Singaporean Model Cheryl Chou (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Here is the quick list of my top five dating sites in Singapore. I’ll go into more detail in my reviews below.
When I first traveled to Southeast Asia way back in the late 2000s, the dating scene in Singapore was pretty difficult. There were a handful of dating sites, but these sites had tiny membership numbers. Because dating is a numbers game, you need to cast a wide net, and unfortunately, that was just not possible in Singapore back in the day.
Today, the situation is totally different. Just like in Thailand and the Philippines, there are a number of dating sites and apps to choose from. If you’re looking for love in this Asian city-state, you’ve finally got quite a few reputable places worth exploring.
A lot of people come to Singapore for work assignments, so if you fall into that category, I highly recommend you give dating sites and apps a try. You’re going to be spending a lot of your time in the office, and I can’t think of a more efficient way to meet new people than to use your smartphone or PC to make connections.
Unlike a lot of places (e.g. my home country, the United States), the culture in Singapore is such that you’re not going to have success just going up to random women in public, chatting them up, and getting their number. If you don’t have some type of prior connection, your odds of getting shut down are virtually 100%. I’ve seen that this holds true not just in Singapore, but in most other countries I’ve been to in Southeast Asia.
Without further ado, let’s get into my reviews of the dating apps and sites that I think will be most worth your time while you are in Singapore.
Singapore Models (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
SingaporeLoveLinks.com is the best online dating site in Singapore. If I only had money to spend on one site, this is the site that I would spend it on. If you do a search of women between the ages of 18 and 35 who have been active on the site within the 3 months, you will find over 1000 active profiles.
Singapore Love Links
SingaporeLoveLinks.com is run by one of my most favorite online dating companies, Cupid Media. Cupid Media owns sites that I’ve used in the past like Afrointroductions.com and BrazilCupid.com (where I met my wife), when I was living in Africa and Brazil, respectively.
Most of the members of SingaporeLoveLinks are actually from Singapore, and as a member of the well-established Cupid Media Network, the website itself is easy to use, and the features are top-notch.
Sign up Process
To sign up, either link your Facebook account or enter your name, gender, password and email. Finish up by sharing a bit about yourself and what you’re looking for in an ideal match. Now you’re free to browse other members! Occasionally the site will ask you for more information in your profile in order to carry on browsing or searching.
How to Locate Potential Matches
You have two choices when looking for a potential match: searching and browsing. Searches can be narrowed down by age, location, education, lifestyle choices (smoking, drinking, etc.), religion, and more. Browsing is of profiles that SingaporeLoveLinks has recommended for you and is highly flexible, with customizable criteria and different options for viewing and sorting.
How to Communicate with Other Members
Standard members on SingaporeLoveLinks can visit each other’s profiles, add each other to their Favorites, and send each other “interest” and messages. These messages are blocked however, and can only be read once one or the other decides to upgrade to a Gold or Platinum plan.
As a standard member, you are able to communicate freely with premium members, but unfortunately SingaporeLoveLinks makes it difficult to do this, only showing 1-2 Gold or Platinum profiles for every page of browsing. So if you want to do more than non-verbally flirt with other Standard members, or wait around for the premium member, your best option of finding a compatible match is to upgrade to a premium membership, and access their perks: IM, audio and video chat to whomever you like.
Unique Site Features
SingaporeLoveLinks’s video messaging features are some of the best I’ve come across in my explorations through the world of online dating. First off, there is live video messaging, a potent tool for vetting potential matches for compatibility before deciding to move the relationship forward.
Second, there is the option to send video messages, which, if you do them right, tend to get way more, and way better, responses than what a simple text message would receive. Finally, you can even upload a personal video message to your profile, for other members to watch when they visit. Some may see it as too much work, but I loved the opportunity to leave such a personalized message.
