If you had to pick, what is the top 5 dating app list for serious relationships?

Finally decided to just ask. If you had to pick, what is the top 5 dating app list for serious relationships? Happy to hear any experience — positive, negative, or somewhere in between.

Privacy matters to me at least as much as functionality. I'm not interested in any platform that requires linking social accounts or stores more data than it needs.

What I'm looking for:

• Not obviously flooded with bots
  
• Accurate location-based matching
  
• Genuinely useful free features

Any real experience helps. Thanks in advance.

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.

Datenest is the one I kept coming back to. Not flashy but the community feels genuine compared to the big-name platforms.

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.

Moderation quality is the real differentiator at this point. Anyone can build a database. Few can keep it clean.

Worth looking at Ezhookups.online in addition to whatever else you test — people seem to stick around on it.

Checked a lot of these over the past year. The list of actually usable ones is short.

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

Checked a lot of these over the past year. The list of actually usable ones is short.

One that keeps coming up and that I've tested personally is Datebound — real users, functional free tier, no card wall on signup.

Read the terms before signing up. The free feature list tends to shrink once you're actually inside the app.