The Best STD Dating Sites

According to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), the United States sees more than 2 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) every year.1 That’s in addition to the estimated 1.2 million Americans already living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and 66.5 million with human papillomavirus (HPV), herpes, trichomoniasis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, or hepatitis B.2 3

Yet, as common as STDs are, they carry an unfortunate stigma, so having one can make it difficult to date and find love.4

STD dating sites aim to correct this issue by connecting users with other singles living under similar circumstances. Catering to adults living with various diagnoses, they can remove some of the stigma and reduce the risk of potentially infecting a partner.

But how well do these sites work, and how do they stack up against one another? This guide answers these questions and more. Read on for all the details, but here are our top recommendations for those in a hurry.

Our 2026 recommendations for STD dating sites

• Best overall: Positive Singles
• Runner-up: Meet People With Herpes
• Best for private chat and calls: Meet Positives
• Best for HIV news and networking: POZ Personals
• Best budget pick for HSV daters: HWerks
• Best for herpes community support: HWerks

At Innerbody Research, we thoroughly evaluate every product and service we review, including STD dating sites. Our testing team has created profiles on all the top sites and used them to scrutinize interface design, dating pool quality, and more.

Through the course of our investigations, we also perused various scientific journals to read up on the nuances, symptoms, and treatments for various STDs, as well as the shifting attitudes on STD status, stigma, and dating life. Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this guide is thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy.

Over the past two decades, we have helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

It can be exceptionally hard to evaluate a dating site of any kind without creating a profile and spending time interacting with its community. When we did this with the top STD dating sites, it revealed several criteria that would be top-of-mind for most users:

• Privacy
• Dating pool
• Cost
• Site features

We then used those criteria to measure the sites against one another. Here are our findings:

Privacy

Winner: Positive Singles

Your STD status is your business, and only you should decide who to share that information with. Because of this, STD dating sites keep your privacy a top priority. Some use encryption services and other measures to protect users’ personal information. Many offer discreet billing and secure payments. To keep the community safe, many sites also allow you to report or block members you suspect are not actually living with an STD.

The best combination of privacy options we’ve seen comes from Positive Singles, where you can delete your profile and expect the data to be gone for good from the company server within six months, and for no cost (some competitors, like Meet Positives, actually charge you a fee if you want to delete all your site data, not just remove your profile). Also, as a paid member of Positive Singles, you can set who gets to see your profile and photos (e.g., certain matches or people you’ve reached out to).

Dating pool

Winner: Positive Singles

The more members a site has, the better your chances of making a match. Many sites offer location-based searching, so you can find out how many people in your area are available to meet. In this guide, we prioritized sites with the most members, particularly those whose members are active and success stories abound.

Having more than 2 million active members, Positive Singles has the STD dating market cornered when it comes to dating pool size. With a number that big, the company understandably advertises it.

Other sites bury their user information, which forces us to calculate the pool size via various match searches and results comparisons to come up with a reasonable estimate. The site with the next-largest pool we found was Meet People With Herpes, an HSV-specific dating site whose parent company also owns Positive Singles.

Cost

Winner: HWerks

Most STD dating sites allow you to try out the service for free or at a low cost, but then you have to pay a membership fee to take advantage of the site's truly useful features. The fee is typically recurring, ranging from $10 to $50 per month, depending on the site and billing frequency you choose.

HWerks, however, stands apart in that it dispenses with the free-user tier and has you make just a one-time payment of $56 for a lifetime membership. Within just a few months, it’s less expensive than any other recommendation in this guide. Here’s a table laying it all out (when there are two prices listed, it indicates dual membership options):

POZ Personals is the only site that has a potentially lower total cost after one year, but the cost exceeds that of HWerks in your 13th month. So, in both the short and long term, HWerks presents the most cost-effective option.

That being said, HWerks is a herpes-specific site. If you’d prefer to explore romantic interests outside of the herpes scope, then POZ Personals (followed by Meet Positives) is your most affordable choice.

Site features

Winner: Positive Singles

STD dating sites have standard features that you find on any other dating site, like matching, searching, and messaging. Some also have additional features that help you hone your searches, organize your matches, and personalize your profile. Some even feature video calls and live chat to help you further connect with potential mates.

