All free dating apps

With new dating apps appearing every week, it can be hard to navigate your way from one catchy one-word app to the next. And yet most coverage of the world of dating apps (rather sadly!) focusses only on Tinder and Happn. After searching long and hard to see if there was a definitive list of all the dating apps available to us in 2015, I realised there wasn’t one … so now there is!

Here on 30 Dates, over the next few days, I’ll be covering every remotely-dated app I’ve ever heard of … and some I only just discovered on the app store. Yes, this list will probably be out of date within minutes … but, if you do realise I’ve missed one out, get in touch and I’ll add it to the list!

Charly xx

A is for Antidate

Antidate is described as an ‘a-symmetrical’ app – which means women and men have different screens. Men can only see the profiles of women who choose to show them to that particular guy. Meanwhile, women can see where the guys physically are. The app, created in London by lawyer Hatty Kingsley-Miller, is designed to deal with a number of the issues she experienced when she herself dated online.

Are Your Interested

Available on both desktop and as an app, ‘AYI’ focusses on mutual Facebook friends and shared interests. Sounds familiar …

Anamo

According to the apps store, there’s a dating app called ‘Anamo’. I’ve never heard of it, and when I googled it, Google kept trying to give me suggestions for ‘anime’. I’d probably avoid this one!

B is for Bristlr

It was only a matter of time until Dating Apps became truly hipster. Following on from the success of Shoreditch’s Cereal Cafe, the creatives behind Bristlr have designed an extremely East London app. As the PR strapline says it’s an app for “those with beards to those who want to stroke beards”.

Badoo

Who? I hear you ask … but these guys are HUGE in Europe. So huge in fact, that they created an app almost identical to Tinder, years before Tinder. Badoo’s head office is actually based in London, though most of their millions of members are in continental Europe.

Bumble

This app has received huge media attention, because the face of it is Whitney Woolf – the Tinder co-founder who sued the app for sexual harassment. Whilst it’s billed as a ‘female empowerment’ app – because women have to make the move, it’s not too dissimilar to Tinder. The branding is cute and bee-related, and it seems predominantly aimed at American sorority girls. Fun fact … the guys behind Badoo (see above) actually designed the app for Whitney.

BeLinked

For a while last year, this app was billed as ‘the next Tinder’. Basically the same functionality, but using LinkedIn contacts instead of Facebook friends. The original name was ‘LinkedUp’, which may have been a bit too close to LinkedIn for legal comfort, because they rebranded last summer. Since then, they’ve disappeared off the radar … maybe because dating and career progression are two things best kept separate?

Bro

New app bro is for gay men who want longterm relationships – something which perhaps differentiates it from the casual reputations of Grindr and Gaydar. The app was launched earlier this year.

Binger

This app is currently just a glint in its creator’s eye (and no, it’s not an April Fool!). The premise is to match people based on their online TV viewing – or box set binges (hence the name). Except it would need to rely on Netflix, and Netflix don’t want to share the dater with the (rather unattractively named) app. The company have tried to get #BeAloneTogether trending in support of their project, but nothing’s been written about the app since February.

Blued

Apparently Blued is the world’s biggest dating app. So why haven’t you heard of it? And why is it so big? Because it’s a Chinese gay app – based in a country with an enormous population, and a still closeted approach to homosexuality. At the end of last year, the app reported 15 million users, and the app has been used by the Chinese government to help tackle the spread of HIV.

BootyShake

Hmm …. Well the name is certainly memorable. Apparently instead of swiping through date options, you ‘shake’ your way through them.

C is for Clocked

Unlike most new dating apps, Clocked still uses compatibility matching. Each day you’re given a selection of suggested suitors, based on data pulled from social media. At midnight the matches disappear … hence the name.

Coffee Meets Bagel

Probably the biggest dating PR blag of the century was Coffee Meets Bagel’s appearance on the TV show ‘Shark Tank’ last year (for Brits reading, it’s the US version of Dragon’s Den). Essentially the three founders (the Kang sisters) turned down an insane amount of money offered by one of the sharks (in my mind proving that they were really only on there for publicity). Every day, at noon, users of the app are delivered ‘a bagel’ (a match). The match is a friend of a friend on Facebook. You can either like or pass on the match. And that’s it – a daily dose of dating in your lunch hour. The app has receive a HUGE amount of coverage, but is currently only available in the States and obviously reliant on Facebook providing friends of friends data to apps … which could all change very soon.