How it works
From signing up to a first date
Here is the whole thing, in the order you will meet it. Nothing is hidden behind an upsell, nothing is shared without your say-so, and nothing that keeps you safe costs anything.
Feel free to skim. The short version is that you make a profile, look at people one at a time, and talk to the ones you like. Everything below that is detail you can come back to.
- 1
Make an account
Email, password, date of birth, country. That is it. No card, no fee, nothing to cancel. Your account works the moment you finish, and it keeps working whether you ever pay for anything or not.
- 2
Confirm your email
We send a link that works once and expires after 24 hours. Clicking it moves you to trust level 1 and opens up your profile editor.
- 3
Write your profile
Gender, age, height, location and a short headline, then as much of the longer questionnaire as you feel like answering. Every question is optional unless it is marked otherwise, and each answer is yours to scope: public, members, matches only, or nobody until you grant access.
- 4
Get through the first checks
Phone and a liveness selfie are what unlock matching and messaging. They take a few minutes and a person compares the selfie to your photos. No stock photos, no catfish, no ghost that answered three messages and vanished.
- 5
Verify as far as you want to go
ID, proof of address, employment, income. Each one you complete lifts your trust level, and trust level is the one thing nobody can buy. You can stop wherever you like.
- 6
Fill your packet
Up to 5 photos, 5 videos and 5 audio clips, plus your social links. It stays invisible until you accept a request for it.
- 7
Like people, and talk
Pass or like. When two people like each other, a conversation opens. Very new accounts get slower limits and cannot paste links yet, which is what keeps the first week quiet.
- 8
Share only when you decide to
Someone asks to see your packet. You see who is asking and why. You set the length of the access and the number of opens. You can cut it off at any point, and every open gets recorded.
- 9
Say how it went
After a conversation or a date, either of you can write about honesty, safety, communication, punctuality, kindness, authenticity and chemistry. Reviews are read by a moderator before they go anywhere, and they only travel inside a packet you hand over.
Your face, on your terms
Your real photos open when you connect. Before that, people see an avatar - so you are recognisably a person, not a grey box, without handing your photos to strangers.
A realistic avatar
Generated just for you, unique to you, and labelled "AI avatar". Pick from several options.
Or design your own
Prefer an illustration? Build one in the avatar studio - face, hair, outfit, the lot.
Real photos on match
When you both like each other, your photos open. You can also share more, privately, in a packet.
How this is different
The familiar design shows you a face and asks for a yes or a no. It is fast, and it is also why so much of online dating feels like shouting into a room. Here is the trade we make instead.
Profiles are checked, not just written
On most sites a profile is whatever someone typed. Here, every claim maps to a step somebody actually completed, and you can see which ones.
Your media is private by default
No public grid of your photos and videos for anyone to save, screenshot and pass around. Media moves inside a packet you open on your terms.
Reputation travels with consent
People you actually met can vouch for honesty, safety and chemistry, and those reviews only travel where you allow them to.
You are not the product
No adverts, no boosts, no like meter counting down to make you pay to feel wanted. The free tier is a complete product rather than a demo.
To see the detail on a particular app, including what it does better than we do, the comparison pages cover each one.
How the four tiers work
Everyone starts on Open, which is free and where most people stay. Your tier decides whose profiles you can see: your own, and the ones below it. Likes are never filtered - a like reaches the person it was sent to, whatever tier either of you is on.
Paying does not open up the app. It puts more filtering between you and the noise, and it adds more pools of people for you to meet. Everything that keeps you safe stays free on every tier - that is the part most sites get backwards.
Open - where everyone starts
Free, and it stays free. Everything that keeps dating here safe is on this rung, and every member on every tier can find you. No card, no trial clock, no expiry.
Screened - automated accounts filtered out
A cleaner feed and a few conveniences. High-risk, unconfirmed and spam-reported accounts leave your feed, the Screened pool joins it, and you can take back a pass you did not mean.
Curated - verified photos, complete profiles
For people who want to know the photos are real. Every profile in your feed has passed a live-selfie photo check and is properly filled in, so an opener is never wasted on a blank page.
Select - scam filtered, badges on everything you verified
The strictest filter and the widest view. Scam-reported and flagged accounts are filtered on top of everything below, you see every pool, and every category you have verified is badged on your profile, so the work you did to prove yourself is the first thing anyone sees.
Confirming who people are
Separate from tiers, and it cannot be bought. You complete what you want to complete, and each one you finish adds something to your profile that other people can see. The more you have confirmed, the more replies you get - which is a fair trade, because it took effort and nobody can buy it.
Nothing confirmed yet. Nothing is required to start talking to people.
Your email address is confirmed.
A person compared a live selfie to the profile photos, so you know the pictures are current and they are the person in them.
A government photo ID was checked. You are who the profile says you are.
Proof of address is on file, so the location on the profile is real.
Employment, income or net worth, evidenced rather than claimed.