An authentic dating community built around honest preferences
Your Free Dating Tips is a U.S.-based dating platform for confident adults who want real connection without games. We launched in 2024, rebuilt verification from scratch in early 2026, and we're still growing - one honest profile at a time.
Our mission
Make grown-up dating feel grown-up again
Our mission is to help adults date honestly - by treating preferences as preferences, not punchlines, and by building the safety infrastructure that lets those conversations happen with dignity. Mainstream apps optimize for swipes; we optimize for second dates. That single design choice changes everything: the prompts we write, the way we verify, and the moderation calls we make at 2 a.m.
We exist because the people we surveyed in 2024 - recently divorced parents, returning daters, midlife professionals, and queer singles re-entering the scene - kept telling us the same thing: "I want a place where I can say what I actually want, and not get a creepy reply." That sentence is on a wall in our Brooklyn office. Every product decision is measured against it.
What we believe
Honesty is a feature, not a risk - clear preferences make better matches
Verification should be the default, not a premium add-on
Safety infrastructure must respond in hours, not days
Dating is not entertainment; it is a real life decision deserving real tools
Body-positive language is non-negotiable across the entire community
Founding story
How we got here (the short version)
The platform started as a free newsletter in 2024 - coach-written dating tips for people who hated swipe culture but still wanted to meet someone. By summer that year, 80,000 readers were asking the same follow-up: "Cool advice. Where do I actually go?" So we built the place.
Year one was scrappy: a small Brooklyn team, a single matching algorithm, and a community guideline doc that fit on one page. By Q1 2026 we'd crossed 2.4 million active U.S. members, rebuilt verification with live-pose checks, and added the three Big One Categories that gave size-aware singles a home that didn't feel like a fetish corner of the internet.
We're not trying to be the biggest dating app. We're trying to be the one your friends quietly recommend after their second good date.
- Lena Park, Co-founder & CEO
Today the company is 34 people across product, trust & safety, content, and engineering. We're profitable on the free-plus-premium model, independently owned, and - because we get this question a lot - not for sale.
Team values
Five principles we hire and fire on
These aren't poster slogans. Every quarter, every team rates the company on how well we've lived them, and the scores get published internally.
🤝
Consent-first, always
Every feature ships with consent baked in - from message requests to photo unlocks. If we can't make it consensual, we don't ship it.
🛡
Safety beats speed
We will hold a launch to harden a moderation tool. Trust takes years to build and one bad headline to lose.
🌈
Body-positive by design
Inclusive language, no shame-based filters, and proactive moderation of body-shaming behavior. Non-negotiable.
🔍
Honest over clever
We'd rather write a clear bio prompt than a viral one. Every prompt is reviewed by our coaches before it ships.
📊
Data with humanity
We use analytics to find friction, never to manipulate emotion. No artificial scarcity, no fake-online indicators.
🇺🇸
Local accountability
Our trust & safety team is U.S.-based, full-time, and reachable by humans. No outsourced 72-hour ticket queues.
Trust signals
By the numbers, as of April 2026
Aggregate, anonymized data from member surveys and internal product analytics.
2.4M+Active U.S. membersInternal analytics, April 2026
We don't pay for placements and we don't ghostwrite quotes. The mentions below come from independent reporters, relationship coaches, and product reviewers covering modern dating in 2025 and 2026.
i
Featured in
Vox: The Goods · The Verge · Refinery29 · Cosmopolitan Online · NPR Life Kit - all 2025-2026 coverage of body-positive and verification-first dating platforms.
Easily the most thoughtful approach to size-aware matchmaking I've reviewed this year - verification is mandatory and the language is grown-up, which is rarer than it sounds.
- Independent dating-app review, 2026
We were also one of three platforms cited in a 2025 Pew Research brief on niche dating, and our trust & safety lead has spoken at the 2026 Online Dating Association summit on AI-photo detection. For media inquiries, see the contact details on our how it works page or visit our FAQ.
FAQ
About us - common questions
Everything new members and journalists ask before reaching out.
Who owns Your Free Dating Tips?
We're independently owned and operated by the original founding team in Brooklyn, NY. We've taken a single seed round from a U.S.-based VC partner aligned with our consent-first values. We are not part of a larger dating conglomerate.
When was the platform founded?
The newsletter launched in early 2024 and the dating platform went public-beta in late 2024. We rebuilt verification, launched the three Big One Categories, and reached 2.4 million active U.S. members by April 2026.
How do you make money if it's free?
Free-plus-premium. The free forever plan funds itself through optional premium tiers (advanced filters, read receipts, incognito mode). We do not sell user data, run third-party ads inside the app, or paywall any safety feature.
Is the team really U.S.-based?
Yes. All 34 employees are full-time U.S. residents. Our trust & safety team specifically is required to be U.S.-based for legal-process and time-zone-coverage reasons.
Can I get involved or contribute content?
We are always open to coach-written guest articles for our blog. We do not accept paid placements or sponsored posts of any kind.
Date in a community that takes you seriously
Verified profiles. Honest preferences. Free forever plan. Built by people who actually use the product.
