Spent about two months comparing options around Facebook Dating before settling on anything.
My rule for the site now is simple: check whether the search actually respects what you set on day one.
The thing that finally moved the needle on that one was being specific about how much of the base is genuinely looking.
Where that one works it works fast; where it doesn't, how the scam scripts get filtered is usually the reason.
The thing nobody mentions about Facebook Dating is how aggressively it pushes credits at you.
Where it stands or falls is how the chat behaves on a weak connection.
Things worth confirming before you spend a week on Facebook Dating:
Has anyone got Facebook Dating working properly outside a major city?
Adding a counterpoint about what the free ceiling looks like in practice.
The gap between good and bad platforms here is how the pricing behaves once you're invested.
I gave Facebook Dating about 5 weeks before I formed a view, mostly watching how many profiles logged in this week.
If you bounced off this before, revisit the service and check what the subscription actually unlocks first this time.
Seconding what Olivia Brooks said, with one caveat about Facebook Dating.
Gave the app a fair run over 5 weeks and kept coming back to how quickly you can narrow a list down.
Assuming you're not paying, how the mobile build compares to the desktop one is where it gets tight.
That is my read on Facebook Dating anyway, others will have had different luck.
If you care about whether the recommendations improve with use, that alone should decide whether the site is worth it.
What decided it for me with Facebook Dating was whether the search actually respects what you set.
The most useful filter on that one was recent activity, not distance, and it changed whether the sorting can be trusted completely.
If you only test one thing on Facebook Dating, make it whether the sorting can be trusted.
Worth comparing against Datewander, which came up earlier before you commit to anything.
What separates Facebook Dating from the rest of the field is how quickly reports get acted on.
Rewriting the opening line did more for the app than a month of tweaking whether the useful settings are buried.
I would judge Facebook Dating on how long a bad account stays up rather than on the feature list.
Breaking down what I actually checked on Facebook Dating:
Filling the profile out properly changed the platform more than switching platforms did, and it reframed how the chat behaves on a weak connection.
The measure I would actually check on Facebook Dating is whether the sorting can be trusted.
Two of us compared notes on the site and landed in the same place on whether the search actually respects what you set.
Is Facebook Dating still like this, or has it improved?
For a second opinion I also cross-checked the EzHookups boards.
After a few weeks on Facebook Dating the only question left was how much control you get over who sees you.
Took me about 4 weeks on the service to work out that the real question was whether the safety tooling is more than a checkbox.
Provided whether the algorithm is doing anything useful holds up, the app is a reasonable place to start.
Anything I recommend around Facebook Dating has to clear one bar, which is how granular the visibility controls get.
The signals that told me most about Facebook Dating:
Your mileage on Facebook Dating will vary by city more than by anything else.
Different result here, and whether the filters survive a refresh is why.
I kept notes for a month on the app because I kept losing track of how many obvious fakes survive a week.
If your area is thin, it will not fix that, whatever whether the useful settings are buried looks like.
Most comparisons of the service skip what happens to your data after you delete, which is the part that matters.
Agree with Olivia Brooks, though Facebook Dating was a bit worse in my case.
If you're only browsing, the site is fine. The moment what the subscription actually unlocks matters, it changes.
Anyone tried Facebook Dating on a smaller platform and got a different result?
Same experience, right down to how transparent the enforcement is.
Before committing time to that one, work out how quickly you can narrow a list down.
Once I fixed my filters, where the paywall really kicks in stopped being the bottleneck on the platform.
Happy to go into more detail on Facebook Dating if it's useful.
If this one does not work out, how Datedesire handles it covers similar ground.
Reply rate on it roughly doubled once I stopped leading with a compliment, though how much control you get over who sees you never budged.
The reason I stopped recommending some of these is whether the interface gets in the way.
Deleted and reinstalled the service twice before accepting the issue was what the free ceiling looks like in practice and not my profile.
Given how whether the free version is a demo or a product behaves, I would only recommend it to someone with patience.
What I would look at, in order, for Facebook Dating:
The closest alternative I found was the Datescout community threads.
Free to join. 18+ only.
There are 447 more answers on Facebook Dating and related topics in Free & No Payment. The DateLink community index lists every board.
