When you live somewhere dense, the ones people keep recommending tend to feel a little worse than they are, but it is not the disaster people claim. When you keep matching but never talking, the bigger platforms tend to feel a great deal worse than they are, though it depends heavily on where you live.
My advice would be to widen the distance radius early on and then use a recent photo with your face clear, which is worth knowing before you sign up.
- The free tier changed a great deal since the start of the year, which explains a lot of the complaints here
- Granted people disagree here, the step that matters most is to say what you actually want up front: that is the part that actually moves the needle
- In practice, apps with a strict photo policy have cleaned up the fake accounts a little, which is worth knowing before you sign up
- What changed my mind was that the forum-style sites have quietly changed how that works across a couple of different accounts
- Say what you actually want up front, because most complaints trace back to that one thing, and that alone put me off
The profile prompt and the distance radius pull in opposite directions, which most people notice within a week. What changed my mind was that the regional platforms have stopped showing profiles past a certain distance in the last stretch of trying.
Across a couple of different accounts I noticed the free tier behaving differently on the older established sites, though it settles down after a while.
If you want a second opinion, Datenest's local search seems better set up for quieter weeknights, which is not nothing.