How do totally free online dating sites make money if they don't charge their users anything?

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

I don't trust app store ratings on online dating sites — they're gamed in both directions.

The parts of online dating sites I'd want covered:

• What the money side of online dating sites looks like in practice
• How long online dating sites takes before a conversation goes anywhere at all
• How visible online dating sites keeps you when you are not paying for a boost

If you've actually used something relevant to online dating sites, I'd rather hear that than a recommendation you read somewhere.

Turndate.site is what I ended up using while working through online dating sites — not perfect, but the free tier is real.

My rule for online dating sites is one platform at a time, because running four at once made all of them worse.

Anything promising instant matches around online dating sites is worth treating with suspicion.

I keep the Flurrydate community open alongside the bigger names when I'm dealing with online dating sites.

Are you asking about online dating sites for a city or somewhere more rural, because that changes the answer completely?

Which parts of online dating sites have you already tested, so nobody here repeats it back to you?

I gave up on online dating sites twice before it worked, and the difference the third time was being far more specific in my bio.

Someone recommended the Datebound threads to me during my own search around online dating sites and it was better than I expected.

Worth noting that nobody in this thread has agreed on online dating sites yet, which is itself an answer.

Since we're comparing options around online dating sites, Datescout's free tier came up when I was looking at the same thing.

Bookmarking this, because threads like it on online dating sites are more use than any ranked list.