Is the Mutual Dating App Free?

Yes. Mutual says downloading the app, building your page, browsing, matching and messaging are all free. Messaging after you match is unlimited and free for everyone. Premium is optional and adds extras, mostly around seeing who likes you and sending more likes. You can run Mutual without paying anything.

Mutual lists five things as free: downloading the app, building a page, browsing, matching and messaging. That covers the whole path from seeing a woman to talking with her.

The one that matters most is the last. Once you match, the conversation costs nothing and has no cap. That is worth noting, because not every app works that way.

According to Mutual's FAQ, Premium is optional and includes:

• See Who Likes Me.
• Unlimited likes.
• More filters, including height.
• Ward Hop, which lets you browse profiles in another location.
• Profile Boost.
• Daily Notes.
• Unlimited Double Takes.
• Privacy Mode.
• Read receipts.

Some of that is useful. Some of it is convenience. Seeing who likes you saves you from guessing. Extra filters narrow the pool. Read receipts tell you whether she opened your message. That is information, but it is rarely good information to stew over.

The clearest gap is See Who Likes Me. On the free version you cannot see the women who already like you, so you find them only when they come up in your own browsing.

The other gaps are volume and reach. Premium lifts the limit on likes, adds more filters and lets you browse another location. None of it changes whether a woman wants to talk to you once she sees your page.

A Note lets you send one message to a woman before you match. Free members get fewer Notes than Premium members, and Notes do not stack, so an unused Note does not pile up for later.

Treat a Note as the one chance to be read by a woman who has not yet decided about you. Waste it on "hey" and you spent a scarce thing on nothing. Use it on one real detail from her page, said in a way she can answer in a line.

Mutual says plans range from a short stretch to several months. This page leaves the prices out, because they change, and the price screen in the app is the only place to read the right one on the day you decide. Read that screen before you tap anything, so you know what a plan costs and how long it runs.

Billing runs through the app store. That has one consequence worth knowing: a Mutual subscription has to be cancelled through the App Store or Google Play. Deleting the app does not cancel it. Men get charged again because they assumed deleting the app was the same as quitting.

Decide it with a week of free use, not on day one.

Count what happens on the free version. How many women do you like, how many like you back, and how many of those turn into a conversation? If you are running out of likes while real conversations are happening, the limit is your bottleneck and Premium may help. If your likes are not turning into matches, or your matches are not turning into replies, more likes will only give you more of the same result.

a dating coach describes online dating as a chain of ratios multiplied together: matches, replies, phone numbers, dates. A paid feature lifts one link in the chain. If another link is near zero, the whole result stays near zero. He also says not to expect to win for free while other men pay to be seen, and not to spend blindly either: try each paid thing and see whether it moves your results.

Put a clear daylight photo first, then two or three photos of real days in different clothes. Write a few specific lines about what you do and what you want.

Like only the women you would be glad to hear from. a dating coach says a lot of apps read a selective man as one worth showing, and may show him better matches in return. Write to each match within a day, with one detail from her page and a question, and keep it short. My advice is to spend a minute or less on a first message, because many of the women you write to will never see it. Move the conversation toward a plan quickly.

Do those things well on the free version and you will know whether the app has women for you. Paying afterward makes sense only if it does.