Best Alternatives to Dating Apps: 10 Ways to Meet Someone Without Swiping

The best alternatives to dating apps are a personal matchmaker, free registration with a matchmaker, a dating coach, hosted singles events and speed dating, dinners with strangers, clubs and classes, introductions through friends, faith and values communities, your professional network, and, if you keep one app, a date-first app. Which one fits depends on how much time you have, how much you want to spend, and whether you want someone else to screen people for you. I’m Julie Ferman, a matchmaker and dating coach in Los Angeles, Denver and Santa Fe, and I offer four of the ten; the other six don’t involve me at all, and I’d tell you to do them anyway.

You’re not imagining the fatigue. In a 2024 Forbes Health survey conducted by OnePoll, 78% of 1,000 U.S. adults who had used a dating app in the past year said the apps left them emotionally, mentally or physically exhausted at least sometimes. In January 2026, The Harris Poll found that 75% of singles want more curated ways to meet compatible people than dating apps can offer.

A lot of people call the apps exhausting, soul-sucking experiences, and they still have a hard time quitting them. What I have the most fun doing is helping people do everything else first, before they throw themselves up online and before they hire a matchmaker. I’ve been at this since 1990: more than 40,000 singles have registered with me, I’m credited with more than 1,600 couples, and I’ve produced more than 1,000 singles events since 2002.

The 10 Best Alternatives to Dating Apps at a Glance

The Alternatives, One by One

1. A Personal Matchmaker

A matchmaker does the searching and the screening, and you only meet people who have already said yes to meeting you. With me, Julie Ferman, I always go to the man first; both people see photos and a detailed profile before a date is set; my First Date Concierge service handles the logistics; and I hear back from both of you within 24 hours of every date.

It’s the most expensive alternative here and the least effort. My personal matchmaking starts at $25,000, by invitation after a strategy session. Among the firms that publish their prices, full packages start at $3,500, and I compare them in the best matchmaking services in the U.S.

Watch for guarantees of love (nobody honest makes them), and ask where the matches come from.

2. Free Registration With a Matchmaker

This is the alternative almost nobody mentions, and it costs nothing. You register privately in a matchmaker’s database, with current photos and a real profile, and you become someone she can introduce to her clients and invite to her events. I can’t match you if I can’t find you, and neither can anyone else.

Registration alone promises nothing. It’s also the door to my mitzvah matches: about half of the introductions I make are free, and I make them for people with a little skin in the game, the ones who have done the $295 consultation.

3. A Dating Coach

A coach doesn’t hand you people. A coach changes what happens when you meet them: your photos and profile, where you go, how you open a conversation, and why you keep choosing the wrong person.

My 60-minute strategy session is $295 by phone or Zoom, and my 30-Day Boot Camp, Camp Cupid’s Coach, is $4,700, with weekly video modules, group office hours twice a week and two one-on-one sessions with me. If you’re not sure whether you need a coach, a matchmaker or someone else entirely, read matchmaker vs dating coach vs therapist.

4. Hosted Singles Events and Speed Dating

Nothing beats a room where everyone is single for finding out, in two minutes, whether there’s any spark at all. CitySwoon runs hosted speed dating in 23 U.S. cities, Los Angeles, San Diego and Denver among them, with about eight short dates picked for you and age-banded events; a Marina del Rey event on its site in September 2026 was $39 a ticket, or $19 for members. Thursday runs weekly singles-only events, from bar nights to run clubs, in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and Denver.

I curate my own events. I don’t just put the word out and charge people and then whoever shows up shows up: invitations go only to singles registered with me, planned by age group and around the clients I’m searching for. The best events I’ve had are the plus-one parties, where I invite mostly the women first.

Dating well takes practice, and the best way to get that practice is to surround yourself with single people, and do so often.

Julie Ferman

5. Dinners With Strangers

There’s a wonderful company called Timeleft that does little dinner parties, and it’s not just for single people, it’s for anybody. You pick your city and your availability, it seats you with five strangers and reveals the restaurant shortly before. Its U.S. list includes Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Denver and Albuquerque. Because it’s framed as friendship, nobody’s auditioning.

You can also throw your own. My favorite is the “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” party, where a group of single friends each finds a date for someone else in the group and everybody meets at the same party. The simpler version is a plus-one party, where nobody gets to come unless they round up a single guest the host doesn’t know yet.

6. Clubs, Classes, Leagues and Volunteering

Run clubs, hiking groups, cooking and dance classes, rec leagues, book clubs and volunteer shifts all put the same people in front of you week after week. Heidi Friedman, who went on 104 dates before she met her husband, gave the only rule you need on my podcast: “join something you like to do. Like, if you hate pickleball, don’t go play pickleball.” On Meetup, two Los Angeles singles groups have about 1,900 and 1,750 members.

