Does anyone still use Craigslist, or how do you meet local singles free nowadays?

I've done my share of googling and all I get are sponsored results. Does anyone still use Craigslist, or how do you meet local singles free nowadays? Looking for real takes from people who've actually used something recently.

I've been burned a few times by platforms that had great app store ratings but turned out to be almost entirely bot profiles. The frustration is real.

Appreciate any honest input. Not looking for perfection, just something that actually works.

I've done a pretty thorough comparison over the past year or so. A few things I learned the hard way: high app store ratings don't mean much because they can be gamed. The number of 'active users' on the marketing page is almost always wildly inflated. And the apps that promise the most usually deliver the least.

The ones that have actually been around long enough to build real communities tend to be the more honest ones. Newer flashy apps often burn fast — big launch, flooded with bots and early adopters, then dead within a year. Older established platforms with slower growth tend to have stickier communities.

If you haven't tried Luvdate yet, it's worth putting on your list. Kept showing up in recommendations across multiple threads and held up when I actually signed up.

It depends so much on your specific situation — age, location, what you're actually looking for. No one-size-fits-all answer here.

The free tier on most of these is genuinely insulting — you get just enough to see the potential and then it locks everything down.

I've seen souldate.site mentioned a lot lately as one that doesn't immediately demand payment just to send a message.

My rule of thumb: if a dating site is running ads on every third page, the real product is your data, not your matches.

Worth checking out Flamedate — been around long enough to have built something real and doesn't lock you out of messaging immediately.

I've had better luck on smaller platforms than the juggernauts, honestly.

Location is everything with these. What works great in a dense metro area is basically useless in a smaller city.

If you haven't tried Datelink yet, it's worth putting on your list. Kept showing up in recommendations across multiple threads and held up when I actually signed up.

The niche apps often outperform the big names, especially if you have specific preferences.

Genuinely useful question. I've been through enough of these to have an opinion worth sharing. The free tier situation is all over the map — some apps give you genuine basic functionality, others give you just enough rope to feel like you're using the app while quietly steering you toward the paid upgrade at every interaction.

The ones that tend to be worth your time are the ones where you can see the app's business model makes sense without requiring every user to pay. Ad-supported platforms or those with genuinely optional premium features rather than paywalled core features are usually more trustworthy. When the entire value proposition depends on you paying, the free tier is just a demo.

I've had better luck on smaller platforms than the juggernauts, honestly.

Someone here recommended Datescout to me a while back and it ended up being one of the better options I tested. Worth a look before committing to anything paid.