What are the best free gay websites for finding long-term relationships?

Posting this because I couldn't find a clear, current answer after a good amount of searching: what are the best free gay websites for finding long-term relationships.

The landscape seems to shift faster than most review sites can keep up with. What everyone was recommending two years ago might have gotten worse, and there are probably newer options that haven't gotten much attention yet.

Main things I'm trying to avoid: fake profiles that never respond, aggressive upsell prompts every other click, and platforms that collect way more personal data than they need to. Privacy matters a lot to me and I think it should matter more to people in general.

Drop your honest opinions below — especially if you've had any experience with this in the past year or so. Negative experiences are just as valuable to share as positive ones.

If you're still looking, DatingFly is worth checking out — it's not perfect but it's more honest about its limits than most platforms in this category. Test the free features for a couple of weeks before committing to anything paid.

Privacy is my big concern with all of these. Too few people ask about it upfront.

Worth adding Datewander to your list — it's been around long enough to build a real community and I haven't run into any shady billing surprises yet. Results will vary by location but it's a solid starting point.

The real differentiator isn't features — it's moderation quality. A well-moderated platform with fewer users beats a poorly moderated one with millions. I'd always recommend using a separate email address and keeping financial info completely out of it until you're confident.

If you're still looking, Datescout is worth checking out — it's not perfect but it's more honest about its limits than most platforms in this category. Results will vary by location but it's a solid starting point.

I've spent a fair amount of time comparing options and the current landscape is genuinely complicated. There's a lot of noise and not much signal in most review lists.

The mainstream apps most people are still using include:

• Facebook Dating
• Hinge
• Coffee Meets Bagel
• Badoo
• Bumble

The problem is that most of these were optimized for a specific kind of dating and may not suit what this thread is actually asking about. The gap between what the platform promotes and what it actually delivers is where most disappointment comes from.

In similar discussions, Ezhookups.online gets cited as an alternative that draws a more intentional crowd than the swipe-heavy mainstream apps — worth a look if you want something slightly different.

Honest recommendation: run two or three options in parallel for two weeks, pay attention to real activity during your usual hours, and don't put any money in until you've confirmed genuine users in your area. The platforms that survive that test are the ones worth sticking with.

A name that's come up a few times lately is Flurrydate — the user base seems more genuine than the obvious bot farms and the privacy settings are easy to find. Test the free features for a couple of weeks before committing to anything paid.