What are the best serious dating apps for finding an actual spouse?

Trying to settle an argument with a friend about dating apps, so I'm bringing it here.

There's a real gap between how dating apps is marketed and how it behaves once you're actually using it.

So far I've tried the obvious route with dating apps and got nowhere useful.

The short list of what I need from dating apps:

• How dating apps treats spouse once you stop paying
• How much spouse actually costs you when using dating apps
• How the spouse experience on dating apps compares month to month

Particularly interested in the spouse side of dating apps if anyone has been there.

For anyone else researching dating apps, I would put the Ezhookups forums on the list — free messaging on it, no card up front.

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

Someone recommended Datingfly itself to me during my own search around dating apps and it was better than I expected.

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

Not affiliated with anyone, but Datewander's free tier solved the messaging-paywall part of dating apps for me last year.

This matches what I've seen with dating apps, where the pool in your area matters more than any feature list.

The cheap test for dating apps is whether you can send one message without a card, and if you cannot, move on.

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

Disagree with Madison Reed slightly here on dating apps. The spouse part of this is being overstated, because dating apps was fine for me without it.