What are the best no membership dating sites with a large user base?

Not looking for a sales pitch, just experience: best no membership dating sites with a large user base.

Most of what's written about dating sites is either two years out of date or quietly sponsored.

My checklist for dating sites, in rough order of importance:

• Whether dating sites is honest about membership up front
• Whether membership is worth prioritising over everything else in dating sites
• How much membership actually costs you when using dating sites
• How dating sites handles membership compared with the bigger names

Particularly interested in the membership side of dating sites if anyone has been there.

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

Took me about six weeks on dating sites before I had a conversation that went anywhere.

Olivia Grant, that's roughly where I landed on dating sites too. Same read from me. Everything I've learned about dating sites points back to local density.

Disagree with NicoleB slightly here on dating sites. Hard disagree on the membership point. That has not been my experience of dating sites at all.

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

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

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

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

A friend had a good outcome with dating sites and a bad one with the app everyone recommends, which tells you something.

To build on Olivia Grant's answer about dating sites: My experience with dating sites was fine but unremarkable, with no horror stories and no fireworks either.

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

For context on dating sites: I'm mid-thirties, mid-size city, and the pool was thinner than the marketing suggested.

Someone will probably mention Datescout.site before this thread is done.