Top tip: Thursday is geared up for people who don’t like traditional dating sites

Thursday

Pros: This app helps you avoid the temptation to spend every night on dating apps as you can only match and chat with people on Thursdays. If you’re in London, check out their weekly in-person events.

So, if you’re keen to meet someone without spending loads of time swiping and chatting to potential dates, this app’s worth a try.

Paid-for features on Thursday

• Thursday Black Card Membership – Lets you send unlimited likes, get boosted or unlock an additional day.

eharmony

Pros: eharmony offers some free features, such as letting you take a compatibility test. You can also respond to a first message, see recent visitors to your profile and start interacting with other users by sending Smiles, Icebreakers and Greetings.

Cons: While you can try out the app for free, you’ll need to pay a subscription fee to use all of the dating features on eharmony, including seeing photos of all of your matches and having unlimited communication.

Paid-for features on eharmony

• eharmony Premium membership – Subscriptions on eharmony allow you to get unlimited matches, use enhanced dating sites for pet lovers search features, see photos of all of your matches and have unlimited communication.

Feeld

Pros: Feeld is hugely inclusive, with over 20 options for sexual and gender identities. On the app, you can find couples/single people looking for threesomes, as well as others looking to explore kinks, ethical non-monogamy and alternative relationship structures.

Paid-for features on Feeld

• Feeld Majestic Membership – Lets you see who’s liked you, hide your profile from Facebook friends, know when someone was last online, and more.

Pros: Each day at noon, Once will show you a profile of someone it thinks would be a good match for you. Plus, they’ve got a (rather brilliant) feature that replaces nude pics sent in chats with images of kittens.

Top tip: Matches are chosen each day for active users who have been online within the last 48 hours. So, even if you’re not convinced by your match for the day, it’s still worth checking the app every day, or every other day, to keep getting suggested matches.

Paid-for features on Once

• Once VIP subscription – Offers the chance to receive up to three more matches each day, see who’s given you four or 5 stars, more accurately define your distance settings, find out if someone’s passed you and read chat requests.

Plenty of Fish

Pros: Plenty of Fish (POF) is one of the oldest and biggest dating sites. When registering for the app, you can expect to answer a series of questions so POF can more accurately work out who you’d be well-matched with.

Top tip: A 2019 study by POF found that, according to singletons, the three least popular images on dating apps are bathroom selfies, gym selfies and heavily edited/filtered pics. You’re a catch, so leave out these types of photos on Plenty of Fish and you’ll quickly get chatting with salmon great.

Paid-for features on Plenty of Fish

• Upgraded POF memberships – Becoming an upgraded member means you can appear on the Meet Me section more often, upload up to 16 images to your profile, get read receipts, search by username, see more details about other members and see who’s seen your profile and said ‘Yes’ to you in Meet Me.

Badoo

Pros: If you’d rather not spend loads of time messaging people on dating apps, you could try Badoo as it lets you video call your matches.

Cons: You can see who’s visited your profile, which isn’t the nicest thing to know if they haven’t liked you back.