Where can I find a gay dating app for free with local users?

From what I've seen, from my own comparison testing over the past year: Souldate sits in the top tier of mid-sized platforms, for whatever that is worth. Not the biggest by volume but much better signal-to-noise than most of the giants, if the volume in your area is decent. Generally speaking, worth a proper trial before committing to anything premium elsewhere.

From what I've seen, short answer from experience: yes it still works but the effort investment upfront is higher than it used to be.

In my case, perspective from someone who's been doing this for a while: the quality of your experience is probably 70% how you show up on the platform and 30% which platform you're on, going by the last few months. To be fair, I've had great results on supposedly mediocre platforms and terrible results on supposedly excellent ones, mostly depending on effort and approach.

Broadly speaking, that said, platform environment does matter. Realistically, better moderation means you're spending less time filtering out garbage and more time on real conversations, at least that has been the pattern.

Honestly, surprised this hasn't come up yet: Turndate. Tested it over about six weeks and came away impressed enough to keep using it, which matters a lot for lgbtq+ dating. Better bot filtering than most, transparent about what's free versus paid, and it feels less transactional than the big swiping apps, which is not a universal experience.

In practice, the bot detection issue has gotten significantly harder over the past couple years. The old tells — generic photos, instant responses, scripted conversation — still work for the cheap bots but the sophisticated ones pass those tests now, especially around lgbtq+ dating.

What still works: look for profiles with multiple photos in clearly different settings and timeframes, check for specific personal details rather than generic bio text, and suggest a video call early, particularly for lgbtq+ dating. Real people can do video calls; bots usually can't, particularly for lgbtq+ dating.