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SingCupid.com

Free dating platform, Singapore, A free, Singapore-only dating platform built like a local community: matching and real-time chat, plus region and interest groups, forums, and date guides for one island.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • PostgreSQL
Visit the live project
5Regions covered
FreeMembership
HumanModeration

Background

The big dating apps treat Singapore as one small pool inside a global product: algorithms tuned for cities of millions, paywalls on messaging, and no sense of where anyone actually lives. The founders wanted the opposite, a platform only for people in Singapore, free to use with no premium tiers, organised around the island's regions and the things locals do together, so meeting someone feels less like a slot machine and more like a neighbourhood.

Challenges

  • A single-country product has to feel full from day one. Matching, groups, and events had to be organised by region and interest so a modest member base still feels active wherever you are on the island.
  • Free means no paywall to keep bad actors out. Verification, moderation, and reporting had to be built in from the first commit, and be cheap enough to run on a free product.
  • Community content, date ideas, restaurant guides, and dating-culture articles, is part of the product, and the team needed to publish it themselves without waiting on a developer.

Solution

SingCupid is one Next.js codebase in TypeScript over PostgreSQL, covering the dating side (profiles, preferences, browsing by region and neighbourhood, likes and mutual matches, real-time messaging) and the community side (region and interest group chats, forums) on one profile and permission system.

Trust is layered in: photo verification with a visible badge on verified profiles, one-tap block and report, and a human moderation workflow rather than an algorithm deciding who stays. Conversations stay on the platform until members choose otherwise. Content runs through a built-in publishing pipeline, so date guides and blog posts go out on the team's schedule, not the engineering roadmap. We built it from scratch and we maintain it today.

Key features

  • Region and neighbourhood browsing across Singapore's five areas
  • Like-and-match with mutual notification, then real-time messaging
  • Group chats by region and interest, plus community forums
  • Photo verification badges, one-tap block and report, human moderation
  • Curated date ideas, restaurant guides, and a blog the team publishes without a developer

Outcome

Built from scratch and maintained by us: one codebase runs matching, chat, groups, forums, and content, live today.

The work behind it

Dating appsIndustry solution →Custom softwareSee how we do it →Support & maintenanceSee how we do it →

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