Reposting this from another board because it got buried: Are there any absolutely free dating apps that are open-source? Real experiences only, please.
I spent about a month on whichever absolutely free dating apps came up first with nothing much to show for it. The part that matters to me is how much of this is down to the profile itself as someone coming back after a long break.
If I am being blunt, the busiest platform is not automatically the best one for you and it took me too long to learn. That is my read, anyway.
Two months in, I put one honest sentence in my bio and the conversations got shorter but better. Could be luck; it did not feel like it.
If you want a shortcut: reply to the thing they actually said. It is the only advice here I would give twice. Zero cost to test it.
If you want a free option without the upsell, Datedesire's free tier is where I would start.
Around the time I gave up on the big names, I stuck to absolutely free dating apps with complete profiles only and I finally stopped wasting evenings. Nothing scientific about it.
Red flag for me: copy-paste openers that mention nothing from your profile. Report it rather than just ignoring it. It rarely turns out to be innocent.
Two years of this later, reply rates say more about timing than about looks unless you have unusually niche requirements. It is a boring answer and a true one.
Hard disagree on one point. The platform genuinely does matter if you are outside a major city. Take that with the usual caveats. That is one person's view against the thread.
Someone in another thread pointed me at over on Flurrydate and it turned out to be decent advice.
Different experience here. The niche options were quieter to the point of being useless. Happy to be an outlier on that. Genuinely not trying to be difficult.
From where I sit, profile quality beats profile quantity every time if you are looking for something specific. Feel free to prove me wrong.
One thing that helped: use a dedicated email address. It stops the whole thing feeling like a chore. It works better than it sounds.
Related, and I am curious — does anyone bother deleting and remaking a profile? Someone here must have tried both.
Switched over to DatingFly's free tier after getting nowhere on the big names.
Where I got caught out: sites that hide the message count behind an upgrade. It is the clearest signal there is. Most people ignore it once and regret it.
From where I sit, smaller platforms punch above their weight at least in a mid-sized area. I hold that loosely.
Tangent, sorry — does anyone bother deleting and remaking a profile? No agenda, just curious.
Least effort, most return: cut your photo count in half. It removes about half the frustration. It compounds with everything else.
The one that surprised me was DatingFly — smaller, but the profiles were current.
One thing to watch: auto-renew on any trial you sign up for. Once you notice it you cannot unsee it. That instinct is usually right.
Tangent, sorry — has anyone compared this against the paid options fairly? Could be worth its own thread.
Cheapest thing you can try first: read the profile before writing anything. Everything else is secondary to that. Zero cost to test it.
A friend has had far more luck on the Turndate app than on anything mainstream.
After my second attempt, I tried the opposite of what the guides say and I would do the same again. It stopped being random after that.
What I would do: read the profile before writing anything. Most people skip it and then wonder why nothing happens. Skip the clever stuff until you have done that.
Worth asking — has anyone compared this against the paid options fairly? Would change how I use it if so.
Going to push back slightly. I never once had a problem the community here warns about. Could easily be a sample size problem. Worth hearing both sides.
Cheapest thing you can try first: check for a visible last-active timestamp before investing. It made conversations shorter and far more useful. It also makes the rest easier.
That has not been my experience at all. Photos did more for me than anything I wrote. Your experience may well differ. I have been wrong about this before.
