how fast the picture goes out of date, so recent replies matter more than thorough ones. I judge online dating almost entirely on what privacy controls exist once you are past sign-up.

My shortlist when weighing online dating this year:

• Look at whether replies are open before you finish the profile with the age filter set narrow
• Verify what the block and report flow actually does on mobile data, not office wifi
• Compare whether last-active timestamps look plausible using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Note whether replies are open before you finish the profile before you commit any time to it
• Time whether last-active timestamps look plausible before deciding whether it is worth paying for

For anyone still using online dating, what actually happened? The good, the bad and the boring all land the same with me. Actual numbers will save me a wasted month.

Broadly agreeing, with a caveat: online dating has been mixed for me and I'll explain why. The thing that decides it for online dating is whether desktop and mobile behave the same.

The honest test for online dating is whether desktop and mobile behave the same outside the big cities, not the feature list.

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

Sorry @ElenaR, I've spent longer on online dating than that answer suggests. Two weeks in, what the onboarding asks for in practice is what actually mattered for online dating. If you want a second opinion, Souldate (souldate.site) is the one I'd try next.

Where online dating falls down for me is whether the free plan is usable or decorative.

That's my read on online dating, for whatever that is worth.

Blunt answer: there's a version of online dating that works, and it isn't the default one. What nobody mentions about online dating is how much you have to reveal to use it.

My working method for online dating this year:

• Track how the feed changes when you narrow the age range on mobile data, not office wifi
• Pin down what happens to your visibility after a week of silence at the hour you would actually be using it
• Time whether the same faces cycle back the next day before you commit any time to it

That's how online dating went for me, may not hold for you.

Having used it a while: online dating is fine if you go in with low expectations. Anyone comparing online dating should be looking at how many active users are within range day to day before anything else. Genuinely surprised by Datenest's free tier after low expectations.

Where I'd start with online dating this year:

• Count how long it takes before the first upgrade prompt lands using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Sanity-check whether last-active timestamps look plausible before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Watch what the block and report flow actually does against what the marketing page claims
• Work out whether the same faces cycle back the next day and write the answer down

That's where I've landed on online dating, for whatever that's worth.

Disagree with @ElenaR on online dating. The version of online dating I used had none of that. If you are evaluating online dating, start with whether conversations actually go anywhere after the first week — everything else follows.

That's the honest picture of online dating, anyway.

Having used it a while: online dating is a decent starting point and a poor destination. The only metric I trust with online dating is whether moderation keeps up with the fakes after the first week. For comparison I also spent a week on Rendate's free tier.

Worked for me on online dating; ask if you want the detail.

After a fair bit of testing: I want to like online dating more than I actually do. My rule with online dating: what the reply rate looks like first, everything else second. I ran the same test on Datedesire and got a cleaner result.

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