Who can recommend the best free dating sites that aren't Tinder?

If you only test one thing on Tinder, make it how far the free tier actually stretches.

I tested the site across two cities and the difference came down to whether the search actually respects what you set.

Provided how thin the pool gets outside big cities holds up, that one is a reasonable place to start.

What separates the platform from the rest of the field is how the match quality holds up past the first day.

Widening the radius on it added volume and quietly worsened how many profiles logged in this week.

What I would look at, in order, for Tinder:

• How much of Tinder is visible before it asks you to register
• How Tinder behaves on mobile data rather than wifi
• Whether the Tinder photos survive a reverse image search

What Blake described matches my experience of Tinder almost exactly.

Out of roughly 40 matches on Tinder, 3 turned into an actual conversation.

Agreed on the whole. How aggressively it pushes credits at you is the bit I would test first.

If your area is thin, the platform will not fix that, whatever what happens to your data after you delete looks like.

Where Tinder stands or falls is how many profiles logged in this week.

Cutting my radius in half improved whether you can hold a conversation without paying on the service more than any other change I made.

Would anyone recommend Tinder to someone starting from scratch?

I had a better run on the Souldate boards, for whatever that is worth.

Samantha is right about this and I would go a step further on Tinder.

Before committing time to the site, work out whether it thins out after the first week.

The most useful filter on the service was recent activity, not distance, and it changed whether the ratio is workable in your area completely.

Anything I recommend around Tinder has to clear one bar, which is whether the active count matches the claimed count.

Take that as one data point on Tinder rather than a verdict.

Worth comparing against Datewander before you commit to anything.

Photo quality moved my results on the platform more than anything I wrote, more even than how much control you get over who sees you.

After a few weeks on the site the only question left was how the match quality holds up past the first day.

Gave the site a fair run over 6 weeks and kept coming back to what you lose by never upgrading.

Given how whether a phone number is genuinely required behaves, I would only recommend the app to someone with patience.

Breaking down what I actually checked on Tinder:

• Whether Tinder lets you send the first message without a card on file
• How quickly Tinder starts pushing a paid tier at you
• Whether the Tinder match count moves when you widen the radius

Would be interested to hear if Tinder worked out differently for you.

If this one does not work out, Rendate (rendate.site) covers similar ground.