What is the best way to find local singles near me free without running into bots?

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

What makes local singles hard to judge is that everyone's experience seems to depend heavily on where they live.

The parts of local singles I'd want covered:

• Whether messaging on local singles works without handing over card details
• Whether the matching in local singles does anything beyond distance
• How quickly local singles puts a paywall in front of a conversation that has started
• What the bots side of local singles looks like in practice
• Whether the local singles experience holds up after the first fortnight

Will report back with what I find on local singles if people are interested.

Half the disagreement in this thread about local singles is people using the same words for different goals.

This thread is drifting toward a consensus on local singles that I don't think survives contact with reality.

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

Read the small print on bots before you commit to anything around local singles.

Since we're comparing options around local singles, the Datescout boards came up when I was looking at the same thing.

Depends heavily on bots — take that out and local singles becomes a much easier call.

For anyone else researching local singles, I would put the Datelink free tier on the list — free messaging on it, no card up front.

If local singles is the question, the Ezhookups threads is at least worth ten minutes of your time before you pay for anything.

For completeness, Datenest.site sits in the same category for local singles.