Senior dating sites compared

Comparison pages usually collapse into a league table, and a league table is the one thing this set of eight cannot honestly produce. Four of them will not show a price until you have handed over an email address. Six of them say nothing anywhere public about whether you can filter for a widowed member. One of them contradicts itself about its own subscription price on two pages of the same site. So the table below reports each cell as what it is, with a mark saying whether we read it inside an account, on the company's own public page, or could not confirm it at all.

The table

Read the marks before the values. inside means we saw it signed in to an account we hold. public means it came off the company's own logged out page, and the URL and date are in the last section. not verified means no page we could reach states it, so we left it empty rather than guess. The App Store figures are the live iTunes averages for the United States store on 17 September 2026; counts drift by a few between reads on the same day.

The Facebook figure of 4.53 from 28,364,356 ratings belongs to the whole Facebook app, because Facebook Dating has no App Store listing of its own; treating it as a rating of Dating would be wrong. And the parent company column is the contracting entity named in each service's own terms, which is not always the brand you think you are dealing with: OurTime, Match and Plenty of Fish all trace back to Match Group, and SeniorMatch and SilverSingles have the same owner, SuccessfulMatch.com, Inc.

Which senior dating site is the most honest?

On the checks we could make, Facebook Dating and SeniorMatch come out cleanest, and none of the eight comes out ahead on every count. Three checks are worth making yourself: whether the price is shown before you sign up, whether the person writing to you has been verified, and who owns the service.

Price first. Facebook Dating sells nothing, and SeniorMatch's public cost page showed the same three prices as its web checkout, though its App Store listing printed a different one month price; both are dated on our SeniorMatch cost page. OurTime, Match, Plenty of Fish and eharmony print no figure until you register. SilverSingles' pricing pages redirect to its homepage when you are logged out, and Stitch's own pricing page and FAQ quote two different price structures.

SeniorMatch is the one service here we could confirm requires a selfie video from every member, though its service agreement also says, in capitals, "NO CRIMINAL BACKGROUND SCREENING", so the verified badge proves a face matches its photos and nothing more. eharmony checks only a phone number. Ownership takes reading the terms, where the company named is often not the brand on the app: OurTime, Match and Plenty of Fish all trace back to Match Group, and SeniorMatch and SilverSingles both belong to SuccessfulMatch.com, Inc., which charges very different prices for the two.

We earn a commission when you register on SeniorMatch, so read this section with that in mind. Each claim in it is dated in the table, in that service's section below, or on the cost page linked above.

SeniorMatch

We hold a Premium account provided for this review, active 16 September to 15 October 2026, so these figures come from the account, not a sales page. Checkout on 16 September 2026 showed $33.99 for one month, $69.99 for three months and $109.99 for six, which works out at $23.33 and $18.33 a month, both charged up front.

Whether the free account is enough for you comes down to messaging. A free member can reply to a paying member but cannot open a conversation, and the FAQ dated 13 July 2026 puts it plainly: "at least one person in a conversation must have an active PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP for messaging to remain available". Two free accounts cannot talk to each other at all.

SeniorMatch verifies more strictly than most of this set: a selfie video has been required of every member since 14 April 2025, where Plenty of Fish leaves its Selfie Verification optional and eharmony checks nothing but a phone number. The service agreement dated 12 May 2026 gives you 3 business days to cancel for a refund, and also states "NO CRIMINAL BACKGROUND SCREENING", so a verified badge here means the face matches the photos and nothing more. What to do about the rest is in the SeniorMatch safety guide.

Where it disappoints: on 17 September 2026, with the "Living in" filter set to United States, the Discover gallery for our account returned "No members found". If you are in the United States, check that for yourself before you pay anyone.

SilverSingles

The SilverSingles homepage footer names SuccessfulMatch.com, Inc. as the owner, which is the company behind SeniorMatch too, and its FAQ text and member backend match SeniorMatch's almost word for word. It is the same machine with different paint on it.

The price does not match. Checkout inside our account on 16 September 2026 showed $499 billed every month, or $999 for three months, which is the highest price we could read anywhere in this comparison, and by a wide margin. Its public pricing page will not tell you that: /pricing, /about and /silversingles-cost all redirect to the homepage when you are logged out, re-confirmed on 17 September 2026.