Positive Singles has some of the most in-depth features you could ask for from its free side, with a Tinder-like application called Flame and the ability to message other members freely as long as they message you first. You have to be a paid member to send that message first, but the site offers additional ways to make your interest known (e.g., matching through Flame, or sending a notification akin to a wink or a like that lands in the other person's mailbox).

But a different site, Meet Positives, earns runner-up consideration here because of a specialized set of features available through its Safe Connect membership tier, which works in conjunction with a network platform of the same name. With this, you have access to an anonymous call and text feature that lets you chat with other users by phone through a masked number. Unfortunately, Safe Connect membership is Meet Positives’ highest subscription tier, so you’ll pay a premium for the privilege. Positive Singles has an app that features a similar system, but the app has its own membership fees.

Before we start this guide in earnest, we should discuss the debate over the terms “sexually transmitted disease (STD)” and “sexually transmitted infection (STI).” These terms are often used interchangeably, but they have different meanings.

Generally, having an STI can cause an STD.5 Something is considered a “disease” when it presents symptoms, which not all STIs do. And the word “disease” has negative connotations that contribute to stigma. For these reasons, some people prefer the term STI.

In this guide, however, we use the term STD because many of the sites we review also use that term.

An STD dating site is much like any other dating site, with the exception that all members of the dating pool are living with one or more STDs. These sites model themselves after many of the most successful general dating sites, so they have several qualities in common: the ability to construct profiles, matches made by algorithm, and the means to communicate with other users.

Who should use an STD dating site?

If you’ve tested positive for an incurable STD or have a chronic or latent infection, you may want to use an STD dating site to find a partner who will accept your situation without judgment.6 But even if you aren't sure that joining a site with a paying membership would be worth it, creating a free (and minimal) profile is still useful for anyone seeking a concentrated repository of STD resources, as many STD dating sites also have blogs, educational materials, and even databases of locations for treatment and support.

You also don’t have to be looking for love to join an STD dating site. Living with herpes or HIV can be isolating, and many sites have aspects dedicated to community building, regardless of romantic aspirations.7 Joining such a community of people who understand your experience can help mitigate loneliness.

Who might want to look elsewhere for dating services?

You might want to consider an alternative dating platform if your STD is treatable and you’re undergoing treatment. The medical community generally advises against sexual contact with other positive individuals while undergoing treatment, even if you have the same infection.8 The rate at which a given treatment works can depend on numerous variables, such as the efficacy of certain treatments, infection timetables, individual metabolism. If you and a partner are at different stages of treatment, even by as little as a day, you could pass that infection back and forth to one another. Antibiotics and similar drugs aren’t intended to be used as prophylactics.

Another population that should look elsewhere for dating is (obviously) people who don’t have an STD. This isn’t a question of your health — your bodily autonomy is your own, and we’re not here to judge — but rather of ethics. The people who rely on STD dating sites use them with an expectation of privacy, which is predicated on the assumption that everyone else in the community is in the same boat as them.

When someone violates that trust, it undermines the sanctity of the system. So, if you’re STD-negative, you should look elsewhere for dating services.

There are benefits and drawbacks to using any dating site. Broadly speaking, you have to take the good with the bad, and it’s up to you to create a beneficial experience.

But STD dating sites present a unique set of pros and cons that are worth exploring.

Pros

• Avoiding “the talk”: When you meet and date someone who doesn’t have an STD, there should always come a time when you disclose your STD status. This talk can be a dealbreaker for some people. With an STD dating site, the talk doesn’t go away completely, but it’s different because you’re talking to someone in much the same situation as you.
• Reduced risk of transmission: If you and a match both have the same STD, you don’t have to worry about potentially infecting them. It’s still essential to have a conversation about safe sex practices (just as in any sexual relationship), but you don’t have to worry about the STD you have in common.
• Support: Unlike other dating sites, most STD dating sites provide community support resources that can help you manage and treat your STD. Some sites have message boards, chatrooms, local support groups, and lists of clinics to help you take care of yourself, mind and body.

Cons

• Limited dating pool: STD-specific dating sites have fewer users than general dating sites do. After all, there are more people without STDs than with. So you’ll have your pick of fewer profiles than you might see on Tinder or Bumble, and the pool ought to be even smaller in less populous locations.
• Reinforcing stigma: Some argue that STD dating sites actually feed into STD stigma by relegating people with STDs to niche platforms and implying that they shouldn’t date people without STDs. Of course, the millions of people using STD dating sites certainly don’t feel they’re contributing to stigma. Instead, they’re using these sites as a tool to react against stigma and date successfully.

