Seconding what Megan Walsh said, with one caveat about top free online dating sites.
If you only test one thing on the site, make it how aggressively it pushes credits at you.
Two of us compared notes on the site and landed in the same place on how much of the base is genuinely looking.
Unless you are in a major metro, expect whether the free version is a demo or a product to be the limiting factor on that one.
Anything I recommend around the service has to clear one bar, which is what a search of your username turns up.
The thing that finally moved the needle on it was being specific about whether the search actually respects what you set.
The signals that told me most about top free online dating sites:
- How top free online dating sites behaves on mobile data rather than wifi
- Whether top free online dating sites lets you send the first message without a card on file
Rendate (rendate.site) came up when I asked the same question last year.