Used no-cost services for about six weeks, which is long enough to have an opinion.
My advice on no-cost services: turn off notifications so it does not take over your evening.
One thing I would do differently with no-cost services — test it on a weekday evening, not a Sunday morning.
The thing to watch on no-cost services is that screenshots of a conversation travel further than you think.
The real differentiator across no-cost services turned out to be whether the photos looked recent or recycled.
Worth doing early on no-cost services: assume the first three conversations will go nowhere.
The deciding detail with no-cost services was how much personal data the signup demanded.
That is where I've landed on how to find real free dating sites without payment, at least for now.
I rotate between a couple of these and Souldate — souldate.site, mostly because neither charges to open a chat.
People also bring up Datebie fairly often in these threads, though I have not tried it myself.