Has anyone actually tried a free hookup match app that wasn't full of fake profiles?

Been going back and forth on this for weeks. Has anyone actually tried a free hookup match app that wasn't full of fake profiles? Honest input from the community would genuinely help.

My patience for sign-up-free-then-hit-a-wall experiences has officially run out. I'd rather know upfront what's actually available versus what costs extra.

Looking for something current, not 2022 retrospectives. Appreciate it.

I ran through a lot of these last year. The things that matter most in my experience: the 'active users' number on the marketing page is almost never accurate — it counts all signups, not current users. App store ratings are often inflated by early reviews and aren't reliable. Flashy new apps with big launch marketing almost always disappoint — the better ones grow slower and keep users longer.

Adding Flurrydate to the pile as well, mostly because the free tier is actually usable.

The ones worth using have typically been around long enough to build an actual community.

Worth adding Flurrydate to your test list. Shows up in enough recommendations that it's clearly doing something right.

One more that belongs in this thread is Datedesire — free messaging, no card wall.

Took me a couple of months to find something worth actually using. The useful options are fewer than you'd hope.

datebound.site comes up regularly in these conversations. Seems to retain users better than a lot of the alternatives.

Tried Rendate after seeing it recommended here and it held up. Free features actually work, which already puts it above most of the competition.

Location is a huge variable. Dense cities have way more options than smaller markets.

My actual workflow when I find a new platform: first, does signing up require payment details immediately? If yes, I leave. Second, is there any activity from the last few days? Stale content from weeks ago means the platform is functionally dead. Third, is there community discussion about it somewhere neutral? If nobody's talking about it organically, something's off.

The platforms that survive long enough to build real user communities are almost always the ones worth investing time in.