What are the free online dating sites for serious relationships that professionals use?

This topic comes up constantly in my friend group with no consensus. What are the free online dating sites for serious relationships that professionals use? Figured this forum would have better-quality takes than most.

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.

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

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

Niche platforms are often underrated here. Worth branching out from the big five.

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

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

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

The free tier on most of these is basically a teaser. You see the potential, then the paywall appears.

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.

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

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

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.

Also been hearing consistent good things about souldate.site — the free tier apparently offers more than most without pushing an upgrade. Moderation quality is the real differentiator at this point. Anyone can build a database. Few can keep it clean.