Using an STD dating site is nearly identical to using any other dating site. The principal difference is that completing your base profile involves designating an STD status.

After you’ve created your base profile, you can begin to engage in the same kinds of experiences you would have on mainstream platforms, such as:

Best overall

Positive Singles is the most robust STD dating site. It has more than 2 million active members, as well as over 2.5 million member conversations a month and 60,000+ member-written success stories. It doesn’t cater to a specific STD but rather allows users to choose which one they have from a list. This information appears on user profiles and is searchable when matching with potential mates. The list of STDs includes:

• Herpes (HSV-1 cold sore & genital, HSV-2 cold sore & genital, unsure which type)
• HPV
• HIV
• Hepatitis B
• Hepatitis C
• Chlamydia
• Thrush
• Syphilis
• Gonorrhea
• Other STD

Once you’ve created your account, you can begin exploring Positive Singles’ many features and user sections, most of which are available to free and paid users alike (though with limited functionality for free users).

The site offers many amenities in addition to matching with a potential partner, including:

There’s also a Positive Singles app for Android and iOS. It’s highly rated and includes most of the same features as the website, with some differences. The app doesn’t include the STD Q&A, dating adviser, or list of STD care locations, but it does have a few features that are absent from the website:

• Voice chat: like a chatroom but using voice instead of text
• Video calls: a private video chat between two members
• Drift bottle: a place to send and receive anonymous messages

Privacy and security

Because your STD status is private and can still carry a stigma, Positive Singles takes many extra steps to ensure that your information is secure. It uses a privacy safeguarder that protects users from litigation if disputes arise. Also, it doesn’t provide, sell, or rent personal information to any third-party organization. All information you provide is kept confidential.

Your profile privacy settings let you personalize your privacy so that you feel comfortable. You can choose to show or hide your profile from certain members, as well as view and edit your subscription and notifications. Plus, premium members can browse profiles anonymously and hide their online status from other members.

Positive Singles allows members to report any profile they suspect violates the community terms of use and encourages all members to verify their identities within 48 hours of creating a profile. A member can confirm their identity by uploading a copy of a photo ID. Other members can see if a profile is verified, leading to higher credibility on the site and more matches.

Purchases with a debit or credit card will show on your statement as “SuccessfulMatch.” Some other companies, like HWerks, do a poor job of concealing their identity on bank statements, so we appreciate this level of discretion.

Free vs. paid features

Here’s a quick view of the features you get with a standard (free) Positive Singles membership versus a premium (paid) one:

Standard accounts look like they come with a lot of functionality, but they do limit your ability to search for partners via preferences like age, location (more specific than state), gender, STD, and relationship status. And only being able to search by state can be tough if you live in a less populated place like North Dakota, though it would be less tough for residents of a state closer to Rhode Island in size.

You also can’t respond to a message unless it’s from a premium member. Fortunately, premium status is displayed in profiles, so you can target premium users with winks in the hopes they’ll reach out. Once they do reach out, you can communicate freely.

Pricing

Here’s a quick breakdown of Positive Singles’ pricing.

These prices are neither the lowest nor the highest among STD dating sites with a monthly recurring subscription charge. Considering the level of functionality you get, we feel that the pricing is competitive.

Runner-up for best overall STD dating site

Meet People With Herpes (MPWH) is owned by SuccessfulMatch, the same parent company that runs Positive Singles. In fact, we ranked Positive Singles above MPWH in our guide to the best herpes dating sites, simply due to its much larger dating pool and track record. But MPWH is still a valuable option for daters with HSV.

All of the features and design elements of Positive Singles are present on the MPWH site and the MPWH app (which is why we don’t have separate subsections for those aspects here). The one notable exception is the range of options for STD status and STD search filters.

Compared to Positive Singles, MPWH has a much smaller dating pool of about 400,000 members. (There are over 2 million members on Positive Singles.) However, since the dating pool is exclusive to those living with a herpes infection, the odds of you matching with someone who shares your STD status are still high.

Pricing

The most important distinction between MPWH and Positive Singles is price. Indeed, MPWH is less expensive at every billing frequency:

That’s good enough to make MPWH the overall third-least expensive dating site in this guide, behind only HWerks and POZ Personals.

