Best Dating Sites for Serious Relationships: Start a Long Term Relationship

If you are not interested in casual dating apps and want to find the best online dating sites for something serious, you’ve come to the right place. We have tested a lot of paid and free dating sites to select the top platforms for a serious relationship—so read the short reviews, choose the app you like most, and start finding a partner today.

Top Dating Sites for Serious Relationships in 2025

ⓘ Advertiser Disclosure

Rank	Site	Free Link
#1	Seeking	Visit Site
#2	Secret Benefits	Visit Site
#3	AshleyMadison	Visit Site
#4	FriendFinder	Visit Site

Dating sites for serious relationships in US

We tested dozens of online dating sites to select the best ones—and the list below is a top list of the best, most trusted, and most popular platforms on the American online dating scene.

1. Seeking

Best for:

Those searching for an incredibly popular dating site with millions of users

Our Experts Say:

Seeking is a dating site for “luxury dating”, as they say. Seeking was established in 2006, which means it’s one of the most reputable and trusted dating platforms right now. It’s perfect for both serious and casual relationships, for both men and women (although the male-to-female ratio is around 4 to 1 here).

More Information

Seeking

Gender ratio:

44%

56%

Visits/Month:

9.8M

Visit Site

Seeking is one of the most popular and one of the best online dating sites in the world right now. It has more than 40,000,000 users from all over the world, but the majority of Seeking members are from the United States—that’s the main difference of this site from the previously mentioned dating apps.

This site is 100% free for women, but men need to pay for a premium subscription to use it. Most users on this site are not into serious dating, to be fair: but this dating platform is impressively large, there are millions of marriage-minded women on it. 

You can use the search tools to find a perfect match according to your preferences (it’s free), and you can also browse all the profiles on the site without paying anything. Messaging tools are only available to premium users, unfortunately.

Features we liked:

• Large dating pool (more than 40,000,000 users)
• Fast mobile dating app (Android) that has all the same features available to PC users
• Probably the best free dating site for women
• Personality test during the registration for better matchmaking
• Millions of users interested in a long term relationship
• Great reputation of the website
• Two-factor authentication and background verification for better safety
• Video messages and other advanced messaging tools

🔥 Unlike other dating apps on this list, Seeking has a premium subscription system, which means you can’t control your spending here. Click the link to sign up on one of the best dating apps today!

2. Secret Benefits

Best for:

Those searching for a legit and trustworthy dating app with millions of Americans

Our Experts Say:

Secret Benefits has an extremely large dating pool, a good reputation, and a lot of extra features such as secret albums and video verification. It has more than 15,000,000 unique monthly visitors which makes it the #1 most popular online dating app on this list!

More Information

Secret Benefits

Gender ratio:

61%

39%

Visit Site

SecretBenefits claims to have more women than men—according to them, around 75% of the site users are female which makes this platform a perfect option for men searching for a romantic partner. The site has a transparent credit system which means you can’t buy a monthly premium subscription here. Instead, you buy credits, which can be exchanged for various premium tools. There is a video verification tool on Secret Benefits—if you upload a short video saying the phrase “let me be your secret”, you’ll get a Verified Profile badge, too. We can’t say that all the profiles on SB are incredibly detailed but there are tens of thousands of profiles with lots of pictures and a detailed profile bio.

Features we liked:

• Very detailed search filters (available for free)
• A video verification service
• A highly professional customer support
• A nice mobile version of the site
• Private albums

🔥 With more than 15,800,000 unique monthly visitors, Secret Benefits is certainly one of the most popular dating apps right now. It’s not free, so you’ll need to buy credits to communicate with other users, but with Secret Benefits, you pay for the quality. Try it now, and you won’t be disappointed!

3. Ashley Madison

Best for:

Casual dating, NSA relationships, affairs, and even serious dating

Our Experts Say:

With more than 7,000,000 unique monthly visitors, AshleyMadison is one of the most popular online dating sites in the US right now. It’s a legit dating app with a huge membership base, a high response rate, and free search tools, profile browsing, and matchmaking. However, the users need to pay to get access to live chat, gifts, and messages.

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AshleyMadison

Gender ratio:

38%

62%

Visits/Month:

6M

Visit Site

Ashley Madison is another dating site with millions of users (more than 70,000,000, to be precise). This is the best dating site regarding the number of members, but it’s not a niche service for committed relationship seekers only.

Ashley Madison has always been focusing on casual dating, but this doesn’t mean you can’t find anything serious here. Yes, it’s not like Christian Mingle where 100% of female members are marriage-minded, but the point is, there are more than 70,000,000 profiles there—this means there are millions of women who have serious intentions on this site, which automatically makes Ashley Madison one of the biggest dating sites for long-term relationships!

