As I wrote and subsequently edited the swinging article, we dabbled with multiple swinger lifestyle sites on the internet and learned that some are pretty good, while many are simply bad or scams. Read on to learn what we found and see what we consider the best sites for the swinging lifestyle.
Evaluation Strategy of Lifestyle Sites
Many factors were considered as we evaluated the lifestyle sites; the most important being the price and popularity, followed closely by features.
Price
Most of the sites offer “free” memberships. Free members are usually very limited on the websites, but can at least have basic profiles. For the most part, the free memberships are nearly worthless, however if you want to maintain your identity in the lifestyle, creating free memberships with the same profile name as your preferred site will help.
Hosting and development of a site requires time and money. We believe paying for membership at a site is fair as long as the price is reasonable and the features and popularity of the site warrant the cost. Some lifestyle members will not talk to persons that have free accounts, to avoid scammers and picture collectors.
You may notice that some lifestyle websites charge close to or slightly more for “lifetime” access as they would for a prepaid year. I believe this is to encourage a high-priced commitment up front, while taking advantage of the unsure with high monthly fees. Many of these sites offer free trials for a few days. Use this time to thoroughly evaluate the site and determine if it is right for you.
Some of the lifestyle websites are outrageously priced, with the most expensive we found being Adult Friend Finder at up to US$420, plus an optional US$240 to allow free members to access your own profile. That’s US$660 for a full membership, automatically renewed.1 They do not offer a lifetime package, but I imagine if they do in the future, it will be horribly expensive.
If a site shows advertisements on paid member pages, this reduces the value of the site in my opinion. Wife Swapping is the worst for this, with Live Cam (fee based) and other advertisements within search results. These cam and other advertisements on Wife Swapping are only slightly different in appearance than actual search results. Very deceptive.
Lifestyle Lounge is among the most expensive sites I have evaluated in the swing lifestyle. When I asked them about it, they actually told me that their premium rates are intentional to filter out lower scale demographics. Their web-site is poorly designed and slow. I don’t know how they are spending the money, but it isn’t on the technology. Their evaluation period is extremely limited, and they delete profiles that do not pay for an extended period. This latter point is unusual for lifestyle websites, since they need high membership numbers to garner sales. Adult Friend Finder is the worst that I found for keeping inactive profiles.
Features
Website features are the tools and layout of the site which impact its usefulness. A site needs to have an intuitive design and function well.
A note on Intuitive Design – A well designed website will be easy for the average person to use. The typical user should be able to setup their profile, privacy and other components with little or no guidance necessary.
Searching and browsing
The ability to search for members is essential. A good site will have a search engine that allows fine tuning by location and distance, and profile type. A great site will have fine tuning like smoking preference, profiles that have pictures and last login date. Searching for a profile name is a great function on the better sites. Sometimes it is difficult to find the profile of someone you met at a party, for example.
Useful Profile Data
Relevant information needs to be present in profiles, such as join date, last login date, membership type, and location. It doesn’t make sense to contact a member that hasn’t been on their account in several months, especially a free member who visited once and likely is not returning. It is just as silly to contact a member that is thousands of miles away.
Other useful profile data is basic statistics and lifestyle preferences. The sites with fun questionnaires help to establish compatibility.
Communications
A couple of the sites offer not only electronic mail communication, but an instant messenger type tool and maybe even chat rooms as well. When prospective profiles are online, being able to have a casual conversation helps with determining a fit. A couple of the sites also have web cam functionality to boost communication features.
Privacy
Most people in the lifestyle wish to be discreet. Protecting intimate pictures and other data is critical for lifestyle websites. Additionally, the ability to “hide” from certain profile types and block trouble-causing profiles is essential.
Some of the sites allow web crawlers and general public visibility for profiles, while other sites only allow access to visitors that are logged onto the site. Some actually give each profile owner the ability to decide their visibility, including being “featured” on a site’s main page.
