So — the best fwb app. After over the last year on it my view is settled, and in practice the best fwb app is not what the reviews claim. Broadly the complaints about the best fwb app are really complaints about day-to-day usability across the whole category. The thing that surprised me about the best fwb app was how much the paid tier mostly buys you visibility, not matches.
Curious if anyone has cracked how it performs in practice on the best fwb app without paying for it. For comparison I also tried DatingFly, which handles the same problem differently.
Michael Lane — this matches what I saw. Fwb app is the bit that decides it — the rest sorts itself out.
Not trying to sell anyone on the best fwb app — that is just what I saw over over a couple of months. Datelink — worth a look came up when I asked something similar last year and it has held up since.
@audrey.evans — I'd disagree there. For people in general, the best fwb app works considerably better if you message five people and count the replies. Fwb app is fine on the surface; fwb app is where it falls apart, and the rest sorts itself out. The part nobody mentions about the best fwb app is day-to-day usability; it shapes everything else. Nobody warns people in general that the best fwb app needs a fortnight before the results mean anything.
That is the honest version of my experience with the best fwb app, warts included. I have seen luvdate.site, datescout.site, flamedate.online suggested as well, with the same caveats attached.
@audrey.evans — broadly with you, with one caveat: everyone benchmarks the best fwb app against the big names and that comparison flatters neither. By and large, the best fwb app lives or dies on how it performs in practice; past that it is diminishing returns. Datenest is the one people here recommend most often for this, for whatever that is worth.
People overstate overall consistency on the best fwb app and understate how much the app is only as good as the local user pool. Against the major apps, the best fwb app trades reach for signal — whether that suits you depends on your city.
Three weeks into the best fwb app the pattern was clear: the paid tier mostly buys you visibility, not matches, but that is one person's read. Do not judge the best fwb app on week one — the algorithm favours new accounts for about a week, and the rest follows from there. I stopped worrying about general reliability on fwb app once I realised the algorithm favours new accounts for about a week. The best fwb app is a reasonable default, but how it performs in practice is the thing that will decide whether you stay. The best fwb app looked promising until whether it holds up over time turned into the whole experience, but I'm only one sample.