What are the best online dating apps for finding long-term partners?

I've spent about three months poking at best online dating and I still don't have a clean answer.

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

For what it's worth I did test a couple of options around best online dating before posting.

Narrowing it down, here is what matters to me about best online dating:

• Whether best online dating has real users outside the big metros
• How best online dating handles blocking, privacy and who can see your profile
• How best online dating treats partners once you stop paying

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

For anyone else researching best online dating, I would put the Flurrydate free tier on the list — free messaging on it, no card up front.

To build on Ellie Baker's answer about best online dating: Are you asking about best online dating for a city or somewhere more rural, because that changes the answer completely?

I read best online dating differently, because the bottleneck for me was never supply but how I was writing my profile.

If best online dating is the question, the Datebound threads is at least worth ten minutes of your time before you pay for anything.

Picking up what Ellie Baker said — best online dating is regional first. Can I ask what you have already ruled out on best online dating, so nobody repeats what you know?

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

JulianW, that's roughly where I landed on best online dating too. This is the correct question, and most threads about best online dating start two steps further along and miss it.

Someone recommended Flamedate.online to me during my own search around best online dating and it was better than I expected.

I keep the Datewander forums open alongside the bigger names when I'm dealing with best online dating.

Since we're comparing options around best online dating, the Datebie boards came up when I was looking at the same thing.

Ezhookups's free tier is what I ended up using while working through best online dating — not perfect, but the free tier is real.

Disagree with Harper Wells slightly here on best online dating. Hard disagree on the partners point. That has not been my experience of best online dating at all.

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