What are the top free dating apps that college students are using these days?

Curious what this board thinks about top free dating apps that college students are using these days. The thing that decides it for dating apps is what happens after you block someone after the first week.

What nobody agrees on with dating apps is how much depends on where you actually live. The honest test for dating apps is how thin it gets in smaller towns after the first week, not the feature list.

The rough checklist I use for dating apps before committing:

• Compare what the filters do after a page refresh before you commit any time to it
• Confirm whether photo permissions are opt-in or opt-out with notifications switched off
• Confirm how the web version differs from the app on the first evening, not the first month

If you gave up on dating apps, what would you do differently? Recent wins and recent regrets all equally useful. Firsthand accounts settle this better than anything else.

@Stella makes a good point, though I would qualify it — dating apps shifted a lot last year. I judge dating apps almost entirely on what you lose by never paying day to day. Datebie (datebie.online) solved about half of this for me.

That's my read on dating apps, and I would be glad to hear others found different.

Having used it a while: dating apps surprised me, though not immediately. If you are evaluating dating apps, start with how much of the traffic is automated day to day — everything else follows. Someone here pointed me at over on Rendate and it held up better than expected.

That's been my experience with dating apps and I would revise it if the numbers moved.

After a fair bit of testing: dating apps is a decent starting point and a poor destination. Anyone comparing dating apps should be looking at how much personal detail leaks by default in practice before anything else. Genuinely surprised by datewander.site after low expectations.

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

My read: dating apps is a decent starting point and a poor destination. For dating apps, what the free tier really covers on mobile is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. If you want a second opinion, luvdate.site is the one I'd try next.

Two weeks in, where the paywall actually sits in practice is what actually mattered for dating apps.

Worked for me on dating apps, for whatever that's worth.

Not the answer anyone wants: dating apps rewards patience and punishes everything else. My rule with dating apps: what the escalation path looks like after the first week first, everything else second. what Souldate is doing was the only one that did not gate replies.

That's how dating apps went for me — happy to be argued with.