Free members cannot send private messages. That sits behind the paid tier, which lists 33 privileges in total. The refund window is 3 business days, the same clause as SeniorMatch's, from a service agreement with the same date. Verification takes a selfie video plus a mobile number.

Where it beats SeniorMatch: the members. With the account set to live in the United States, the gallery returned 61 cards with a median age of 62; 20 of them were 65 or older and 15 were between 50 and 54. Our SeniorMatch account, with the same country filter set on 17 September 2026, returned nothing. If the money is not the obstacle for you, that is the comparison that matters.

OurTime

Four services here are built for people over 50, and OurTime dwarfs the other three: 69,021 App Store ratings against SeniorMatch's 2,240, SilverSingles' 108 and Stitch's 73. Everything below comes from its own public pages on 17 September 2026; we did not register.

Its free tier is the most restrictive in this comparison. The help article on Reply for Free explains that free members can only reply, and only when a paying member has bought that add-on for them, and states plainly: "To email other Match members, you must purchase a subscription." You cannot find out what that subscription costs without creating an account, because no help page or public page carries a figure.

The terms of use name Match Group Americas, LLC as the operator, set the minimum age at 18, and say that purchases are generally nonrefundable, with special terms for residents of twelve states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Verification is a video selfie, described in its Self Verify FAQ as "Photo Verification consists of one simple step: taking a video selfie."

No OurTime page we read mentions a Widowed relationship status field, so that cell stays empty. If being able to search by that matters to you, OurTime does not publicly claim it.

eharmony

Read eharmony's homepage and you find a free tier claim nobody else in this set makes. Free members "can take the Compatibility Quiz, view members' profiles, send and receive initial likes and first messages, and see who's visited your profile". Its cost page draws the line as Basic "Limited messaging" against Premium "Unlimited messaging".

What that limit actually is, eharmony does not say publicly, and neither does it say what Premium costs: the cost page markets three, six and twelve month plans without printing a figure until you start signing up. So the free tier is more generous than OurTime's on paper, and the paid tier is just as opaque.

Its terms name eHarmony, Inc. as the contracting party, put the minimum age at 18, and carry a 3 Day Cancellation clause plus the same twelve state list that OurTime, Match and Plenty of Fish use. Verification is SMS only, which is the weakest of the eight: a text message proves someone controls a phone number, not that the face in the photographs is theirs.

eharmony is not a service for people over 50; it is a general one that older members also use. If you want a filter that finds widowed members, nothing on its public pages describes one.

Match

Match had 239,270 App Store ratings at 3.87 on 17 September 2026, more than every service here except Plenty of Fish and the Facebook app, and it shares a corporate parent with OurTime: its terms of use open "Welcome to Match, operated by Match Group Americas, LLC."

Free messaging works, but only after a match. The help article on chatting says "All of our free members are now able to chat with every match! Once you match with someone, you can message each other directly", which means you need the other person to have liked you back before a single word can pass between you. The same article adds a note for residents of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Texas and Oklahoma, who can message all Mutual Matches free.

Verification is layered rather than mandatory: a Colorado safety article says "We offer SMS verification and, in some markets, an optional identity verification feature", on top of automated age detection and face photo checks run against the primary photo. The refund position and the minimum age of 18 match OurTime's, twelve states and all.

Match publishes an Age sort in its help center, which orders results youngest to oldest. That is a sort, not a filter, so we did not record Match as having an age range filter. For a reader who wants to see only people within a decade of themselves, that distinction is the whole ballgame.

Plenty of Fish

Nothing about Plenty of Fish is built for people over 50. It earns a row here on size alone: 1,808,571 App Store ratings at 4.29, more than seven times the count on any other dating app in this set.

Free members can message a Mutual Match, which its help center describes as "You'll swipe and like profiles, creating what we call Mutual Matches. Then you're free to message as much as you'd like with that match!" As with Match, the first message still depends on someone liking you first.

Its terms of use are the most generous on refunds in this set, but only outside the United States: they add the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland to the usual twelve states, with a 14 day full refund for members there. The same document sets the minimum age at 18 and splits the operator by region: Plentyoffish Media ULC for most users, MTCH Technology Services Limited for European ones. Both are Match Group entities.

