OkCupid moves right into you describing yourself in your bio section and answering a couple random questions so you can start getting matched with others. Then, once you’ve “liked” a few people’s profiles to help identify your type, your profile is all set and ready to use. Of course, you’ll want to upload some photos to your profile and fill out all of your other profile sections so people can learn things about you, but you’re otherwise set free to find someone that interests you.
Match
Instead of immediately letting you out into the wilderness like OkCupid, however, Match tries to get more information from you before it points you in the right direction. It’ll ask you what age range you’re looking for, and how wide of a net you want to cast in terms of distance. Then you have to answer a multitude of questions that thoroughly describe yourself and what you’re looking for in someone else. The questionnaire includes everything from your religious beliefs to the preferred hair color of your matches. Once you’ve finally made it through the somewhat exhausting questionnaire, you’re ready to explore. It’s still a wilderness, but hey, at least they give you a compass. (OKCupid has all this too, but you can answer as many or as few questions as you want at your leisure.)
Tinder
In order to sign up, you have to connect your Facebook account. If you’re like me and hardly ever use Facebook, it’s terribly annoying. If you do use Facebook, it can still be kind of frustrating because it uses whatever pictures you have set on your Facebook profile. If you want to add new pictures, you have to add them on Facebook. That may not seem like a big deal, but if you wanted to add a photo that was a little more alluring, you’d have to jump through hoops to add it to Facebook and keep it from popping up all over everyone’s feeds. Of course, most people probably won’t have this issue, but it’s an annoying and seemingly arbitrary limitation. OkCupid and Match also allow to sign up for their services using Facebook if you prefer it that way, but they at least give you the option to go with just email.
The bottom line is Tinder is easy to sign up for, but being forced to use Facebook can be a hassle for some hookupdate.net/es/japan-cupid-review/, especially if you’re trying to be a little more discreet. OkCupid and Match use similar methods to get you signed up, but one is more appealing if you like to be set free, and the other is more appealing if you like to narrow things down before you jump in.
Pricing
The price of each service is where things get a little hairy, especially for Match. While all three services can technically be used for free, Tinder and OkCupid’s free versions are far more functional.
Match will let you sign up as a “Member” for free and view your daily matches, browse profiles, like profiles, send “winks” (which is essentially a Facebook poke), see who winked at you, and favorite someone’s profile to find it easily later. You cannot, however, see who viewed, liked, or favorited your profile, and you can’t send anyone any messages (unless they write to you first AND they paid for a subscription add-on that allows you to use your separate “Reply for Free” inbox). Of course, you still get teased with notifications and emails along the lines of “like alert – someone nearby is interested in you” and “so and so sent you a message.” I imagine if you’re pretty lonely, that teasing almost always leads to a subscription. You can disable notifications, sure, but the bottom line is you have to pay and become a “Subscriber” to really get anything out of Match. Here’s how their subscription pricing breaks down currently: