Okay, so your vow to spend 2025 swiping and speed meeting hasn’t quite gone to plan, despite downloading a host of the best dating apps. Yep, you might have a case of dating dysphoria — essentially, you think it’s grim out there. And you’re not wrong, with dating app Cherry labelling us a nation of ghosters, with 5.6 million Brits (18%) admitting to leaving someone unanswered.
But there’s no getting away from the fact that dating apps are the most common way to find love in the digital age. There is, however, reason to be positive. Another study, this one by Zen, suggests that 31% of people in the UK know a couple who successfully met online. And you do now, too, as I can confirm my boyfriend and I met on Hinge in December 2024.
So, if you are ready to redownload, the next step is settling on a dating app(s). You’ve got options, with more than 1,400 (!) dating platforms in the UK, including Match.com, eHarmony, Coffee Meets Bagel, Bumble, Tinder and SilverSingles. But working out which is actually worth your (powerful) energy? Tricky.
Enter: GLAMOUR’s guide to the best dating apps and trending sites for queer women, heterosexual daters and LGBTQ+ singles, compiled as a result of our mission to get out and meet people through all the subscriptions on the market. So, if you’d still rather swipe right over, say, speed dating or romantic run clubs, we’ve got you.
SKIP TO: What is the best dating site for a serious relationship in 2025? | How we chose the best dating apps.
Meet the experts:
How we chose the best dating apps:
It is important to us that we provide unbiased, trustworthy and honest reviews of everything we test – from dating sites to sex toys. To compile this guide to online dating, single members of the GLAMOUR team have shared their dating experiences to help point you in the right direction. We continue to test as many of the featured dating sites in this edit as possible, doing so for at least a month, meeting potential dates IRL and scoring apps based on various criteria. Think: whether they’re suited to all sexualities, how safe they made us feel, whether they offered unlimited messages, the quality of the icebreakers and how appropriate our matches felt. For those we’ve not yet had the chance to test, we’ve referred to experts and user reviews.
