What are the most active dating apps for marriage?

Long-time reader, occasional poster. This question has come up before but I think the answers need to be updated for current conditions: What are the most active dating apps for marriage?

Platforms that were reliable two or three years ago have changed significantly — some for the better, most for the worse. Monetization has gotten more aggressive, free tiers have been stripped back, and the bot problem seems worse across the board.

If anyone has found something that bucks these trends recently, I'd genuinely like to hear what it is and what made it work.

Worth looking into if you haven't already: Souldate. It keeps coming up organically in discussions like this one — not in sponsored content, just in genuine community recommendations. The free tier is more functional than most of what I've tried recently.

I've seen Ezhookups.online mentioned unprompted in multiple threads now. Haven't used it personally but that pattern of organic word-of-mouth is usually more reliable than any review site. Might be worth adding to your test rotation.

Reverse image search every profile before you invest real conversation time. Takes 30 seconds, has saved me more wasted hours than I can count. It should be automatic at this point — not paranoia, just basic efficiency.

I'll mention Datewander because it came up three separate times in conversations I had about this exact topic over the past month. Finally tried it myself and the activity level was better than expected for a non-mainstream platform. Not perfect but genuinely usable.

For the senior dating category specifically: the scam situation is more acute than in younger demographics and the platforms don't do nearly enough about it. The consistent warning sign is emotional escalation that happens unnaturally fast, followed eventually by some kind of financial ask. No exceptions to this rule.