Open Relationships compared with 3Fun
3Fun is built around couples and around meeting rather than dating, and that focus is the whole comparison. Whether it suits you depends almost entirely on which of those two things you are actually after.
How to read this
We built one of the two products being compared, so treat this as an argued case rather than a neutral review. Everything said about the other platform here is drawn from its own public description of itself and from what members tell us about using it. We do not link to competitors, and their details change, so check anything that matters to you directly with them.
What 3Fun is built around
3Fun caters to ethically non-monogamous singles and couples and puts a lot of emphasis on being an environment without judgement. It lets individual profiles be linked to a partner or to a couples account, so members can approach others as a team, which is a real feature and one that most mainstream platforms do not offer at all.
Its centre of gravity is meeting rather than dating. That is a legitimate and clearly signalled focus, it serves a large population honestly, and a great many people in open relationships want exactly that. If you are a couple looking to meet other people together, it is doing the job it set out to do.
Where we differ
| Open Relationships | 3Fun | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary orientation | Relationships and dating, including long-term | Meeting, with a strong couples and encounters focus |
| Couples | Linked profiles with separate accounts, inboxes and boundaries | Linked profiles and shared couples accounts |
| Solo members | Full standing, including solo polyamorous members not seeking a primary | Supported, within a couples-oriented environment |
| Profile emphasis | Arrangement, agreements, capacity and what you are looking for | Interests and what you are open to |
| Editorial content | Long-form guides on structures, boundaries and local scenes | Blog content around non-monogamy topics |
| Local depth | Country and city guides on how each scene is organised | Location as a search radius |
The couples question
This is where the two products diverge most sharply, and it is worth being direct about it because the issue matters to a lot of people.
A shared couples account, where two people operate as one profile, is efficient and it produces a specific and well-documented dynamic. The single person on the other side is dealing with a unit rather than with two individuals. They cannot tell which partner is typing. They have no way of knowing whether both people actually want this. And if the connection develops unevenly, which it usually does, the structure has no way to accommodate that.
Our approach is linked but separate. Partners are visible as a couple, and each person keeps their own account, their own inbox and their own ability to decline something without it becoming a joint decision. It is more work and it is slower, and we think it produces markedly better outcomes for everyone involved, including the couple.
Unicorn hunting
The community term for a couple seeking one woman to join them on the couple's terms, with no independent standing in the arrangement. It is the single most common complaint from solo women on any non-monogamous platform, and product design either mitigates it or makes it easier.
The honest case against us
If what you want is to meet people rather than to date them, we are the wrong product and we would say so plainly. Our profiles ask about agreements, capacity and what you are looking for over months, which is a lot of overhead for someone whose intentions are more immediate and entirely honest about being so.
3Fun is also more established in the couples and encounters space, with a population oriented specifically toward it. In that world, being on the platform where those people actually are matters more than any argument about profile design.
Swinging and polyamory are not the same market
A lot of comparison writing in this category treats every non-monogamous platform as competing for one audience. That is wrong, and it produces bad advice. Swinging and polyamory overlap at the edges and are largely different things with different histories, different norms and different expectations.
Swinging is generally recreational and social, organised around couples, events and known venues, and it does not usually involve forming romantic attachments outside the primary relationship. Polyamory is about multiple romantic relationships and the emotional and logistical work that implies. A person can do both, and many do, but a platform optimised for one will feel wrong to someone looking for the other.
The practical failure this causes is a couple from the swinging world approaching a solo polyamorous person, or the reverse, and both parties leaving the conversation annoyed. Neither did anything wrong. They were looking for different things and the platform did not make that clear early enough. Knowing which world a given product is built for prevents most of it.
Who each suits
- Choose a meeting-oriented platform if you are a couple looking to meet other couples or singles for encounters, if your interest is recreational and social, or if you already know the local events scene and want to plug into it.
- Choose us if you want relationships rather than meetings, if you are solo polyamorous and want standing of your own, or if you are a couple who want to date separately as well as together.
- Read unicorn hunting explained before choosing, if you are a couple looking for a third. It is the most common way this goes wrong and it is entirely avoidable.
There is no judgement implied in any of this. Swinging and recreational non-monogamy are legitimate and long-established, and a platform built for them is doing something useful. It is simply a different thing from what we built.
How we compare to other apps
Honest, unlinked comparisons against the platforms non-monogamous people actually use.
Open Relationships and 3Fun
What is 3Fun built for?
Ethically non-monogamous singles and couples, with a centre of gravity around meeting rather than dating. It lets individual profiles link to a partner or to a couples account so members can approach others as a team, which most mainstream platforms do not support at all.
What is the difference in how couples work?
3Fun supports shared couples accounts. We use linked but separate profiles, so partners are visible as a couple while each keeps their own account, inbox and ability to decline something without it becoming a joint decision. That is slower and produces better outcomes for the third person and usually for the couple.
What is unicorn hunting?
The community term for a couple seeking one woman to join them on the couple's terms, with no independent standing in the arrangement. It is the most common complaint from solo women on non-monogamous platforms, and product design either mitigates it or makes it easier.
Which should a couple choose?
A meeting-oriented platform if your interest is recreational and social and you want to meet people together. Ours if you want relationships rather than encounters, or if you want to date separately as well as together. Both are legitimate, and they are different things.
We build one of the products described on this page. Details of other platforms change frequently, and nothing here should be treated as a current statement of their features. Check anything important with them directly.
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