Best for private chat and calls

Meet Positives is similar to Positive Singles in many ways (it even lets you choose from the same STD options), except it doesn’t quite measure up in terms of community resources and dating guidance. What it does offer, though, are some unique features (e.g., live private chat, text, and call) and decent functionality for free members. For example, from your profile homepage, you can:

• Quick search to find a match based on gender, age range, and whether or not match profiles include a photo
• Advanced search with preferences such as height, relationship status, ethnicity, body type, religion, education, and keyword (advanced searches are for paid members)
• “Living with” search to find a match based solely on STD status
• Search by location to find matches nearby or in any location you prefer

Your profile homepage also shows a list of other members who have viewed your profile and a listing of your blog posts. You can “add friends” on Meet Positives (similar to Facebook) so your homepage also shows a listing of your friends.

Additionally, one feature that you’ll see at the bottom of every page you visit is a quick-exit button. This is an important element of Meet Positives because it allows users to protect their privacy. If you’re on the site and need to hide it quickly, clicking this button takes you to a Google search page.

At the highest subscription tier, members can enjoy private voice calls, text messages, and video calls using mobile phones. The site uses Safe Connect to provide you with an anonymous phone number to connect with other members discreetly. This means that you can communicate with matches via video, phone, or text, and your real contact info is kept confidential until you choose to share it. However, this feature is only available at the highest subscription tier.

Privacy and security

Meet Positives takes several precautions to ensure your information is kept confidential. Firstly, the company doesn't sell or rent your personal data to third parties or affiliate sites. It may use anonymized information for data aggregation, but that just means only non-identifying information might be used for these purposes.

Meet Positives encrypts any personal information collected from you. It’s hidden from search engines and can only be seen by members logged in to the site. It uses Stripe, a well-regarded payment service used by companies like Google and Amazon, to collect online payments.

You can also specify which members can and can’t see certain aspects of your profile, including photos. This flexibility is available to free members (whereas Positive Singles only provides it to paid members).

In the Accounts & Settings tab of your profile, you can change your personal information at any time, including your email address and password, or permanently delete your account. Unfortunately, Meet Positives charges you a fee if you want to delete your account data entirely. This is egregious, in our estimation. It’s the only site we’ve encountered to charge for deletion, and given the sensitive nature of these sites, we expect a greater degree of respect for users’ privacy needs.

Free vs. paid features

In addition to the general functionality we’ve described, a free Meet Positives account allows you to:

• Request friendship
• Wink
• Ask a question
• Add to favorites
• Request a meeting

But if you want to email, text, chat, or video message with a member, you have to pay for a subscription. To that end, Meet Positives offers two tiers that vary somewhat in their distinct feature sets. There’s Premium Connect, which lets you message other members, see who viewed your profile, and do local searches. And there’s Safe Connect, which has all of Premium’s features plus the ability to conduct private video chats, calls, and texts.

Pricing

The Premium Connect and Safe Connect tiers also vary in their price points:

Premium Connect looks like this, cost-wise:

And Safe Connect looks like this:

Depending on your billing interval, you’d pay around 30-50% more for the Safe Connect plan, which is altogether the most expensive option in this guide (but also Meet Positives’ most significant distinctive quality).

Best for HIV news and networking

POZ Personals is part of POZ, a website and print magazine aimed at people living with HIV or AIDS. The publication has been around since 1994, and the website, in its current form, encompasses blogs, news, videos, and other community-building resources. As a registered POZ Personals user, you have access to these resources in addition to a well-connected social network for friendships, community, and romance.

Your profile homepage, called your dashboard, provides you with important info about other users as well as an opportunity to improve your profile and explore member profiles. From your dashboard, you can also manage your profile by adding information. The more robust your profile, the more likely you are to find sufficient matches. This includes photos, personal details, and search blockers.

The dashboard design leaves a lot to be desired. It’s hard to take in much information at a glance; you have to do a little work to find what you’re looking for.

When you log in, one thing you’ll see are these:

• How many times your profile has been viewed
• How many members are currently online
• How many members have logged on in the last few hours

(To give you a sense of what sort of user pool you’re working with: when our testers last logged in, 14 members were currently online, and 469 members had logged in recently.)

In terms of search functions, you can perform a quick search using gender, age, sexual orientation, location, and distance preferences, and also opt to see only profiles with photos or of users who were recently online.