Verification is Selfie Verification and a Face Check that scans facial geometry from a video selfie, and both are optional. Another member can request that you verify, which is a useful safety habit, but nobody is required to.

Facebook Dating

Facebook Dating sells nothing at all. No Dating help page mentions a subscription, an upgrade or a purchase of any kind, so there is no refund policy, because there is nothing to refund.

Its help center also gives it the most permissive free messaging of the eight: "In Dating you can send likes and messages to people you're interested in. Once someone likes you back, you'll match and can start chatting in Dating." You can write first, before the other person has liked you. To use it you must be 18 or over and hold a Facebook account in good standing that is at least 30 days old, so it is the only service here that requires you to have been somewhere else first.

Dating lives inside the Facebook app on Android and iPhone, with no website, so it is the choice for a reader who will only ever use a phone. The 4.53 rating from 28,364,356 ratings in the table belongs to that whole Facebook app, not to Dating, and nobody should read it as a judgement on the dating feature. Verification is a video selfie when Facebook asks for one, and the help center says it "must match a photo on your profile". The operator is Meta Platforms, Inc.

The Facebook wording above comes from the Help Center articles we read logged out on 18 September 2026, and from the Supplemental Facebook Dating Terms.

Stitch

Stitch will suit a reader who does not really want a dating app. It runs on groups, events and activity organizers as much as on profiles, and its terms are the only ones here that say "You must be at least 50 years of age." Everyone on it is over 50 by contract rather than by marketing.

Its price is a genuine problem. On 17 September 2026, two pages of Stitch's own live site said different things. The pricing page offered Limited as "Free Forever!" and Full "from $7 per month". The FAQ listed "Limited membership, which is free; Community Basic membership, for $60 per year; Community Standard membership, for $120 per year; Community Manager membership, for $180 per year." We print both and we do not reconcile them, because Stitch has not. Refunds cover accidental purchases within seven days; anything else is at Stitch's discretion.

Free Limited members can attend public events, join public groups, reply to messages and contact activity organizers; member to member chat needs the paid Full tier. Every member, free or paid, has to verify first: "we require all members to verify their accounts with us before they can communicate with any other members through Stitch." The FAQ does not say what verifying involves.

The catch is size. The iOS app, "Stitch - The Community for 50+", had 73 ratings at 3.63 on 17 September 2026, against 69,021 for OurTime.

What happened to SeniorPeopleMeet, SeniorBlackPeopleMeet and Lumen?

Older lists of senior dating sites still recommend three services you can no longer join. On 28 September 2026, seniorpeoplemeet.com forwarded to OurTime's homepage, and seniorblackpeoplemeet.com forwarded to a page saying "SeniorBlackPeopleMeet is no longer an active website," which points visitors to OurTime instead. The same day, lumenapp.com, the site of Lumen, a dating app for people over 50, forwarded to Bumble. OurTime, where both former sites now point, is covered above. If a guide still sends you to any of the three, it has not been checked recently.

Which to try first, by situation

The table has 64 cells, and almost nobody needs more than one of them. Below is the one service we would open first for five common situations, with the fact behind each choice. None of these is a recommendation to pay; each one is a free thing you can go and check this afternoon.

The widowed row is the one we get asked about most. The Widowed option sits under relationship status in the advanced filter panel, which is a paid feature on both services and reverts to default when the paid period ends. For the sites built only for widows and widowers, our sister site WidowGuide checked twelve of them: widow dating sites compared.

Two situations are missing from that table on purpose. If what you want is the largest possible pool of people near you, none of these eight publishes a member count by area that we would repeat. And if you want to know which service leads to more dates, we did not message anyone on any of them, so we have nothing to offer you there.

If you are over 60

Nobody in this set publishes an age distribution, so the only age evidence on this page is what two galleries showed two accounts on two days. Treat it as a snapshot of a feed, not a census.

The SilverSingles feed, with the account set to live in the United States, returned 61 profile cards with a median age of 62. That is the number to hold on to if you are in your early sixties: half that feed was older than 62 and half younger, and 15 of the 61 cards were in the 50 to 54 band, so the service is not exclusively the older end of over 50.

