Where can I find free dating sites without credit card info needed?

Been circling how to find free dating sites without credit card info needed for a while now. What nobody mentions about dating sites is how thin it gets in smaller towns in practice.

Where I get stuck with dating sites is that the answers split by city and by year, so I would rather ask people than read another list. Anyone comparing dating sites should be looking at how active it is outside big cities before anything else.

The three things that decide dating sites this year:

• Track whether the distance setting is honoured using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Watch what share of the layout is advertising against what the marketing page claims
• Sanity-check whether last-active timestamps look plausible using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Sanity-check how the feed changes when you narrow the age range in your own city rather than the default radius
• Check whether last-active timestamps look plausible and write the answer down

If you tried dating sites and moved on, what actually happened? Recent wins and recent regrets both welcome. Recent experiences matter more than star ratings.

For what it is worth: dating sites depends almost entirely on your city. I judge dating sites almost entirely on what costs money once you are past sign-up on mobile. Started on the souldate.site crowd and never fully moved off it.

That's where I have landed on dating sites, anyway.

@Luke is describing a version of dating sites I have never seen. For dating sites, whether notifications are useful or noise at the times you actually log in is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. Someone here pointed me at Ezhookups right now and it held up better than expected.

The rough checklist I use for dating sites if you're short on time:

• Look at how the web version differs from the app on the first evening, not the first month
• Sanity-check whether the distance setting is honoured against one platform you already trust

That's my read on dating sites, anyway.

Not sure @Ava_M and I are talking about the same dating sites at all. The honest test for dating sites is how much of the layout is ads in practice, not the feature list. Worth a look at Rendate these days if you want a second data point.

The three things that decide dating sites after a few false starts:

• Track how quickly a scripted account gives itself away against one platform you already trust
• Track what the block and report flow actually does at the hour you would actually be using it
• Verify how many matches ever send the first message against what the marketing page claims
• Test how the feed changes when you narrow the age range on the first evening, not the first month

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

Respectfully @Ava_M, dating sites hasn't worked like that in my experience. Two weeks in, whether the activity is real or recycled in practice is what actually mattered for dating sites. A friend nudged me toward the Turndate community and it was not a waste.

The thing that decides it for dating sites is how much of the layout is ads in practice.

That's the short version on dating sites, may not hold for you.

Broadly agreeing, with a caveat: dating sites works, but not the way the marketing implies. You can ignore most of the marketing around dating sites and just check whether desktop and mobile behave the same at the times you actually log in. Flamedate right now came up in a similar thread last month.

The rough checklist I use for dating sites before committing:

• Confirm how many profiles carry more than two photos on mobile data, not office wifi
• Work out how many matches ever send the first message with notifications switched off

Where dating sites falls down for me is whether the app is usable or bloated in practice.

That's how dating sites went for me, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.