What Are the Best Dating Apps for Foreigners?

The best app is the one that local women your age use in the city where you live now. No ranking can tell you that, because which app is busy can differ from one country to the next and from one city to the next. Install Tinder, Hinge and Bumble, which are the three big names men usually start with, plus whatever app a local friend says people actually use, and keep the one that gets you matches and replies.

You are new, so you are guessing. Do not guess for long.

Ask two local friends, a coworker or a language teacher which app they and their friends use. If a woman is in that group, her answer is worth more than any list. Then open that app and look. If you see a few hundred women near you within a day or two, it is the right one. If you see a handful, move on.

a dating coach says the same thing in a general form. Each app has its own algorithm and its own mix of people, so test several and keep the one that answers. A foreigner has one extra reason to test. The mix of people in your new city may look nothing like the mix back home.

To her, a foreign man is interesting for about ten seconds and then he becomes a question. How long are you staying? Are you here for a girlfriend or for a season? Is this a local man's version of a holiday?

Answer the question before she asks it. Put three facts on your page: where you are from, why you are here, and how long you expect to stay. "Moved here for work, two years in, still finding the best noodle shops" tells her you live here. "Here for a month" tells her the opposite, and some women will still want to meet you. Either is fine. What costs you is making her guess.

If you speak a little of the local language, use it for one line and say you are learning. Women like effort, and it shows you are not treating the country as scenery.

If you do not, keep your English short and clear. Skip slang, skip jokes that depend on a pun, and skip sarcasm, which survives translation badly. A joke she has to translate in her head stops being a joke. A plain question about something she wrote works in any language.

This is the mistake men make most. A man writes to a woman in his new country and opens with how much he loves her country's women, or her accent, or how exotic she is. It reads as a type, not as her.

coach points out that some women will fetishize a man's background, most will not care, and a few will not like it, and that this is true of every background. The same is true in reverse. She is a person who happens to live where you are. Ask about something she wrote, like a place, a dish or a hobby, and let her country come up the way any other topic would.

My view is that an online profile is a supplement that works in the background while you do other things. That fits a foreigner well. You are in a new place with no friends and no obvious social circle, and the app is the quickest way to start meeting people.

Do not let it be your only plan. Join a language exchange, a sports league or a class, and say yes to the invitation that comes from a coworker. The women you meet that way have already seen you act like a normal person, and they are the ones who will tell you which app to use next.

A foreigner often has fewer evenings than a local does, and a woman can sense that. Once she has answered a few of your questions with real answers, suggest something small and public: a coffee on Saturday afternoon, a walk through a market, a drink near her neighborhood. Meet in a public place, tell a friend where you are, and let her choose the spot if she wants to.

Count your results after three or four weeks. If one app has produced conversations and the other has produced silence, keep the first.