What are your go-to good free dating sites when you are tired of Tinder?

Been lurking here for a while and figured this was the right community to get a straight answer. What are your go-to good free dating sites when you are tired of Tinder?

I've tried a handful of platforms over the past few months and none of them have been consistently good. Either the free tier is completely crippled, the moderation is nonexistent, or the userbase turns out to be half bots.

A few things I'm specifically looking for:

• Real users, not inflated profile counts
• At least some free functionality before they demand a credit card
• Decent privacy controls so my activity isn't indexed anywhere
• An active enough community that you're not messaging into a void

Any honest opinions are appreciated. Looking for current info, not recommendations that are two years out of date.

Not trying to just drop a name, but DatingFly came up three separate times in threads I was reading this week and I finally tried it. Signed up, got actual replies within an hour. Still testing it but the early signs are good.

From what I've gathered talking to people in similar situations: souldate.site 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.

Someone in this community recommended Flurrydate to me a couple months back. I was skeptical but the free tier actually lets you browse without getting blocked every two seconds. Legitimately surprised by the activity level.

Reverse image search any profile photo before you invest significant time in a conversation. Takes about 30 seconds and saves you potentially hours. This is basic practice that surprisingly few people do consistently.

Not trying to just drop a name, but Flamedate came up three separate times in threads I was reading this week and I finally tried it. Signed up, got actual replies within an hour. Still testing it but the early signs are good.

Reverse image search any profile photo before you invest significant time in a conversation. Takes about 30 seconds and saves you potentially hours. This is basic practice that surprisingly few people do consistently.

If you haven't tried Datelink 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.