The SeniorMatch Discover feed, as we found it on 16 September 2026 with no location filter taking effect, returned 40 cards with a median age of 52. A median of 52 on a service branded Dating Over 50 is a decade younger than the SilverSingles feed, and none of those 40 cards was in the United States, though 27 of them were marked open to relocating or traveling.

The two samples were read under different conditions, one with a country set and one with none applied, so this is not a clean measurement of which service is more local or older. What it does say is that you can answer the question for your own town in about ten minutes with a free account, and that the answer will not match the marketing on either site.

If you are over 70

No service in this comparison is built for people over 70. None of the eight names an age above 50 in its own branding, and the highest minimum age any of them sets is Stitch's 50, so a reader in their seventies is a minority user on all eight. If you are widowed and past 70, WidowGuide's dating after 70 covers large type, family help with an account, and getting home safely.

The share of older members in our two samples is the closest thing to a signal. 20 of the 61 SilverSingles cards were 65 or older, roughly a third of the feed. 6 of the 40 SeniorMatch cards were, roughly one in seven. On that evidence, and only that evidence, the SilverSingles feed skewed older.

The practical advantage for a reader over 70 is the age range filter, which SeniorMatch and SilverSingles both have and which none of the six services we read publicly describes anywhere. Setting a floor of 65 on your own search is a far better use of five minutes than reading anybody's list of the best sites for seniors, and it is free to do on SeniorMatch before you buy anything.

One warning for both. The advanced filters are a paid feature on SeniorMatch and SilverSingles, and they reset to default when the paid period ends, so a filter you set in month one is not waiting for you in month three unless you are still paying.

How this page was checked, and what it could not check

SeniorMatch and SilverSingles were read from inside accounts Elena holds, on 16 September 2026: checkout pages, filter panels, the privileges lists and the service agreements. The SeniorMatch United States gallery result was re-checked on 17 September 2026. Inside both accounts we only read pages and moved filter controls; we sent no messages, no winks and no likes, and edited no profile.

Five of the other six services were read logged out on 17 September 2026, from their own pages only. We created no accounts. For Facebook we used the public Help Center, read logged out on 18 September 2026, and the Supplemental Facebook Dating Terms, read on 17 September 2026. We never opened the Dating tab itself. App Store ratings and counts for all eight came from the iTunes Search and Lookup API for the United States store on 17 September 2026.

The pages behind each cell:

• SeniorMatch: the account, plus the public cost page, both 16 September 2026.
• SilverSingles: homepage footer for the owner and FAQ for photo verification, 17 September 2026; prices and privileges from the account, 16 September 2026.
• OurTime: terms of use and the help center articles on Reply for Free and Self Verify, 17 September 2026.
• eharmony: terms, the cost page and the homepage, 17 September 2026.
• Match: terms of use and the help articles on messages, the Colorado safety policy and age detection, 17 September 2026.
• Plenty of Fish: terms of use and the help articles on Mutual Matches, Selfie Verification and Face Check, 17 September 2026.
• Facebook Dating: the Help Center articles on eligibility, on messaging and on verifying a Dating profile (help IDs 2495451450696932, 312959615934334 and 332335518265810), read 18 September 2026; plus the Supplemental Facebook Dating Terms, 17 September 2026.
• Stitch: pricing page, FAQ and terms, 17 September 2026.

Eight cells in the table are marked not verified. Minimum age for SeniorMatch and SilverSingles: neither brand states a minimum age on any page available to us, and our own records of the two accounts do not quote one, so all we can say is that both market themselves at people over 50. Widowed filter for OurTime, eharmony, Match, Plenty of Fish, Facebook Dating and Stitch: none of the public pages we read names a Widowed relationship status field or a filter for one. An absent claim is not a missing feature, and one of those six may well have it behind a login we did not create.

Three more gaps to name. An age range filter could not be confirmed on any of the six public sources either, and Match's Age control is a sort rather than a filter, so we treated it as unconfirmed. eharmony is frequently reported as belonging to a larger European group, but that name appeared on none of its own pages, so the table carries only the entity its terms name. And prices move: every figure here is dated, and the SeniorMatch plans had gone from $29.95, $59.95 and $95.95 on 5 September 2026 to the figures in the table eleven days later.

If a figure on this page is out of date or wrong, email contact@seniormatchreview.com and we will fix it and date the fix.