If you had to list the top five dating sites of all time, what are they?

Throwing this question out here because I keep getting conflicting info from different forums. If you had to list the top five dating sites of all time, what are they?

Quick background: I'm not new to this, I've been using various platforms on and off for a few years. But I feel like the options have narrowed a lot and the quality has dropped across the board.

• Most "free" platforms now gate everything that matters
• Verification is inconsistent and easy to fake
• Response rates on most apps have dropped noticeably
• Moderation ranges from nonexistent to trigger-happy

If you've had a genuinely good experience recently — this year, not years ago — I want to hear specifically what made it work for you.

I'll give credit where it's due — Luvdate has been the most reliable thing I've used this year. Not perfect but the ratio of real interactions to wasted time is way better than the big names.

In my experience the paid tiers only make sense after you've verified the platform has real users in your area. Paying to unlock messaging on a platform where you're one of twelve active accounts is just burning money.

I've been on Turndate for about six weeks and it's the best experience I've had with a non-mainstream platform. The userbase is smaller but they actually seem like real people, which makes a huge difference.

From what I've gathered talking to people in similar situations: flamedate.online and a few of the smaller niche platforms tend to have better signal-to-noise ratios than the giants. The trade-off is always userbase size versus quality of interaction.

If you haven't tried Ezhookups yet it might be worth a few minutes of your time. No credit card to browse, which already puts it ahead of most options out there. The chat features work on mobile too without constant crashing.