It’s the slowest alternative, and nothing tells you who’s single. Go for the activity, and treat everyone you meet as a possible friend who might know someone.

I don’t care if you meet them at the car wash. I don’t care if you meet them at the dog park. I don’t care if you pick up a nice woman at the bookstore. I don’t care how you meet, only that you do.

Julie Ferman, on the Cupid’s Coach podcast

7. Introductions Through Friends and Family

Still the classic. When The Harris Poll asked singles in January 2026 how they’d most likely try to meet someone if dating apps disappeared tomorrow, a set-up by friends or family came first, at 38%.

Widen the circle you ask. Know your FedEx driver and your Instacart person, everyone who knows where you live, because those people know who’s single in the neighborhood. And take the advice my college boyfriend’s grandmother, Ann Bray, gave me: never turn down a date with anybody. You never know who his friends might be.

8. Faith and Values Communities

A congregation, a service group or a cause you care about gives you shared values before the first conversation, and a standing reason to show up. If a shared faith is one of your must-haves, this is where the people who share it already are. Give it time; nobody wants to be treated as a pickup spot.

9. Your Professional and Alumni Network

Alumni events, industry associations, chamber mixers and conferences put you in rooms of accomplished people, some of them single, with something already in common. Keep it light, and follow up outside the event.

10. A Date-First or Curated App, If You Keep One

If you’re not ready to delete everything, change the kind of app. Breeze skips the chat entirely and books the first drink at a partner bar, but in the U.S. it’s in New York City only. The League makes you apply, uses LinkedIn to verify accounts and shows a small daily batch of profiles. Both are still apps, with an app’s limits.

Which Alternative Fits You?

• Busy, and clear about what you want: a personal matchmaker such as Julie Ferman, or at least free registration with one.
• You meet people, but it never turns into a relationship: a dating coach.
• You want to judge chemistry in person, fast: hosted events and speed dating.
• You want free and low-pressure: clubs, classes, volunteering and your friends.
• You’re over 50: put more weight on people and places than on apps. In a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, only 3% of adults 50 and older had used a dating site or app in the past year, compared with 15% of adults under 50.
• You’ll keep one app: a date-first or curated one, alongside at least one of the offline options.

Matchmaker, Singles Event or App: Which Is Better for Meeting Quality People?

It comes down to who does the screening. At a singles event, the organizer screens only by age band and the ticket, and you judge the chemistry in person. On an app, you screen, from photos and a few lines of text. A matchmaker screens for what’s hard to see from outside, like relationship readiness and values, before you ever meet.

The cost runs the other way: an event is an evening and a ticket, an app is free to a subscription, and a matchmaker is the biggest investment. Nothing stops you from doing all three at once.

There is no comparison in using online dating and a matchmaker.

Barry Elman, a matchmaking client of Julie’s, in a Google review

Human Matchmaker or AI Recommendations?

Most people doubt that software can predict love. In a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, only 21% of U.S. adults said the kind of computer programs dating sites and apps use could determine whether two people will eventually fall in love. And in The Harris Poll’s January 2026 survey, 75% of singles said AI has made dating interactions harder to trust.

I’m not much of a fan of online dating these days, because I know too much about the way the algorithms work: they serve up the popular people, and those people get all the attention. In my practice no algorithm is involved. I select and vet every introduction myself, and both people approve it before a date is set. Julie Spira, the online dating expert, gave the fairest line on AI I’ve heard on my podcast: “use it as a tool, but not as the end all.”

Where I Work, and What’s Near You

In Los Angeles, I work with singles from Beverly Hills to Pasadena from my office on Wilshire Boulevard, and I’ve written about alternatives to dating apps for Santa Monica and Brentwood professionals specifically. In Colorado, see matchmaking in Denver, and in New Mexico, Santa Fe matchmaking.

Thursday, Timeleft and CitySwoon all list Los Angeles and Denver on their sites; none of them lists Santa Fe. Santa Fe has its own: my colleague Maggie Lamb runs Local Singles, in-person events that, by its count, draw more than 2,600 members from Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Taos and Los Alamos. As she put it on my podcast, “online dating, most of the interest is far away. And who has time for that? We want to meet people right here.” If what you need next is the how-to rather than the options, start with how to meet people without dating apps.

FAQs About Alternatives to Dating Apps

julieferman.com · Julie@JulieFerman.com · 805-371-9557