Advanced searches add criteria like HIV status, relationship type, ethnicity, religion, body art, astrological sign, and interests, among others. Only premium members can save search results and preferences.

The list menu on your dashboard provides several ways to group members you’ve interacted with.

• Hotlist: a list of member profiles you like and want to contact again
• Block list: a list of member profiles you’ve blocked from viewing your profile
• Private photos list: which members you’ve shared your private photos with
• Footprints: who has viewed your profile and whose profiles you’ve viewed

Privacy and security

POZ takes privacy considerations seriously and takes many steps to protect you. Your personal information is not shared with third parties without your consent. The company may provide aggregated data to third parties, but it will not include any personally identifiable information.

When you make a payment to POZ, you’re protected by Authorize.Net and PayPal. Both companies provide safe and secure online payments.

Free vs. paid features

Like most of the other sites in this guide, POZ Personals offers both a free basic membership and a premium membership, except the premium version is inexpensive compared to similar sites.

Basic members can:

• Create an account
• Add up to five photos
• Search for and message other members
• Create lists of members they’re interested in

With a premium account, members can:

• Save search results and preferences
• Receive alerts when new members join
• See each member that has visited their profile
• Use search blocker to control if your profile appears in search results
• Send unlimited messages and flirts
• Upload an unlimited number of both public and private photos

Pricing

If you choose a premium account, you have several options for the duration of your subscription. Each option is set to auto-renew until you cancel your membership.

• 1 month: $9.99
• 3 months: $19.99
• 6 months: $29.99
• 12 months: $49.99

Among our recommendations with recurring subscription costs, POZ has the lowest price points. To put it in perspective, you can get a full year’s worth of premium POZ Personals for less than you’d pay for three months of Positive Singles, MPWH, and Meet Positives. A 12-month subscription is also less than HWerks’ one-time fee, but that’s no longer the case once you enter your 13th month as a paid POZ member.

Best budget pick for HSV daters, and best for herpes community support

Started in 2007, HWerks is a dating site for people living with herpes or HPV. But HWerks emphasizes that romance is just one facet of living with herpes and HPV, and its goal is to provide care beyond dating. Thus, its scope goes further to include a community feel with various amenities:

• Chatrooms
• Forums
• Secret Facebook groups
• Local support groups

To preserve member privacy, HWerks doesn’t allow people to join without paying for a membership. It offers a lifetime membership for a one-time fee of $56. This is to weed out people who aren’t serious about taking advantage of HWerks’ services and protects members from “lurkers.”

Honestly, when we finally got through the paywall, we were a little disappointed by what we found. Our testers had built up some expectations around this lifetime membership-only system, but the site design was mediocre, with too many photo-less profiles and too few features overall.

The features that are present are thoughtful, though. In addition to searching member profiles and finding potential mates, HWerks members can use a variety of features related to friendship, networking, and advice:

• The member chatroom includes discussions and Q&A sessions. HWerks organizes a weekly, members-only meet and greet.
• On the forums, members can ask questions and share stories. This can be especially helpful for people with a new diagnosis.
• HWerks operates a secret Facebook group that is open to all members. Because it’s a secret group, other Facebook users can’t see that you belong to it.
• The site includes a list of local groups in the U.S. and Canada. Select your state or province to see any herpes or HPV support groups or secret Facebook groups in your area.
• Informational sections like the Herpes FAQ, the list of national events, and the HWerks newsletter help inform and connect site visitors.

Privacy and security

HWerks does not share your personal information with third parties and uses reasonable methods to keep your info safe. Your payment is collected using PayPal or Stripe, two well-known, secure companies for online transactions.

However, when you purchase a membership, it shows on your statement as HW Erks & Co. Anyone with internet access can quickly figure out what that is. We'd like to see the company reconfigure its presence on bank statements to protect users' privacy further.

Pricing

Again, HWerks members pay a one-time fee of just $56. In just 1-3 months, that becomes a better deal than a subscription to either Positive Singles, Meet Positives, MPWH, or HSV Singles, depending on the payment interval. And in 13 months, it’s less expensive than POZ Personals.

Other STD dating sites are available in addition to our top picks. They failed to satisfy our fundamental criteria to make our list, but they do have unique features that may appeal to some daters (e.g., inexpensive premium trials, a broad international reach, or low overall rates).

Here are our choices for top honorable mentions: