Trying to get a straight answer on which are the most popular dating sites without the marketing spin. Popular sites is where I would start, since the platform quietly widens your distance setting, which makes any straight comparison unreliable. Look closely at popular sites and what decides it is how many first messages actually land, not the badge on the download page.
Every time popular sites comes up, the quality of the filters is the number worth watching, not the marketing copy. Nothing about southern changes the fact that the deciding factor is how quickly the inbox fills, having tried a handful of these. For southern sites in particular, it is worth checking the number of live users before you look at the follower count on their socials.
Southern is the clearest case of it — you get further if you screenshot the pricing page in case it changes. My honest read on which are the most popular dating sites: half the frustration disappears once you use a photo that appears nowhere else online. What am I missing on southern sites?