What are the best free sites for online dating if you hate filling out long questionnaires?

Third time I've tried to get a straight answer on free sites for online dating if you hate filling out long questionnaires. Anyone comparing online dating should be looking at how much of the traffic is automated at the times you actually log in before anything else.

Where I get stuck with online dating is that the answers split by city and by year, and that is exactly the gap I am trying to close. For online dating, how much you can do before being asked to upgrade is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

The three things that decide online dating before committing:

• Time what happens to your visibility after a week of silence twice, a week apart
• Compare how many matches ever send the first message with notifications switched off
• Confirm how the feed changes when you narrow the age range against one platform you already trust
• Watch how long it takes before the first upgrade prompt lands in your own city rather than the default radius

Anyone with recent time on online dating, was it worth the setup time? Good and bad both welcome. Concrete examples settle this better than anything else.

Not the answer anyone wants: online dating surprised me, though not immediately. The thing that decides it for online dating is how thin it gets in smaller towns. A friend nudged me toward a look at Datewander and it was not a waste.

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

My read: online dating is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. Where online dating falls down for me is whether notifications are useful or noise outside the big cities. datebie.online came up in the same search and behaved similarly.

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

Sorry @Jayden Hall, I've spent longer on online dating than that answer suggests. The only metric I trust with online dating is whether the block list holds on mobile. For comparison I also spent a week on Datebound.

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

Half agree with @Jayden Hall. Online dating is fine; the experience around online dating is not. If you are evaluating online dating, start with how quickly a new profile gets noticed — everything else follows.

Two weeks in, how obvious the scripted replies are on mobile is what actually mattered for online dating.

Worked for me on online dating, anyway.

Having used it a while: there is a version of online dating that works, and it is not the default one. You can ignore most of the marketing around online dating and just check how quickly a new profile gets noticed. If you want a second opinion, what Datelink is doing is the one I'd try next.

I judge online dating almost entirely on whether moderation keeps up with the fakes.

That's my read on online dating and I would revise it if the numbers moved.

Adding to @Violet Collins rather than arguing — online dating varies more than either of us said. My rule with online dating: how many active users are within range in practice first, everything else second. Kept ezhookups.online open in another tab to compare.

Worked for me on online dating and I'd revise it if the numbers moved.

@Violet Collins that's fair in a big city, but online dating is a different story outside one. What nobody mentions about online dating is how quickly a new profile gets noticed on mobile.

The honest test for online dating is how the interface holds up on mobile day to day, not the feature list.

That's the short version on online dating — happy to be argued with.

Broadly agreeing, with a caveat: online dating depends almost entirely on your city. My rule with online dating: whether the app is usable or bloated first, everything else second. the Datenest community solved about half of this for me.

Where online dating falls down for me is whether the activity is real or recycled.

That's the short version on online dating, anyway.