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Saturday, February 1, 2025

The Best Dating Sites for Seniors


It's Valentine's Day, and love is in the air... and online, on these senior-friendly dating sites. 


Are you one of the 17% of Americans over age 50 who have tried online dating? Or are you thinking of dipping your toes in the online dating pool? Dating apps are far from the only way to meet other older singles, but they do make dating easy. An app gives you convenience, a much larger circle of people to date, and the option to get to know someone before meeting them in person. 

If you’ve been considering taking the plunge but aren’t sure where to start, read on for insight into how seniors are using online dating platforms. According to a survey by the National Council on Aging (NCOA), all these sites are LGBTQ+-friendly, and they each have a free version—although they’ll quickly encourage you to bump up to a paid subscription to access more matches and features. 

Tips for Dating Over 50

  • Stay alert to scams–but don’t let the fear of scammers stop you from dating online. Yes, scammers are on these sites, and it’s essential to keep your guard up and notice the common signs of a romance scam in progress. But don’t let the risk keep you away from online dating sites entirely, if you’re otherwise ready to give them a shot. In the NCOA survey of 500 older daters, 37% of them reported encountering a fake profile. While the scammers are out there, the majority of the profiles you’ll see are of real people looking to connect. 

  • Lean into your self-knowledge. One of the wonderful things about dating later in life is that you know yourself better than you did in your 20s. Before you get on the apps or update your profile, take some time to reflect on your values, desires, and deal-breakers, and then do your best to honor that hard-won knowledge. 

  • Take your sexual health seriously. Prepare yourself to talk about sex with new partners. Open communication is key to deepening intimacy and protecting from STIs, which don’t discriminate based on age.
  • Remember, age really is just a number. That means that you’re never too old to date and forge deep connections with other people. And it could also mean, perhaps, entertaining a bigger age gap than you have in the past. In her 2022 book How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love, Logan Ury suggests that one common obstacle daters face is to let go of their image of the “perfect” partner. One of the standards to flex, she offers, could be the age range you’re considering.

Match

If you’ve only heard of one dating site, it’s probably Match.com. This pioneer dating app is turning 30 this year, and it’s as popular as ever, with 96 million users. About 75% of people on the site are over age 30, and the 27% who are over age 50 represent the site’s fastest-growing demographic. 


A unique offering from Match are its in-person events. Those who live in rural areas may have to travel, but people in metro areas can choose from several Match events each month, including speed dating, wine tastings, and comedy nights. With these mixers, Match is appealing to folks who want to try online dating but aren’t sold on the whole idea of online dating. You can use the platform as a boost to meet your match in person.


A basic profile is free, and paid options run from $4 to $43 a month, making Match the most affordable paid subscription on this list. 


eHarmony

In our research, Match and eHarmony emerged as the two top overall dating sites for seniors. Of the 500 older online daters surveyed in July 2024 by the NCOA, more people said that they met someone through eHarmony as compared to any other site. eHarmony is the second most popular app among people over 50, after Match (and Tinder comes in a fairly distant third).


A perk of eHarmony is that one of their dating experts will offer one free review of your profile, with tips. For people who are serious about finding a match, as people on eHarmony tend to be, that feedback is valuable. eHarmony’s quizzes ask about your values, lifestyle, and specifics about the kind of partnership you’re looking for, and then the site offers you a compatibility score with each of your matches. That level of detail is a far cry from the swiping style of Tinder and other apps.

 

A basic subscription is free, and paid options run from $45 to $75 a month. You’ll end up paying, as only paid subscribers can see other people’s photos on eHarmony. And be wary of the auto-renew feature: some users complain that it’s misleading and hard to cancel.


SilverSingles

While Match and eHarmony target all age demographics, SilverSingles and our next pick, OurTime, are designed for the over-50 crowd. Like eHarmony, SilverSingles will ask you to take an in-depth quiz to create your compatibility score with other matches. You’ll be able to see a breakdown of the score to understand exactly how your priorities stack up with those of your match.


One reviewer rated SilverSingles as the “Best for Safety” as compared to the other top dating sites for seniors. That’s because it encrypts your data and verifies each new user. (Still, NCOA found that over half the users in its survey reported a fake profile on SilverSingles.) 


SilverSingles prices its subscriptions differently depending on whether you’re using the mobile app ($16 to $60 a month) or the desktop version ($14 to $45).


OurTime

OurTime is geared toward seniors, and it’s not just for dating. When you sign up, you can choose the kinds of connections you’re looking for: dating, friendship, or even pen pals. Like SilverSeniors, OurTime is marketed toward users 50 and up; the majority of its users (about 80%) fit that age range, but anyone over 18 can sign up.


If you don’t want to spend time filling out a lengthy quiz, OurTime will let you get to matching faster. Just create a short profile, with the option to set very specific dealbreakers about kids, location, and other factors. The prices of OurTime’s paid versions mirror those of SilverSingles.


Let this Valentine’s Day be your reminder: there’s no guarantee you’ll meet someone on the apps, but there’s also no doubt that friendly, real people are out there waiting to meet you.







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