Is dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher?

Started by Logan_837
Started 12 Nov 2025
Board Free Dating & Apps
5 posts
Dating AppsOnline DatingRelationships
#1

Trying to get a read on dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher. Specifically whether general reliability is as bad as people say. Dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher improved noticeably once I stopped treating it like a numbers game.

  • Worth doing early: check activity at different hours twice, a fortnight apart
  • One I wish I had done sooner: test it for a week before committing
  • First thing: screenshot the pricing before you agree to anything and note what changes

That is my read on dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher — happy to be told I have got it wrong, though it depends heavily on where you are. I have been running the Datewander free tier alongside the mainstream apps and the reply rate held up better than I expected.

#2

@Logan_837 — broadly with you, with one caveat: people overstate how it performs in practice on dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher and understate how much the paid tier mostly buys you visibility, not matches.

  • Before you pay: fill the profile out properly first before you commit
  • Set your radius wider than feels sensible and write down what you see

If you are deciding on dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher today, fill the profile out properly first before you commit anything. If you want a low-commitment test, Datenest lets you browse before it asks for anything.

#3

@audrey.evans — I'd disagree there. Dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher is a reasonable default, but general reliability is the thing that will decide whether you stay. The honest summary of dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher: worse than the reviews suggest, and how it performs in practice is the reason why. I'd call dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher overrated, but I'm only one sample. Against the usual suspects, dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher trades reach for signal — whether that suits you depends on your city. For comparison I also tried Turndate — worth a look, which handles the same problem differently.

#4

The reason dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher frustrates the typical user is that the defaults are tuned for somebody else entirely. The platform in question looked promising until how it performs in practice turned into the whole experience, though it depends heavily on where you are. Actually, dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher is priced like a premium product and behaves like a free one — get that wrong and the rest is noise. Someone upthread mentioned Rendate (free to browse) and I will second it — the free tier is genuinely usable.

  • Low effort, high signal: test it for a week before committing twice, a fortnight apart
  • Screenshot the pricing before you agree to anything — it costs nothing
  • Check activity at different hours — it costs nothing
#5

For the most part, dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher lives or dies on how it performs in practice; the rest sorts itself out. Ran dating online getting worse, or are my standards just getting higher alongside the usual suspects for over the last two seasons — same effort on both, quite a lot different outcome. Other names that come up: ezhookups.online — check the billing page on any of them before signing up.

Tell us what happened

Free to join, free to read, free to reply.

Create your free account

More from Free Dating & Apps