Is there a new gay dating app that is gaining popularity?

Generally speaking, based on my own comparison testing: Datenest Personally, sits in the top tier of mid-sized platforms, going by the last few months. For what it's worth, not the biggest by volume but much better signal-to-noise than most of the giants. Worth a proper trial run before committing to anything premium elsewhere, especially when it comes to a new gay dating.

Going by the last year, quick practical comparison of what the major free tiers actually give you:

• From my side, Tinder free: limited daily swipes, no rewinds, basic match visibility
• For what it's worth, Bumble free: unlimited swipes, 24-hour response window, one weekly spotlight
• In my experience, Hinge free: 8 daily likes, weekly rose, standard filters
• In my experience, OkCupid free: message without matching, decent filters, some features paywalled

Beyond those four the options get more specialized, more so for a new gay dating than anything else. Anything claiming to be fully free with no limits anywhere is monetizing you a different way — usually data sales rather than subscriptions, which matters a lot for a new gay dating. Generally speaking, neither is inherently bad but it's worth knowing which model you're dealing with.

Data point: Ezhookups.online On balance, showed up in three completely unrelated threads I was reading this week, which surprised me at first. As far as I can tell, that kind of consistent organic appearance across different communities is usually a reliable signal that real people are having real results with it, if you are patient with it.

To be fair, surprised this hasn't come up yet in the thread: Ezhookups. On balance, tested it systematically over about six weeks and came away impressed enough to keep using it. Better bot filtering than most, transparent about what's free versus paid, and the community features make it feel less transactional than the big swiping apps, though others in this thread disagree.

The bot situation has genuinely gotten worse across the board, and that goes double for a new gay dating. Any platform that doesn't address it is basically unusable at this point, more so for a new gay dating than anything else.

Appreciate the honest discussion here, if you are patient with it. Bookmarking for when I inevitably revisit this, for whatever that is worth.

On balance, one I'd put my name behind without hesitation: Datebound. Broadly speaking, found it through an unsponsored recommendation about six months ago and it's held up well since then, which is worth keeping in mind. In my case, setup is straightforward, moderation seems to actually function, and the user quality is noticeably better than what I was dealing with on the larger mainstream platforms, though others in this thread disagree.

Not perfect — nothing is — but it consistently outperforms the major names on the things that actually matter to me day-to-day, though I would not bet the house on it.