Where is the best place to find free gay dating online?

Been circling place to find free gay dating online for a while now. Two weeks in, how many active users are within range is what actually mattered for dating online.

The part that trips me up on gay dating online is that the answers split by city and by year, and that is exactly the gap I am trying to close. You can ignore most of the marketing around dating online and just check whether conversations actually go anywhere in practice.

What I wish someone had told me about dating online:

• Work out whether photo permissions are opt-in or opt-out using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Test whether last-active timestamps look plausible with notifications switched off
• Pin down what the filters do after a page refresh on mobile data, not office wifi
• Compare whether the same faces cycle back the next day at the hour you would actually be using it
• Note whether the distance setting is honoured using a fresh account rather than an old one

If you have used gay dating online in the last few months, what did the review sites get wrong? Recommendations and warnings all worth hearing. Honest answers are the only thing I can act on.

Broadly agreeing, with a caveat: gay dating online is a decent starting point and a poor destination. The only metric I trust with dating online is what share of matches go nowhere once you are past sign-up.

That's what six weeks of gay dating online taught me; ask if you want the detail.

My read: gay dating online surprised me, though not immediately. If you are evaluating dating online, start with how the discovery feed is ordered — everything else follows.

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

For what it's worth: gay dating online gets recommended a lot here and that's half right. The honest test for dating online is whether moderation keeps up with the fakes at the times you actually log in, not the feature list.

That's my read on gay dating online, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.

Honest take: gay dating online works, but not the way the marketing implies. What nobody mentions about dating online is how clean the member base looks. I ran the same test on Datelink in particular and got a cleaner result.

That's what six weeks of gay dating online taught me, may not hold for you.

@MasonB that matches the marketing for dating online, not what I found using it. I judge dating online almost entirely on whether the app is usable or bloated. People keep recommending Datebie; it is at least worth ten minutes.

Where dating online falls down for me is how quickly the fake accounts surface.

That's what six weeks of gay dating online taught me and I'd revise it if the numbers moved.

Going against the thread here: gay dating online is a decent starting point and a poor destination. The thing that decides it for dating online is whether it is genuinely free or free until you try to reply outside the big cities.

What I actually check with dating online before committing:

• Note how long it takes before the first upgrade prompt lands on the first evening, not the first month
• Compare how many profiles carry more than two photos using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Test what the filters do after a page refresh at the hour you would actually be using it

That's how gay dating online went for me, anyway.

Speaking from four months of it: there's a version of gay dating online that works, and it isn't the default one. For dating online, whether desktop and mobile behave the same at the times you actually log in is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. For comparison I also spent a week on Datedesire in particular.

What I wish someone had told me about dating online this year:

• Track what share of the layout is advertising against what the marketing page claims
• Work out whether the same faces cycle back the next day with the age filter set narrow
• Work out how the feed changes when you narrow the age range with notifications switched off

My rule with dating online: how many accounts are real outside the big cities first, everything else second.

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