Of course some of the features do not act as advertised. For example, SDC has Profile Blocking features so that members can keep specific profiles from seeing their profile. Just because they can’t see the profile, doesn’t mean they cannot send private messages. When this issue was raised to SDC support, their response was “I do not see a message from them in your messenger.” Wait – What?! It was a bit disconcerting that SDC Helpdesk can go into member mailboxes at will. It is understood that system administrators can grant themself permission and then gain access to a mailbox or file share, but this is their general helpdesk going into mailboxes easily at will. That’s a red flag on privacy.
Popularity
Lifestyle sites are worthless without members, especially local members. When evaluating the popularity of a site, we are considering the site as a couple for South-Eastern Pennsylvania and Central New Jersey area, since that is where we reside. The number of active profiles and inactive profiles were measured and used to determine the popularity of the website.
Avoid Scams
We have found by experience that some of the lifestyle websites have automated mechanisms to trick free members into upgrading their membership.
Adult Friend Finder (aka Passion and SwapFinder), for example, appears to be one of these sites that sends bogus contact requests from members in the area; even inactive accounts. Free member messages are blurred, so you can’t read the received message without upgrading, and naturally cannot respond either. Within 10 minutes of registering, we received five contact requests on Passion and four on SwapFinder. Bear in mind – we didn’t upload pictures or put much information in the profile yet. In fact, we hadn’t even been notified our profile was approved until about an hour later.
Another example is Swing Seekers. About a week after creating our account, we received a message from ourselves. Apparently, we thought we could be a match. This site has so few local members, that the only match was ourselves. Of course, since we are free members we are not able to respond.
To be honest, Swingers Date Club (SDC) successfully tricked us into paying for a membership using a similar mechanism. We would receive friend invites and messages from profiles that matched our “seeking” setting. Once we purchased a membership, these stopped and those same people have not responded to any follow-up messages from us.
At least SDC allows us to turn off the automatic renewal; many do not. We found a few sites that only way to stop billing is to cancel the account. Be careful of those that terminate the account immediately and do not refund the remaining balance.
WifeSwapping is another example of a site which provides misleading notifications. According to one of their notifications, shown here, we visited our own profile.
These types of alerts are caused by poorly coded automation (aka bots). Ignoring the fact no one wants a bot providing false visits and messages; having poorly coded bots helps expose the fraudulent nature behind the site.
Swingers Central (aka Wife Swapping) told us that we visited our own profile. For the fun of it, we clicked the notification and the result was a message the the profile (us) is no longer part of the site. How’s that for very poorly coded bots?!
Comparison Chart
| Site Name | Yearly Cost (US$) | Free accounts | Popularity | Features | Privacy | Recommend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adult Friend Finder | $108 to $720 Auto-renewing | Severely limited Pay to view profiles. Upgrade to read mail. | Mostly Men | Very Good | Good | No |
| AirTight Lifestyle (Dead) | N/A | Not limited. | Okay | Okay | Okay | Maybe |
| AltPlayground | $140 to $204 | None. | Poor | Good | Poor | Maybe |
| Dating Kinky | $75 to $120 | Slightly limited | Poor | Okay | Okay | No |
| Double Date Nation (Dissolved) | $150 to $240 | Very Limited | Poor | Good | Poor | Gone |
| FabSwingers | $45 to $60 | Limited. | Very Good | Very Good | Very Good | Yes |
