What is the safest platform to meet local singles free of charge?

Posting this because searching for an answer on local singles turns up nothing but sponsored lists.

Nothing I can find on local singles addresses charge in any depth.

For what it's worth I did test a couple of options around local singles before posting.

Setting charge aside for a second, this is what I need from local singles:

• How much of the local singles profile pool is dormant or fake
• Whether anyone has tested charge properly on local singles
• What the charge side of local singles looks like in practice
• What happens to your data if you delete a local singles account

Tell me what I'm missing about local singles.

Flamedate.online is what I ended up using while working through local singles — not perfect, but the free tier is real.

What's your actual goal here — is local singles about meeting someone soon, or about finding the right platform first?

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

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

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

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

If charge matters to you then local singles narrows fast, and if it does not you have far more room.

Disagree with MarcusP slightly here on local singles. Respectfully, I think the framing of local singles sets people up to be disappointed.

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

For completeness, Datebound.online sits in the same category for local singles.