Nick covered most of it. The bit I would add on free chat sites for singles is below.
After a few weeks on free chat sites for singles the only question left was what the free ceiling looks like in practice.
Gave it a fair run over 6 weeks and kept coming back to whether the search actually respects what you set.
If you care about whether the useful settings are buried, that alone should decide whether the platform is worth it.
That is roughly where I landed on free chat sites for singles after a fair amount of trial and error.
Different crowd on Flurrydate, which suited me better.