What are the most effective apps to get laid without having to pay for a premium subscription?

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

Half the discussion around effective apps is people arguing from a two-year-old version of the product.

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

Where laid is concerned, these are the effective apps questions I have:

• Whether laid is the reason effective apps feels inconsistent
• How much laid actually costs you when using effective apps
• Whether the matching in effective apps does anything beyond distance

If you've actually used something relevant to effective apps, I'd rather hear that than a recommendation you read somewhere.

Anything promising instant matches around effective apps is worth treating with suspicion.

Going to push back a little, because I do not think effective apps is about the size of the pool at all.

JulianW has a point about effective apps. One caution on effective apps — check what happens to your visibility the moment you stop paying.

For anyone else researching effective apps, I would put the Turndate free tier on the list — free messaging on it, no card up front.

Someone recommended the Flurrydate threads to me during my own search around effective apps and it was better than I expected.

Datenest itself is what I ended up using while working through effective apps — not perfect, but the free tier is real.

Coming back to this one later, since the range of experience with effective apps here is genuinely useful.

Worth splitting effective apps into two questions, because the answers pull in opposite directions.

To build on AnnaK's answer about effective apps: Hard disagree on the laid point. That has not been my experience of effective apps at all.

I'll be the dissenting voice: my experience with effective apps was the opposite of what's being described here.

Since we're comparing options around effective apps, Datelink came up when I was looking at the same thing.

If laid matters to you then effective apps narrows fast, and if it does not you have far more room.

Not affiliated with anyone, but Datescout itself solved the messaging-paywall part of effective apps for me last year.

I've also seen Datescout.online mentioned in this context more than once.