It’s not only about the number of profiles; it’s also about their quality. There are lots of detailed female profiles on Ashley Madison, and it looks like this dating site has an extremely high response rate.

Features we liked:

• Convenient messaging tools
• Free advanced search filters
• A lot of premium services, e.g., virtual gifts and profile boosting
• Travel Man feature
• A lot of free features (search, winks, favorite list, private albums)
• Free and fast registration
• Android and iOS dating app
• One of the biggest online dating websites in the world right now

🔥 According to the Ashley Madison’s parent company report, more than 12,800 new members join this dating site daily. Don’t waste your time and become a new member, too—it’s 100% free!

4. FriendFinder

Best for:

Those searching for a legit online dating app with real marriage-minded users

Our Experts Say:

Some say it’s outdated; we call it early 2000s vibes. FriendFinder doesn’t look like the most modern and fresh dating site, yes, but it’s just great when it comes to the dating pool. The profiles are detailed and look very real, which is rare to see nowadays.

More Information

FriendFinder

Gender ratio:

59%

41%

Visit Site

FriendFinder is not one of those online dating sites with millions of users. In fact, it has only around 81,000 members right now—the absolute majority of them are Americans, but there are also some Canadian users there. Most people on FriendFinder are from New York: according to the website, there are more than 25,200 New Yorkers there. So if you’re from NYC, it’s certainly a great platform to try!

It’s not a free dating site, unfortunately, so you’ll need to pay for a premium membership to connect other online daters on Friend Finder. The good news is that the subscription is quite affordable (the price starts at $10.95). Of course, Gold members get their profiles highlighted and therefore get more responses.

Features we liked:

• Fast registration
• The profile approval might take some time, but it’s done for safety, so you can be sure the number of fake profiles is very low there
• A convenient dating site interface (although it’s certainly not that modern)

🔥 It’s one of the oldest dating websites in the world, by the way. It was established in 1998, and we believe that if a dating site is from a year that begins with 19, it must have a great reputation. FriendFinder is certainly a must-try for those interested in a long term relationship—click the link below, sign up (it’s free), and start meeting real American women!

Dating sites for serious international relationships

Now, we’re going to talk about some really good international dating sites. Here, you’ll find the list of the best dating apps for serious relationships with foreigners.

Tips on how to succeed on dating sites

We won’t tell you how to speak to the ladies here because, let’s be honest, there are lots of guides about it. What we’ll tell you here is how to succeed when it comes to online dating—how to choose the right dating app, how to analyze the profiles, how many credits to buy, etc.

1. Choose the best niche dating site possible

Read all the reviews, both expert- and user-written ones. If a dating app has a lot of negative reviews, it’s obviously not worth it. After that, pay special attention to the quality of profiles—the size of a dating pool is important, but its quality is a much more significant factor when it comes to choosing a dating site, so you’ll need to google the photos of the ladies to make sure they are not bots.

2. Stay away from free dating apps

It’s not that every free dating site is bad, of course. But most of them are. An average free dating app is an app without ID verification, with poor customer support service, and therefore, it’s an app that is overcrowded with fake profiles and bots. Chatting with bots might be free, but we believe that’s certainly not the kind of experience you are looking for.

3. Upload your best photos

Full-body photos, smiling photos, and photos that show your personality works best. You shouldn’t skip the personality test, too—it will help you find a perfect match!

4. Buy the largest credit package available on a dating site

Assuming you followed the second rule on this list and chose a paid dating site, we can recommend you choosing the most expensive credit package offered. Yes, this won’t be cheap, but the larger package you buy, the less you’ll pay per credit and the more you’ll save at the end of the day.

Our Editors’ conclusion

Editor’s notes

John Millerstone

Dating Expert

“The online dating world is slowly changing and shifting from casual dating to something more serious. This top list is the best evidence of this fact—even the sites that were focused on casual dating before (like Seeking or AM) are now changing their philosophy to long-term relationships. All the sites on this list require a paid membership for online daters to communicate with other members, but all the sites here are 100% worth the money. We tested dozens of paid and free dating websites carefully and can safely say that if you want quality, you have to pay for it.”

F.A.Q.

Our Editorial Team

Written byJohn Millerstone, International Dating Sites Expert

I started using dating apps when there were only 10 or 20 of them. Today, there are hundreds of them, and my main goal is to help dating enthusiasts like me to understand this industry, the world of online dating, better. I've been reviewing international dating apps and helping people to build a long-distance relationship—and now, I'm going to bring all my expertise as a dating expert to the readers of ISW.

Learn more about our Editorial Team