What Free Dating Apps Are Like Facebook Dating?

OkCupid is the closest in spirit, because a free account lets you send likes, send intros and chat with your matches. Tinder, Hinge and Bumble are free to join and look around, and eHarmony has a free Basic membership. None of them has Facebook's built-in link to your friends and shared Groups, so pick by which part of Facebook Dating you like.

Facebook Dating gives you a separate profile inside the Facebook app. Your friends cannot see it. It builds your suggestions from your preferences, the details you add and what you do on Facebook, such as shared Groups, Events, your hometown and your schools.

You can also send one message to someone before a match, and it can suggest friends of friends. Those pieces are the reason men look for something like it: it is free, it sits in an account you already have, and it comes with a bit of shared context.

No other app copies all of that. So the useful question is which piece you want most.

Every app below lets you join without paying. What differs is how much the free version lets you do.

Do not treat that table as fixed. Apps move features between the free and paid sides, and limits change. Open the app and see what it lets you do today.

Facebook Dating gives you one message before a match. OkCupid's intros work the same way: an intro is a first message that lands in her Intros tab, so you can write to a woman without waiting for her to like you.

Bumble works differently. A Note sent before you match counts as your opening message, and after you match, each of you gets one opening message inside a time limit. On Hinge you like one photo or answer to start.

In every case you get one shot, so the first line should say something about her.

This is the part you will not find elsewhere. Shared Groups, mutual friends and the same school are specific to Facebook.

The closest substitute is to build the context yourself. OkCupid's match questions show how you and a woman line up on what you each want. Hinge shows you her prompt answers, which gives you something specific to open with. Away from the apps, joining a club, a class or a league puts you in the same room as people who share an interest. a dating coach counts that as a supplement that works in the background.

eHarmony says its members want a meaningful relationship, and it sorts them by a Compatibility Score. Its free Basic membership is enough to take the quiz and look at who the site shows you.

That is a slower start than a swipe app. Many men like it for exactly that reason.

Free accounts usually cap the likes you can send, show you to fewer people and hide who has already liked you. None of those limits touches your photos or what you write.

a dating coach's view is that dating apps are businesses and the paid tiers tend to show you to more people. He also says paid features are multipliers: they make a good result bigger and leave a bad one at zero. So get some matches for free first.

coach advises testing more than one app, because each has its own algorithm and its own mix of people. A man can do badly on one and well on another.

Pick two free apps. Give both the same photos and the same written lines. Use them most days for two weeks, and write to women soon after you match.

Then count what happened on each. Likes sent, matches, conversations that got past two messages, and dates set. Keep the one that produced dates, and drop the other. Do not run five at once, because you will not write to anyone well.

If you already have Facebook, running Dating beside one other app costs you nothing. A quiet month on one then does not become your whole dating life.