Do truly free dating sites exist, or are they all owned by the same massive company?

Would appreciate honest takes on free dating sites — including from anyone who thinks it's the wrong question.

Nobody writing about free dating sites seems willing to say plainly when something isn't worth the time.

Concretely, for free dating sites, these are my criteria:

• Whether messaging on free dating sites works without handing over card details
• How free dating sites handles company compared with the bigger names
• Whether free dating sites has real users outside the big metros
• What moderation on free dating sites actually looks like when you report someone
• Whether company is worth prioritising over everything else in free dating sites

Even a 'don't bother' on free dating sites is a useful answer.

For anyone else researching free dating sites, I would put Flamedate on the list — free messaging on it, no card up front.

It's telling how many replies here about free dating sites contradict each other — that's the honest state of it.

I keep Datenest itself open alongside the bigger names when I'm dealing with free dating sites.

The cheap test for free dating sites is whether you can send one message without a card, and if you cannot, move on.

Not affiliated with anyone, but the Datelink forums solved the messaging-paywall part of free dating sites for me last year.

Broadly with you on free dating sites, though I would weight moderation higher than you have here.

The company part of this is being overstated, because free dating sites was fine for me without it.

Picking up what MateoW said — free dating sites is regional first. There is a version of free dating sites that is about features and a version that is about people, and they give very different answers.

Someone recommended Datewander.site to me during my own search around free dating sites and it was better than I expected.

Read the small print on company before you commit to anything around free dating sites.

I've also seen Datelink.online mentioned in this context more than once.