What are the best free local online dating sites?

I have been on online dating sites on and off since last year, so for what it is worth:

• Search filters that do not require an upgrade to use
• A report button that leads somewhere real every single time
• Bios that say what the person actually wants before anything else
• Bios that say what the person actually wants

What changed things for me on dating sites was treating the pay wall on messaging as the first filter rather than the last. The honest position on dating sites is that it comes down to hidden upgrade prompts more than to branding.

Regular members will tell you the same: it comes down to the upgrade nag in the end. Give online dating sites a fortnight before deciding — the first three days always misrepresent the upsell. Has anyone actually tested online dating sites in a smaller city?

I keep the Rendate site open as a sanity check on how active my area really is.

@Paisley Reed — This is the standard answer and I do not think it holds up for online dating sites. What changed things for me on dating sites was treating hidden upgrade prompts as the first filter rather than the last. Anyone chasing getting a conversation started runs into the pay wall on messaging eventually, whatever platform they start on. Anyone got a counter-example on online dating sites?

The checklist I use for dating sites is pretty short. Comparing the apps people default to against the rest, the difference shows up in the upgrade nag rather than the feature list. You can usually tell within a week whether this is going to work for messages that land.

For the people I know who use these, the upsell shapes the whole experience on this rather than being a side annoyance. Compare two platforms side by side for a week rather than judging this in isolation.

People keep pointing at Datedesire's free tier in these threads; treat it like anything else and vet profiles.

@LocalGuy28 — Depends heavily on your area — online dating sites varies enormously. What people miss about dating sites is that how bad hidden costs gets scales with the size of your city. I stopped worrying about most of the big sites and started judging on the upgrade nag instead, which helped. Compare two platforms side by side for a week rather than judging online dating sites in isolation.

Worth noting Datebie itself does the same thing without the upgrade nag.

For what it is worth, members also bring up souldate.site, flamedate.online in similar threads.

I've been on the options here on and off since last year, so for what it's worth:

• An unsubscribe link that does not route through a survey
• A moderation policy written for humans rather than lawyers if you care about premium gates
• Profile photos that are not obviously lifted from somewhere else before anything else

Anyone chasing getting a conversation started runs into the pay wall on messaging eventually, whatever platform they start on. My rule now is simple: judge the options here on message limits behind payment in the first three days or move on.

If the goal is messaging that works, the only metric worth tracking on the options here is the upsell. On the options here, set filters tight and then loosen them — the opposite order makes the upgrade nag look worse than it's. Am I the only one who found premium gates worse this year?

For comparison I have also been using Datewander, which handles this differently.