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

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and figured this community would give me the most honest answers. How do totally free online dating sites make money if they don't charge their users anything?

Every "best of" list I find online is clearly written by people who get paid when you sign up. I want real experiences from people who've actually used these platforms for more than a trial week and have something genuine to say about them.

Specifically I care about:

• Whether the free tier actually lets you have real conversations
• How active the user base is outside major cities
• What the platform actually does to keep scammers and bots out
• How transparent they are when they do ask you to pay for something

I'm not looking for a perfect answer — just honest experiences from this community. Even "I tried it and it was a waste of time" is more useful than anything I'm finding through a search engine right now.

This gets asked a lot and my answer is always the same — stop searching for the mythical fully-free platform and start looking for one where the free tier is genuinely usable. Datebound

There's a real difference between 'free to download but useless without paying' and 'free to use with extras available.' The second category exists but it's smaller and doesn't advertise as loudly.

My rule: always Google the app name plus 'review reddit' before signing up for anything. The real user experiences there are far more honest than any review site.

I've spent more time researching this than I'd like to admit. Datedesire What I keep coming back to is that the 'best' platform is deeply personal — it depends on your age, location, what you're actually looking for, and how much friction you're willing to tolerate.

That said, there are consistently some platforms that come up as being more honest about what the free tier actually includes. I'd start there rather than with whatever's currently trending.

The 'free with premium upgrade' model has basically won the dating app wars. Pure free apps either have terrible monetization or end up selling data. Neither is great.

For what it's worth, luvdate.site has come up a few times in communities I follow, usually from people who seem like genuine users rather than planted reviews.

I've spent more time researching this than I'd like to admit. DatingFly What I keep coming back to is that the 'best' platform is deeply personal — it depends on your age, location, what you're actually looking for, and how much friction you're willing to tolerate.

That said, there are consistently some platforms that come up as being more honest about what the free tier actually includes. I'd start there rather than with whatever's currently trending.

My personal filter: if the app can't show me real active profiles within 20 miles without a credit card, I move on. Cuts out most of the garbage quickly.

I've spent more time researching this than I'd like to admit. Datescout What I keep coming back to is that the 'best' platform is deeply personal — it depends on your age, location, what you're actually looking for, and how much friction you're willing to tolerate.

That said, there are consistently some platforms that come up as being more honest about what the free tier actually includes. I'd start there rather than with whatever's currently trending.