Is Plenty of Fish Still Popular in the USA?

Plenty of Fish is still a working site and app, with free search, a swiping side called Meet Me, and paid tiers. Whether it is popular where you live is a different question, and no national number can answer it. We have no verified count of American users, so we will not quote one. The better move is a ten minute check of your own area.

We can say what the site does today. Search works at every membership level, free included, and filters by distance and age. Meet Me lets you like or pass on women one at a time. A mutual like becomes a Mutual Match, and a match gives you unlimited messaging.

We cannot tell you how many women use it in the United States, how that compares to Tinder, or whether it has grown or shrunk this year. Anyone who gives you a clean figure is guessing, and a guess about a whole country says nothing about your town.

Dating apps are local. An app can be busy in a big city and nearly empty an hour outside it. Two cities of the same size can feel completely different on the same app.

a dating coach's rule for choosing an app is that your results depend on whether the women on it are really looking to date. That describes the women you can reach, not a total on a press page. So the useful question is whether enough women near you are active and serious, and you can answer it yourself.

Plenty of Fish's Privacy Policy says an account closes automatically after two years of inactivity. That means a woman who left a year and a half ago can still be sitting in your search results, with a page that looks real and an inbox that never answers.

This changes how you read what you see. A long list does not prove the site is busy. Judge by signs of life instead: photos that look recent, a description that mentions something current, and women who answer within a day or two. A site with a hundred women near you and ten who answer is a quiet site.

Do this with a free account and no payment.

1. Set a distance you would honestly travel on a weeknight, and the age range you want.
2. Open search and scroll through the first thirty or so women.
3. For each, note whether the photos look recent and whether the page says something specific and current.
4. Like the ones you would be glad to hear from, and write to five of them with a short line about one detail on their page.
5. Check again the next day and the day after. Count how many liked you back or replied.

One more detail to know. Search widens its age and distance filters automatically to show you more people, so you may see women just outside what you set. That can make a thin area look busier than it is, so count only the women who truly fit.

If few women look active and nobody answers, you have learned something real and cheap. It may be a quiet area for this app, or it may be your lead photo or your first line. Change one of those and count again before you decide.

If a fair number answer, give it two honest weeks. Count likes sent, matches, replies and dates planned. Those four numbers are a better answer to the popularity question than any article, ours included.

Even if Plenty of Fish works for you, run a second app beside it. coach advises testing more than one, because each has its own algorithm and its own crowd. A man can do badly on one and well on another.

A second app also protects you from a quiet month. If Plenty of Fish is slow where you live, a free account on a bigger swipe app costs nothing and gives you somewhere else to put your attention.

Pay only after the free account has given you replies. My rule is that a paid tier multiplies what you already have. A man who gets likes and replies will get more of both. A man who gets none will get none to more people.

If you are matching and want to see who liked you, a short stretch of a paid tier is a fair experiment. Put the renewal date in your calendar, and compare your four numbers before you keep it. Where the free search shows you few real women, no tier will fix that.

Do not wait for a verdict before you move. Whatever app you use, answer your matches the same day, write first lines about one real detail from her page, and suggest a day and a place within a few messages. My range is about four to seven short messages, each with a purpose. That habit makes any app work better, popular or not.