What is the best free video dating app for people who hate texting back and forth?

Posting here because I can't find a real answer anywhere else. What is the best free video dating app for people who hate texting back and forth? Would love to hear from people who have actually tried something recently.

The reviews I keep finding are either years old or clearly paid placements. At this point I trust community posts more than any publication.

Specifics are welcome. The more detail the better.

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

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

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.

Mid-tier platforms often hit the right balance — enough users to be useful, small enough to actually moderate.

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

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

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

Worth looking at datebound.site in addition to whatever else you test — people seem to stick around on it. Took me a couple of months to find something worth actually using. The useful options are fewer than you'd hope.

datedesire.online comes up regularly in these conversations. Seems to retain users better than a lot of the alternatives. Checked a lot of these over the past year. The list of actually usable ones is short.

Been there. The search took longer than it should have but something usable does exist.

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