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9 Best Dating Apps With Free Messaging 

9 Best Dating Apps With Free Messaging 

Dating apps today are akin to the ice cream section at your local supermarket. 

There’s such a variety that you feel as though you might never be able to try them all. With ice cream, you generally stick to the one or two flavors that you know, rarely purchasing outlandish flavors that your palate might not approve of.

But this is where the metaphor breaks down. With ice cream, you need to purchase an entire tub in order to try the ice cream. With dating apps, this isn’t the case.



The business model of dating apps has changed over the years. With new dating apps hitting the market every year, companies must alter their model so as to attract singles. The prevailing practice as of late has been to offer free messaging up to a certain extent. 

Nowadays, the average single male might feel as though dating apps outnumber the number of actual dates he’s had over the past year. 

This saturated market means that users can be picky when it comes to dating apps and choose only those that don’t require an initial fee in order to sign up. Yet despite the competition, not all dating apps offer free messaging.

Here’s a list of the best dating apps with free messaging. 

Hinge

hinge

This dating app was influenced by the practice of meeting romantic partners through friends and acquaintances. Only friends of your FB friends will appear in your feed.

In this way, potential partners are pre-screened by Facebook friends. As for its users, Hinge attracts a more mature milieu, one might even say its users are presidential

It’s true that Hinge offers free messaging, but only to an extent. Unlike other dating apps, Hinge only offers a paltry 10 free “likes” a day. This number is meager when compared to apps such as Tinder and Bumble. But what Hinge may lack in free perks it makes up in innovation. 

Hinge addresses one of online daters’ biggest pet peeves; ghosting. Ghosting is so commonplace in modern dating that you’ve probably been ghosted before and never even noticed. To reduce ghosting, Hinge introduced the “Your Turn” feature.

The feature simply reminds users to respond to the person they’ve been messaging. Thus far the feature has shown positive results, reducing ghosting by up to 25%. 

Hinge is a favorite of my clients and for good reason. The app claims that it’s the only dating app, “designed to be deleted.” While other apps are designed to addict you and keep you single forever, Hinge has shown an authentic desire to find you a meaningful partner. 



Facebook Dating

facebook dating

It was only a matter of time before the most powerful social media company  -if not tech company- in the world got mixed up in online dating.

Last year FB launched Facebook Dating in Colombia. 17 other countries were introduced to the FB feature before it finally hit the US on Sept. 5th of this year. 

This nascent feature isn’t an app unto itself, rather it can be found within the FB application, though just because you have the app doesn’t mean that FB dating has been enabled. To find the feature, just click on the three bars on the top right of the FB app and there you’ll find FB Dating. 

Many new users are leery to sign up for a new app due to a lack of users. With FB Dating, this isn’t a worry. 221 million people in the US alone use FB. While FB has yet to release numbers on the quantity of FB Dating users, we can assume that it already has as many if not more users than Tinder at 3.8 million users. 

As of now, FB Dating is free to use. Once the feature has accumulated more users it can be assumed that paid features will be integrated, but for now it’s 100% free. 

As far as how the app works, it’s fairly akin to Hinge in that users can like or pass on a profile and that prompts can be used to chat with new matches. 

Bumble

Bumble

Billed as the feminist version of Tinder, Bumble has one of the most unique origin stories in the online dating world. 

Its founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd is actually the co-founder of Tinder. She only left Tinder after suing the company for sexual discrimination and harassment. Instead of shying away from this experience, she used it as inspiration to create a dating app designed with women in mind. 

Compared to just about all other dating apps that come to mind, Bumble is unique in that women must message first. After a match is made, women have 24 hours to strike up a convo or else the conversation is lost forever. But how exactly does one get a match? By swiping right.

Tinder and Bumble have near-identical interfaces. The major differences between the two apps concerns free messaging. While nearly every other dating app puts a cap on the number of times you can swipe right -and then message your match- Bumble doesn’t.



That’s right. With Bumble you’ll be able to swipe until your fingers are callous. It’s this feature that has led to more than 22 million people around the world sign up for the female-first app. 

Coffee Meets Bagel

dating apps with free messaging

Talk about dating app misnomers. 

CMB sounds like anything but a dating app. Though despite its poor choice of name, the app has flourished. The self-imposed handicap of a mediocre name hasn’t stopped the application from generating over 50 million matches since its launch. 

With the free version of the app, users are handed 8 “beans” on a daily basis. With these beans, you’re allowed to like a fellow user. Once your beans have been used up you’ll either have to wait until tomorrow or purchase more. Once a match has been made there’s no further cost or barrier impeding you from messaging other users. 

For whatever reason, half of CMB users are between the ages of 30-49. When it comes to attracting users from this demographic, this app far outperformers other dating apps.