What is Included in Each Membership Level
- Standard – Create a profile, upload photos, browse recommended matches, search for matches, send interest to any member, communicate with Gold and Platinum members
- Gold – All of the above, plus: Unlimited messaging and communication with other profiles (text, audio, video, Instant Messaging), ad-free browsing, invisible browsing
- Platinum – All of the above, plus: Higher ranking in searches, more profile space, extensive search features, message translating, VIP profile highlighting
Remember That Dating is a Numbers Game
As I mention in my online dating e-book, just like the real world, there will be men or women who you will not click with or who don’t respond to your messages (or just disappear). There will be men or women who might only be interested in helping you to part with your hard-earned cash. That is life.
Just keep sending out messages and reach out until you find the person you are looking for and get success. As is typical with online dating, expect a response rate of around 1-10% depending on how good your profile is. (response rate = people who will respond back to you to whom you sent an introduction message).
Asian Dating
Also run by Cupid Media, AsianDating.com has a decent following in Singapore but not near as large as the site above. It is still worth at least setting up a free profile and browsing profiles to see if you can find someone who strikes your interest. The benefit of signing up for AsianDating.com is that it has a lot of members in the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
You can check out my review of the best dating sites in Malaysia for my full write-up on Asiandating.com.
Coffee Meets Bagel
Coffee Meets Bagel is a free dating app that works by using your Facebook mutual friends to find you a match. It was originally created to avoid the endless swiping and casual hook up culture that many other apps promote.
Coffee Meets Bagel matches you with others by algorithmic matching from your Facebook friends. Although if there are no Facebook friends in the area, you still receive options. Every day you can log into your account at noon, and see a handpicked group of suggested users you can either like, or pass. Same-sex relationships are allowed on the site, but the app is definitely heterocentric.
Sign up Process
Since Coffee Meets Bagel works with Facebook. Set up is quick and cannot be completed without connecting through a Facebook profile.
After logging in through your Facebook account, you will be given a profile with your name, age, and automatic photos taken from your Facebook profile. You may choose up to nine photos from your Facebook, or upload from your camera roll.
You will also have the option to choose and answer three short profile questions such as:
“I am…”, “I appreciate when my date…”, or “I like…”
You are allowed a 276-character limit for each question.
How to Locate Potential Matches
There are two sections to find potential matches on Coffee Meets Bagel: Suggested and Discover.
Suggested: This is where the algorithm comes into play. Men will receive up to 21 bagels (matches) every day at noon. They can either like, pass, or priority like these women.
“Priority likes” are a way to get noticed and supposedly get you noticed “six times faster” than average likes.
When you “like” a profile, you are given the opportunity to send a message at the same time. Coffee Meets Bagel states that this can increase your chances of a returned message by 25%.
In the suggested section, women are given bagels who meet their selected settings criteria.
When you receive a match, you will have 24 hours to make a decision on this person. If you both “like” each other, you can begin chatting, but only for 8 days. To extend this, you can choose to pay for additional time.
Discover: This section allows you to browse through all the profiles that meet the criteria in your settings. You can choose filters such as gender, level of education, distance, height, hair color, eye color, and whether or not they have been active in the last 72 hours. This section will also show you if someone has already liked you.
How to Communicate with Other Members
Communicating in Coffee Meets Bagel is simple: send a like with a message and wait for a reply, or respond to a like by matching, and start a conversation.
If you choose to like someone from the Discover tab, you will need to be premium, or use ”beans,” a paid form of currency in the app.
Unique Site Features
LadiesChoice: This feature is for women. It allows conversations to be started by women in response to men sending likes. Men cannot send full conversations without being first accepted and matched by a woman.
Discover: In order to get more matches than just the curated algorithm section, this section allows you to explore all the matches in your area.
Give: If you choose, you can be a matchmaker for your friends by giving them a past daily match. If your friend checks the match you “Gave” them, you will receive beans.
Take: When you “Take” a match that you find in the Discover section, your profile will appear in their Discover section in the next few days.
Woo: To “woo” someone is to send them a note that you have elevated interest. You will need to purchase this with beans.
Photo Lab: Ever wonder which of your photos will get the best response? With photo lab you can post two pictures and let other Coffee Meets Bagel users vote on which you should use. You must use beans to unlock this feature.
Open Sesame: This lets you unlock the identities of the mutual friends from Facebook between you and your matches.