| Fet Life | $60 Lifetime $240 | Slightly limited. No video access. Recent posts only. | Poor | Okay | Okay | Yes |
| Hot Wife Hub | $30 to $60 | Limited. No video or chat access. | Poor | Poor | Okay | No |
| Kasidie | $130 to $240 Auto-renewing | Very limited | Good | Very Good | Good | Yes |
| Lifestyle Lounge | $190 to $300 Auto-renewing Lifetime $500 | Evaluation only. Severely limited. | Poor | Okay | Okay | Maybe |
| Local Real Swingers | $180 to $396 Auto-renewing | Very Limited. No access to send mail or view pics. | Poor | Okay | Poor | No |
| Love Voodoo (Dissolved) | $120 to $215 Lifetime $150 | Limited. Upgrade to send mail or chat. | Okay | Good | Okay | Gone |
| MeWe | $55 to $360 | Not limited. | Okay | Okay | Okay | Maybe |
| Naughty Swingers | $21 to $129 | Very limited | Poor | Poor | Poor | Maybe |
| Passion (aka AFF) | $108 to $720 | Severely Limited. No access to send mail or view pics. | Mostly Men | Good | Good | No |
| Quiver | $100 to $144 Auto-renewing | Slightly limited No video or private access. | Okay | Good | Very Good | Yes |
| Real Swingers | $180 to $396 | Very Limited. No access to send mail or view pics. | Mostly Men | Okay | Poor | No |
| RockTie | $60 to $120 Lifetime $95 | Severely limited. No event, nude pic, friends, mail or search access. | Okay | Okay | Okay | Maybe |
| SAF Social (Dissolved) | $120 to $240 | Slightly limited. | Poor | Mediocre | Okay | Gone |
| SDC | $125 to $324 Lifetime $250 | Severely limited | Poor | Mediocre | Okay, with issues | Maybe |
| Swap Finder (aka AFF) | $240 to $480 | Severely Limited. No access to send mail or view pics. | Mostly Men | Good | Good | No |
| Swing Lifestyle | $70 to $180 Lifetime $150 | Severely Limited. No nude pic access or sending mail. | Excellent | Very Good | Very Good | Yes |
| Swing Seekers | $180 to $396 Auto-renewing | Very Limited. No access to send mail or view pics. | Mostly Men | Okay | Poor | No |
| Swing Social | $120 to $180 | Severely Limited. | Poor | Okay | Poor | No |
| Swing Towns | $69 to $204 Lifetime $129 | Slightly limited. Upgrade for advanced tools. | Okay | Mediocre | Very Good | Maybe |
| Swinger Chat City | $180 to $396 Auto-renewing | Very Limited. No access to send mail or view pics. | Poor | Okay | Poor | No |
| Swingers Central | $180 to $396 Auto-renewing | Very Limited. No access to send mail or view pics. | Poor | Okay | Poor | No |
| Swingers Heaven | Unsure - Free at the moment | Not limited yet | Okay | Okay | Okay | Maybe |
| Swingers Hub | $100 to $360 | Not limited. | Poor | Poor | Poor | No |
| Swinging Couples Dating | $84 to $336 Auto-renewing | Very Limited. No access to send mail or view pics. | Poor | Okay | Poor | No |
| Swinging Sex Partners | $230 to $480 Auto-renewing | Very Limited. No access to send mail or view pics. | Poor | Okay | Poor | No |
| True Swingers | $50 to $100 Auto-renewing Lifetime $130 | Slightly limited. Limited number of pic and profile views. Limited mail per hour. | Poor | Good | Good | Maybe |
| Wife Swapping | $180 to $396 Auto-renew | Limited. No access to pics. Limited search and mail per day. | Poor | Okay | Poor | Maybe |
Pricing information is based on the monthly subscription rate for one year to the annual rate if offered. The pricing is factual at the time this article was written/updated and is rounded up to an even US Dollar for comparison purposes. Websites may change their pricing schema, including the offer of promotions at their will and out of control of me.
Final Word on Lifestyle Sites
After careful evaluation and experience on the lifestyle sites, I have found that Swing Lifestyle and Fab Swingers are the winners for our area. Quiver scored very well in performance and features, and is extremely popular in Texas. All four deserve your attention if you are serious about the lifestyle.
The “not bad” sites that we evaluated are Kasidie, Love Voodoo (Dissolved) and Swing Towns. Kasidie has a lot of event promoters that litter the messaging system. If you’re into traveling and hitting events, they might be a good choice for you.
New comer Naughty Swingers (Mid-Atlantic based) gets the award for up and coming. We’re keeping an eye on them, but right now they seem to be heavily focused to their own region and the privacy filters are severely lacking. For what it is worth, their membership cost is very low.
True Swingers (related to True Nudists) and RockTie have fallen stale. Not much activity there.
Update – On True Swingers, our verification status was dropped for an unknown reason several months later. Our case with support was never answered. In fact it still showed as “unread” when updating this article a couple months after the case was opened.
Fetlife is very busy, but it consists of a lot of people advertising their onlyfans, manyvids and similar profit-focused pages. If you have strong fetishes that you like to show off or observe, this is probably the site for you. Bear in mind that the number of actually meeting swingers is limited.
The worst sites, based on our experience and opinion, are Swingers Hub (which has not improved in three years), Adult Friend Finder (aka Passion and SwapFinder), Swing Seekers and Hotwife Hub.
Adult Friend Finder, Passion and SwapFinder are actually the same exact system, using the same accounts and data. These three sites just have a different URL and appearance.
Swinging Sex Partners is one of the not-to-be-trusted sites. It sends automated messages to members claiming to be other couples. Sometimes these messages are readable by free accounts, other times the messages are blurred and the only way to unlock them is to buy VIP membership.
Watch out for the over-priced scamming sites. Based on behaviors, including cross-advertising, we will not be returning to Swinging Couples Dating ( a play on Swingers Date Club? ), Local Real Swingers, Real Swingers or Swinger Chat City. If they offer a “free membership” to their affiliated sites with a paid membership, then they are likely not to be trusted. Every single one of these that we evaluated rated poor or worse for us.
Many sites claim to be “totally free”, but yet drastically restrict free members, allowing no access to send messages, look at member pictures and more (or less, depending on your disposition). Some sites, despite being paid for membership still display advertisements.
AirTight Lifestyle dropped from the face of the earth near the end of January 2020. We’re not surprised as the site had very little activity and “okay” features.
Swing Social has redesigned their site, improving the interface for modern appearance, but their membership is still lacking and their privacy settings have not improved at all. They finally introduced a search tool that allows searching by distance from the user’s designated location, but it is only available to paid members only.
Update August 16, 2019 – Swing Towns has been reduced in our scoring. They sent us meetup notices from ourself. We’ll let them ride as a “not bad” site.
Update October 24, 2020 – Love Voodoo has been merged with AltPlayground, without honoring Love Voodoo membership. Lifetime accounts were made three months long, because they “have no obligation” to honor LoveVoodoo memberships. AltPlayground is expensive for its low popularity and poor privacy features. They do not have any free membership level – not even for evaluation.
Update November 19, 2021 – SAF Social has fallen. Their URL now forwards to another site which appears to be suspicious. It is recommended to stay away from it.
Update October 26, 2022 – Double Date Nation has decided to shutdown, effective October 31.
Update June 15, 2023 – newTumbl has shutdown, according to their website notice. Not sure the exact date this occurred, but the site was operational in May. Additionally, Wife Swapping and Swingers Central both sent us a notice that we want to meet ourselves.
Top 5 Lifestyle Sites
The following top five ranking is based on performance, features, including privacy and popularity. These sites are recommended for people venturing in the Swing Lifestyle.
- Swing Lifestyle
- Fab Swingers
- Quiver
- Kasidie
- Love Voodoo (Dissolved)
Yep – would you believe that? A no longer existent site has outranked several other sites. That’s got to say something!
Disclaimer
You may have noticed some of our links are referral links. These referrals and any related kickbacks have no influence on the content written in this article. They are used to help fund this site, and do a little research on these companies’ referral programs. When enough data is generated, there will likely be an article written on referral programs.
2023 May 09 – Pricing and privacy updated.