About Orthodate
A dating app made for Orthodox Christians.
Orthodate is built for Orthodox Christians. Not a numbers game and not another swiping app — a quiet place to meet someone, understand how faith shapes daily life and be honest about what each of you hopes to build.
Orthodate is a dating app for Orthodox Christians who want faith and intentions to be clear, not a game. Profiles are built around the things that actually matter — your parish life, how you keep the fast, whether you want children, and where you see yourself in five years — so you can tell early on whether someone may be a good fit.
Profile options include Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, including Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Antiochian, OCA, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian and other traditions. Email addresses and, where enabled, mobile numbers are confirmed before a profile appears in discovery.
We are an independent team rather than a church body. Orthodate is not sponsored by any jurisdiction, diocese or parish, and nothing published here should be read as an official statement of the Church. Where a question is pastoral — whether a particular marriage can be blessed, what your own parish expects of you — the answer belongs to the priest who knows your situation, and we will say so rather than guess on his behalf.
- No advertising
- Nobody is promoted, boosted or ranked because they paid.
- Account confirmation
- Email addresses and, where enabled, mobile numbers are confirmed.
- Many traditions
- Eastern and Oriental Orthodox church options are included.
- Yours to delete
- Delete your account in Settings; live profile data is removed promptly under our Privacy Policy.
What we decided not to do
The choices that shaped this app
Most of what distinguishes a dating app is what it refuses to do. These are the four refusals we have built around, and they each cost something.
The people, not the metrics
Discovery deals a small, fixed batch each day rather than an endless deck. A limit is an odd thing for an app to impose on itself, and it is the clearest signal we can give that time spent here is not the product.
No advertising, ever
There are no ads, no promoted profiles and no paid placement in anyone’s matches. Nobody appears higher because they spent money, and nobody’s attention is being sold to a third party.
Say what the Church says, not what we think
Where practice differs between jurisdictions — the calendar, mixed marriages, fasting — we describe the difference and point to the priest who would actually prepare you, rather than flattening it into one convenient answer.
Deletion has to mean deletion
Closing an account removes the profile, the photographs, the matches and the messages. We ask you to confirm because it cannot be undone, not to talk you out of it.
Check it yourself
What we have actually built, in public
A dating app asks for a lot of trust before it gives anything back. These three things are free, open to anyone and useful on their own, which is the only way we know to earn that trust in advance.
A parish directory, not a list of links
We built and maintain a searchable directory of 1,701 Orthodox parishes across 62 states, provinces and territories and 1,117 towns, with addresses, phone numbers and directions. It carries no advertising and it is useful whether or not you ever create a profile.
Guides written for one place at a time
Our 45 city guides name real neighbourhoods, real parishes and real annual gatherings. A build check rejects any page that repeats a sentence from another one — a deliberate constraint against the template content that fills this category.
A library, kept honest
145 guides on dating, discernment, safety, marriage preparation and parish life. Each carries a review date, and where a claim rests on a source outside our own knowledge, that source is linked in the text.
A changelog that records the mistakes too
Every release that changes what you see, who can reach you or what we store is written up in plain language and dated, including the outages and the bugs. You can read what the product actually does rather than what a feature page promises.
Questions
About us, answered directly
Who runs this, how it is paid for, and what happens to your data — the things worth knowing before you create a profile.
Who is behind Orthodate?
Orthodate is built and operated by a small independent team, not by a church body, a diocese or a jurisdiction. Nothing here is an official pronouncement of any Orthodox church, and we say so plainly wherever the difference could matter. Questions, corrections and complaints reach a person: every message through the contact form opens a support ticket that somebody answers.
Is Orthodate endorsed by the Orthodox Church?
No, and we do not claim to be. No jurisdiction, diocese or parish sponsors this app. Where we describe church practice we describe it as accurately as we can and direct you to the parish priest for anything pastoral, because he is the person with the authority to answer it for your situation.
How does Orthodate make money if there is no advertising?
Subscriptions, and nothing else. Orthodate is a for-profit company, not a charity or a non-profit. A free account remains a usable product — a daily set of profiles, matching and unlimited messaging — and two optional plans, Orthodate+ and OrthodateX, pay for the rest. Nothing that used to be free was taken away to create them. There is no advertising anywhere in the product, we do not sell member data, and we do not intend to build a business that depends on doing so.
How do you keep members safe?
Members can verify themselves with a short selfie check: the app issues a random pose, the camera feed never leaves the device, and two still frames are reviewed by a person before a verified mark appears. Blocking and reporting are available from any profile or conversation, reports are read by a human, and an account can be placed on hold while something is investigated. Your location is used to calculate distance and is never shown as an address.
Which Orthodox traditions can use Orthodate?
Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions — Greek, Antiochian, OCA, Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Georgian and others — along with the Oriental Orthodox churches, including Coptic, Armenian and Ethiopian. The distinction between those two families is real and we do not blur it; a profile records what someone actually belongs to.
How is the writing on this site produced and checked?
Every guide carries a visible review date, factual claims about jurisdictions are drawn from the churches’ own published material and linked where relevant, and pastoral questions are referred to a priest rather than answered for him. Our editorial standards page sets out the whole process, including how to tell us something is wrong.
What happens to my data if I delete my account?
The profile, the photographs, the matches and the message history are deleted. You confirm by typing your account email address, and there is a short countdown before the button activates, because the action is not reversible. Encrypted backups are overwritten within thirty days, and the Privacy Policy sets out the detail.
Have a look around.
No ads, clear account controls and a profile you can remove from Settings.