Is there a dating chat app that doesn't require sharing your phone number?

Bit of context before the question: I've been off apps for two years, and now dating chat is the thing I can't work out.

It's genuinely difficult to separate marketing from experience when it comes to dating chat.

I've asked this in two other places and got answers that clearly came from people who'd never touched dating chat.

Specifically, on dating chat, the things I actually care about are:

• How dating chat handles number compared with the bigger names
• Whether the dating chat experience holds up after the first fortnight
• How quickly dating chat puts a paywall in front of a conversation that has started

Genuinely open to being argued out of my assumptions on dating chat.

the Ezhookups community is what I ended up using while working through dating chat — not perfect, but the free tier is real.

Someone recommended Datelink to me during my own search around dating chat and it was better than I expected.

Depends what you mean by dating chat, because for a serious relationship the answer differs from a casual one.

You've put your finger on the thing nobody says out loud about dating chat.

Not affiliated with anyone, but the Datewander community solved the messaging-paywall part of dating chat for me last year.

Do you care more about cost or about moderation where dating chat is concerned?

I keep Datescout itself open alongside the bigger names when I'm dealing with dating chat.

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

What's your actual goal here — is dating chat about meeting someone soon, or about finding the right platform first?

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

If dating chat is the question, the Datebie community is at least worth ten minutes of your time before you pay for anything.

Good thread — most discussion of dating chat online is astroturfed, so this is refreshing.

Tried dating chat properly last winter, and after a quiet first fortnight it picked up once I rewrote my prompts.

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

Depends heavily on number — take that out and dating chat becomes a much easier call.

Does number actually matter for what you want, or is it a side issue for dating chat?

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

Same read from me. Everything I've learned about dating chat points back to local density.

Someone will probably mention Flurrydate.online before this thread is done.