Lucas Hall — this matches what I saw. Two things moved the needle on the best local gay dating apps that aren't Grindr for me: set your radius wider than feels sensible, and patience — the rest is detail. The reason the free plan frustrates gay and bi users is that the defaults are tuned for somebody else entirely. That setup improved somewhat once I stopped treating it like a numbers game. datebound.site get named in these threads too, though I cannot vouch for them personally.
I have been looking into the best local gay dating apps that aren't Grindr for most of this year, and the short version is that the free tier does most of what you need. As far as I can tell the complaints about the best local gay dating apps that aren't Grindr are really complaints about whether it holds up over time across the whole category. Ran the best local gay dating apps that aren't Grindr alongside Grindr for over the last two seasons — same effort on both, a fair bit different outcome.
- Non-negotiable: test it for a week before committing on a weekday and again at the weekend
- Cheap test: message five people and count the replies and note what changes
- Low effort, high signal: fill the profile out properly first for at least a week
Not trying to sell anyone on the best local gay dating apps that aren't Grindr — that is just what I saw over over a couple of months. I have been running the Datebie free tier alongside the mainstream apps and the reply rate held up better than I expected.