Rematch: If you match with someone and they do not respond within 24 hours, you can have a chance to speak again by either liking them again or sending another message.
Mirror Mirror: Based on your 10 most recent matches, Mirror Mirror tells you your ranking within the entire Coffee Meets Bagel app. It can also show you how your profile is trending each week.
Express Delivery: With this feature you can send your match a message in advance instead of waiting for them to view your like. This costs 50 beans.
Question of the Day: Each day there is a daily question where members can record themselves answering it within eight seconds. These are posted in the video section and other members can look through them.
What is Included in Each Membership Level
In Coffee Meets Bagel there are two membership levels: Free, and Premium.
In the free membership level, you can use basic features such as creating your profile, selecting your preferences for matches, browse potential matches’ profiles and message them once connected. You will also receive a small amount of beans each month.
When you purchase the premium membership, you receive 6,000 beans per month automatically, can learn more about your match’s chat activity, know when your match reads your messages, and can access an activity report on each bagel.
You will also receive 8 “takes,” get 15% more beans on all purchases, unlimited “woos”, the ability to see mutual friends for all matches, and be able to use the “Skip The Line” feature. This feature puts your profile at the front of the match queue, resulting in more matches.
Tinder
Tinder is one of the most popular dating apps in the world. You’ll be happy to know it works pretty well for Singapore. You can read my full review on Tinder at this page.
OkCupid
OkCupid is popularly regarded as somewhat of a happy medium between laid back, casual apps like Tinder and more serious and commitment-centered services like eHarmony. By combining matchmaking aspects of serious matchmaking sites and the newer, visually-oriented design of current apps, OkCupid has grown tremendously in popularity since its launch in 2004.
Sign up Process
Setting up an account falls again in the middle ground of its competitor services. It is equally visually-focused, with a profile’s main display being the profile picture. However, setting up an account involves a decent amount of personal information, including a short self description and a variety of fun and laid back questions like “are you a morning person” and “could you date a messy person” as well as open-ended prompts such as, “One day I would like to:” allowing other users to get to know who is behind a profile beyond just a photo.
How to Locate Potential Matches
The two main ways to make matches are through “Double Take”, which is set up similarly to other sites, utilizing the swipe left, swipe right feature and through the “Match Search”, which displays multiple profiles at once, giving options to sort and filter by various factors such as age and location or more specific, personal factors, or to display them at random.
How to Communicate with Other Members
On OkCupid, users can message anyone after liking their profile, however, the other user will be notified of the message and will be able to browse their profile before deciding whether or not to match with them.
If they decide to like the profile, they are able to message back and start a conversation. Until the second user sends a like back, their profile will be hidden to prevent harassment.
Unique App Features
The questions that go into creating profiles are kept up-to-date on current events, pop culture and politics. The site also computes the answers to these questions into their algorithm to display a Match % on each profile showing their computed, probable compatibility with the user.
What is Included in Each Membership Level
Three different levels of membership upgrades are offered.
The “A-List” subscription gives users access to view profiles that have already liked their own as well as additional factors to refine searches such as “body type and attractiveness”, making the app more physically oriented again.
The “Premium A-List” additionally allows users to “boost” their profile for a certain period of time each day giving their profile more exposure in addition to other features.
“Incognito Mode” is an upgrade that enables users to make their profile invisible to all users except those whose profiles they have already liked. The feature can be turned on and off at the users own discretion.
Further Reading
Worldwide Online Dating Site Reviews: Be sure to check out my country-by-country reviews of the best online dating sites in the world.
Worldwide Moving Guide: Everything you need to know in order to plan your move to 65+ countries around the world.
Worldwide Jobs Guide: If you are interested in working in this country, be sure to check out my posts on how to find jobs in this country and other countries around the world.
Worldwide Apartments Guide: If you are interested in renting an apartment in another country, take a look at my articles on how to find an apartment in various countries around the world.
About Addison Sears-Collins
Hey! I'm Addison Sears-Collins, the founder of Visa Hunter. You can learn more about me here. Connect with me by liking my fan page on Facebook, connecting with me on Twitter, or check out my website Automatic Addison where I build robots and embedded systems.
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