Dating sites: which to choose, free or paid?

Affection.org in detail: how it works, audio and video chat, history and outside reviews →

Four families of platform

There are hundreds of apps and perhaps four real designs. Knowing which family you are dealing with tells you more than any review, because it predicts who you will meet, how much you will pay, and how the conversation will start.

Swipe apps

A photo, a few lines, a gesture left or right, and a conversation that opens only if both sides said yes. Tinder invented the format, Bumble added the rule that the woman writes first in heterosexual matches, Hinge built its profiles around prompts to make the first message easier to write.

Volume is their strength and their weakness: you see a great many people quickly, and the selection rests almost entirely on the photograph. They are free to use with paid tiers that sell visibility — boosts, super-likes, seeing who liked you. Best suited to dense urban areas; below a certain population the pool empties in a week.

Subscription generalists

Match, eharmony and their equivalents work the other way round: browsing and receiving messages is free, but replying requires a paid subscription. The population skews older and states its intentions more openly — a relationship rather than an evening.

Two things to check before paying. The advertised monthly price almost always assumes a six- or twelve-month commitment paid up front; the true monthly cost is higher. And the subscription renews automatically: see what you sign when you pay online before you subscribe, not after.

Questionnaire matchmakers

A long personality questionnaire, then a limited number of suggested profiles rather than an endless list. eharmony built the model; several national platforms follow it. The claim is a scientific compatibility score.

Be clear about what the evidence supports. Questionnaires are good at filtering out obvious incompatibilities — you want children and the other person does not — and poor at predicting attraction, which no published algorithm has managed to forecast. What you are buying is a shorter list and less fatigue, not a guarantee.

Community apps

Platforms built around a shared identity: Grindr and HER for gay, bisexual and queer users, apps organised around a religion, a language or a diaspora. The advantage is obvious — you skip the explaining. The risks are specific too: in countries where homosexuality is prosecuted, these apps are used for entrapment, and profile data has been leaked more than once. See personal data and sexual orientations.

Free or paid: what "free" actually means

Nearly every dating site calls itself free, and nearly every one of them lives on what its members pay. The word covers three different arrangements, and it is worth knowing which one you have signed up to before you write a single line of profile.

• Free to join, paid to message. Match, eharmony and the questionnaire sites work this way: the profile, the browsing and the incoming messages cost nothing, but replying needs a subscription. The free tier is the shop window; the service starts at the till.
• Free to use, paid for visibility. Tinder, Bumble and Hinge can be used without paying, within daily limits. The subscription sells what the free version withholds: seeing who liked you, being shown more often, writing before the match. You can stay free indefinitely, but the design is built to make the limit felt.
• Credits and one-off purchases. A boost, a super-like, a bundle of "roses" or tokens at £2 to £18 a pack. These add up quickly, and because they are not subscriptions there is nothing to refund once they are spent.

Subscriptions almost always renew automatically: at the end of the month or the six-month term the payment goes out again until you cancel. Three lines to read before paying: the commitment period, the renewal price (often higher than the introductory one) and the exact route to cancel. In the UK the Consumer Rights Act and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 require subscription traps to be avoidable and cancellation to be straightforward; see what you sign when you pay online.

Genuinely free sites do exist. The model is the one used by Affection.org, described on its own page: writing and receiving cost nothing, and the optional subscription adds convenience rather than access. The test is one question: can you hold a complete conversation without taking out a card?

What it costs in 2026

Platforms rarely show their prices before you register, and many vary them by age, by term, by channel (website, iPhone, Android) and above all by the country of the store: the same subscription is not priced the same on the UK App Store or Google Play as on the US one. The ranges below are those listed on the App Store pages on 12 October 2026; the website or Android price can differ by a few pounds or dollars.

Prices observed in the United Kingdom, in pounds, October 2026

Prices observed in the United States, in US dollars, October 2026

Ranges observed in October 2026 on each country's App Store; check before you subscribe. Prices change often, depend on the store country and the term, and an introductory offer is not the renewal price.

Two ways to read this table. First, the "from" monthly price almost always assumes six months paid up front; month by month you pay two to three times more. Second, none of these prices buys a result: a subscription makes you visible, it does not make you interesting. The profile and the first messages matter more, and they cost nothing.

A serious dating site: 7 things you can check

"Serious" is the most searched word and the least defined. It has nothing to do with the look of the site or the price of the subscription. Here are seven points you can verify yourself, before registering, in ten minutes.

• Moderation before publication. Are profiles and photos looked at by someone before they appear? A validation delay is a good sign: it stops fake profiles at the door rather than after a complaint.
• Readable cancellation terms. Term, renewal, renewal price and the cancellation button should be findable without searching. If the terms page cannot be found or is in another language, walk away.
• A written commitment against fake profiles and "animation". Some platforms promise in their terms never to create fictitious profiles or employ people to write messages; others mention "animated profiles" in small print. Search the terms for the word.
• Report and block in one tap. Every profile and every message should carry a button to report and one to block, and the site should say what it does with a report.
• Photo verification. Comparing a live selfie with the profile photos, offered by most large apps, guarantees nothing but discourages impersonation; an easy-to-obtain "verified" badge is better than none.
• Personal data under your control. Where is the data held, what happens to it after the account is closed, can you delete it in one click? UK GDPR gives you these rights; a serious site makes them easy to use. See your rights over your data.
• A customer service you can reach. A postal address, a named company, a form that gets an answer signed by a person: that is how you recognise a publisher who will still answer on the day there is a dispute or a scam. Read romance scams: spotting them, reacting and reporting.

How to choose, concretely

• Start with your own situation, not the app. A large city and a rural county do not have the same answer; nor do twenty-five and fifty-five.
• Use the free tier for two weeks. If nothing happens in two weeks on a platform where the pool is real, paying will not change it.
• Pay monthly the first time, even though it costs more per month. Commit for a year only to something you have already used.
• Note the cancellation route on the day you subscribe. It is rarely where you expect it, and a cancellation made one day late costs a full period.
• Judge a platform by its moderation, not its advertising: how a report is handled, how fast a fake profile disappears, whether a human ever answers.

And away from the apps

Most couples still meet through work, friends, study, a shared activity or a neighbourhood. Apps have grown enormously but they have not replaced any of that — they added a channel for people whose daily circle had stopped producing new faces. If yours still does, the app is optional.

Whichever channel you use, the next steps are the same: writing a profile and the first messages, then the first meeting.

Trans and gay dating

The apps for gay men (Grindr, Scruff, Hornet, Romeo), for lesbian and bi women (HER, Lex, Zoe) and for trans people and those seeking them (Fiorry, Butterfly, Taimi, MyTransgenderDate), the filters of Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid, the specific risks — sextortion, ambushes, fetishisation — and the list of countries where opening these apps is dangerous have their own page: Trans and gay dating: the sites and apps, and the countries where they are a trap.

Frequent questions