Which Filters Are Free on Inner Circle

On the free Standard Membership, Inner Circle lets you filter by age, height, location, education, smoking and whether someone has children. Full Membership adds filters for profession, industry and university. It also adds hobbies and interests, nationality, nearby, online and new members. Inner Circle's guide also mentions filtering search by political ideology, star sign and religion, so check in the app which tier those sit under before you count on them.

The free tier covers the basics. You can filter by age, height, location, education, smoking and whether someone has children.

Those are the practical filters, and most of them are genuine dealbreakers for somebody. If you do not want to date a smoker, or you know you do not want to date someone who already has children, Standard lets you say so without paying anything.

Be generous with the age and location settings. A range a few years wider than your ideal, and a radius that reaches the parts of the city you actually visit, costs you nothing and keeps the search full. You can always pass on someone you see. You can never say yes to someone a filter hid.

Full Membership adds a longer list. Two are about work: profession and industry. Three more are about her: university, hobbies and interests, and nationality. The last three are nearby, online and new members.

They fall into two groups. Some describe the person: what she does, where she studied, what she likes and where she is from. The others describe distance and timing: who is nearby, who is online right now, and who has just joined.

The guide's extra filters for political ideology, star sign and religion are worth checking in the app itself, so you know which membership they come with.

The biggest mistake men make with filters is using every one of them. Each filter you add removes women you might have liked, and most of them remove women for reasons that would never have mattered on a date.

A better rule is to filter only for real dealbreakers, the things that would end it for you whatever else was true. Smoking might be one. Wanting children, or not wanting them, might be another. Religion matters a great deal to some men and not at all to others.

Everything else is better judged by looking and talking. A woman's university or star sign tells you very little about whether you would enjoy a drink with her. Screening for what you like once you are talking, what she is into, what she wants, how she spends her weekends, works far better than screening out whole groups before you have seen a single face.

Of the paid filters, online, new members and nearby are the most interesting, because they change when and how easily you reach someone rather than who she is.

A woman who is online right now can answer while you are both in the app, which makes a quick back and forth, and an early plan, far more likely. A new member has not yet had weeks of attention from other men, so a thoughtful first line has less competition.

Nearby does the same job for plans. A woman ten minutes away is far easier to see for a drink this week than one on the other side of the city.

Filters feel like control, which is why men lean on them. The trouble is that a narrow search makes any app feel empty, and an empty app feels like a problem with the app.

If you have set eight filters and see almost nobody, the filters are the problem. Loosen the ones that are preferences rather than dealbreakers and see how your options change. Height, profession and university are the usual suspects.

The other misuse is treating filters as a replacement for effort. Finding the right women does nothing if your photos are weak and your first line is "hey." Filters decide who you see. Your photos and what you write decide who answers.

For most men, the filters alone are not the reason to pay. The bigger reason is that Inner Circle's Full Membership is also the tier for connecting with members directly, and without that, even the perfect search leads nowhere.

If you do pay, the timing filters are the ones to use. Check who is online, look at new members, and favor women who are close by. Then write something specific, suggest a drink while she is still in the conversation, and ask for her number to sort out the details. Paid features multiply the results you already get, so make sure the photos and the writing are worth multiplying first.