It may be because when it comes to dating, CMB preaches slow dating. CMB claims to be a gourmet dating app while the competition is fast food. They back up this claim by curating a certain number of matches to free users on a daily basis. Based on profile preferences and your swiping history, CMB provides its users with a certain number of curated matches, or bagels, on a daily basis. 

Tinder

Once known as the bad boy of dating apps, Tinder has been able to change its image through the years. Though perhaps it’s got the rise of dating apps in general to thank. 

Tinder burst onto the scene in 2012. Initially, it was known as a hookup app. Naturally, this led to an unfair stigma being associated with the app. But since its launch, millions of Americans have implemented swiping right into their daily routines. Swiping right is now as much a part of a single America’s routine as brushing their teeth. 

Sure Tinder led the dating app revolution, but just because it’s a pioneer doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have competition.



As we’ve seen there is now a plethora of dating app options on the market. Responding to the flurry of dating apps being released, Tinder has tweaked its business plan throughout the years. Though what has always been a constant is its free messaging. 

As far as dating apps with free messaging goes, Tinder is by far the most used. Sure FB Dating is giving Tinder a run for its money but for the moment Tinder is still king.

Currently, the app enables free users to swipe right 100 times every 12 hours. Having established itself, Tinder no longer feels the need to bait users into using the app by providing them with innumerous free swipes.

Sure this is a far cry from what Bumble offers, but the amount of free swipes isn’t what’s most important, it’s the quality of the dating pool.

OkCupid

dating apps with free messaging

OkCupid is among the dating apps with free messaging. Once you’ve matched you’re able to begin messaging. With its most basic account, users can dole out and receive likes, match, and message their new matches. 

OkCupid gets less attention than other apps, so allow me to shine the light on some of its perks. 

While most other apps are shallow and rarely showcase a user’s personality, OkCupid has figured out how to turn its users into more than just playing cards in a stack of singles.

It does this by offering over 50 profile prompts that users can answer from along with thousands of match questions. The app is also LGBTQ friendly, allowing users to select from 22 genders and 11 sexual preferences. 

This is an inclusive app that endeavors to welcome all genders. Being that it’s so receptive to all genders it tends to attract a more refined type of single.

Don’t expect fellow users to shower their matches with bland, “hey” messages or dick pics. If you want to court an OkCupid user, you’ll have to work for it. 

Plenty Of Fish



Is there a better name for a dating app than Plenty of Fish? 

In 2009 POF was the biggest digital dating service in the US if not the world. It was consistently receiving 1.6 billion visits a month. But that was a decade ago. Nowadays, people kind of hate POF. From a janky interface to creepy users that the website refuses to delete, people don’t fancy POF. 

POF peaked in 2009, but got complacent. That being said, it’s still one of the cheapest dating apps around. It makes this list because it’s cheap, not because the quality is state of the art.

Unlimited likes and free messages are two perks of POF. And sure, while the app has seen better days, 90 million people still have POF downloaded on their phones. 

JSwipe

jewing dating sites

If you didn’t know already, JSwipe attracts a fairly specific type of user. Hailed as the number 1 Jewish dating app in the world, JSwipe is ideal if you’re exclusively looking to go out with fellow Jewish singles. 

The app allows users to swipe and send messages for free. It also grants users one super like a day. The app’s interface resembles that of Tinder’s. While the interface is similar, users vary greatly. JSwipe attracts serious users looking for long-term relationships. 

While it’s free to message matches, all conversations will be deleted within 18 days regardless if messages have been exchanged. This unique feature pressures users to exchange numbers and move the relationship from the confines of the app and onto a first date

Happn

dating apps better than tinder

The app’s French founder claims that the idea of the app is influenced by the idea of missed connections. 

Unlike Bumble where you can swipe for users that are within a certain proximity to you, with Happn you can only access profiles of users that you’ve literally walked past. Like I said, it’s all about missed connections. 

You don’t need to literally brush shoulders with another user for them to appear on the app. As long as the person is within a close enough proximity -as defined by the app- they’ll make an appearance on the interface. All potential matches will be accessible on the app for 7 days before being wiped clean. A unique -but also slightly creepy- feature is that the app will tell you more or less where you crossed paths with a fellow user. 

Once a match is made you’re free to chat away with your new lady friend for as long as you’d like. Not only is the app influenced by an awesome concept but it encourages you to get out of the house. The more you explore the greater the likelihood that you’ll cross paths with your next girlfriend. 



While we’ve just outlined 9 dating apps with free messaging, this doesn’t mean that you should sign up for all of them.

Choose no more than 5 dating apps. Remember that each app caters to a different demographic.

Now that you have some apps to ponder using, it’s time to start swiping and messaging. If you don’t know where to start when it comes to flirting via dating apps, don’t ask your buddy who’s equally lost, talk to an expert.

I offer 1-on-1 Skype sessions that will teach you the skills you need to not only mine dates from apps but also to find a significant partner.

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