Flirtbate

Flirtbate has one of the best titles I’ve seen on a porn website in years, in part because it sounds like something that’s been around for years. There’s a certain familiarity to it that might owe a little to earlier platforms, though the words they’ve smooshed together speak for themselves. I knew what the portmanteau was hinting at even before I clicked the link, so I wasn’t surprised to find a webcam site at the other end. This ain’t another generic Chaturbate knockoff, though. This one aims to be even more intimate than the usual internet peep shows you’re already tuning in to see. So, you ready to spend the evening flirting and masturbating?

Flirtbate.com is an adult webcam platform with an emphasis on one-on-one chats. They’re one of the newer cam sites out there, living on a domain just months old, but they’re already pulling thousands of visitors a day. Traffic stats are just popularity measurements on other sites, but they’re vital on sites where users are going to be interacting with each other. Just looking at the numbers, I had high hopes even before I lubed up my favorite silicone bunghole, so let me tell you how I spent the last few hours.

Look at All These Beautiful Women

In any popular website genre, you always end up seeing the same basic presentations over and over again. Free tubes tend to have the same basic wall-of-thumbnails layout, premium movie sites have an auto-playing montage video at the top of the tour, and every dating app these days has you swiping left or right. You wouldn’t believe how many PornDude copycats I’ve seen who imitate my style, sometimes straight-up stealing my whole website, images and all.

I assumed Flirtbate was going to be a webcam site when I saw the name, but they started defying my expectations as soon as I loaded up the front page. One of the subtle differences that alters the hell out of the vibe are the vertical, round-cornered thumbnails, which give the joint a more personal and modern feel than every LiveJasmin clone with the boxy previews out front. Instead of screengrabs from current cam shows, the pics feel like a mix of naughty Tinder photos and straight-up porn.

It’s not uncommon to see cam sites filled with one particular demographic or another, especially when we’re talking about newer sites that haven’t had as much time to build their following. Flirtbate.com must be doing a great job promoting the service, though, because they’ve already got a nice variety of women from around the world. As I type this up, the list of models currently online includes a thick-ass 31-year-old Brazilian in a sexy Santa outfit, a 26-year-old American ebony chick going by the name Doggy Squirter, a 29-year-old Filipina girl next door, and a 31-year-old English BDSM enthusiast in a cum-covered gimp mask.

It's afternoon in Chicago as I type this up, and I’ve currently got my pick of about 50 women with an Online icon, as well as a handful with a Highly Available banner across the top of their front-page photos. There are usually dozens of women connected at any given moment. It's not the greatest spread compared to the big, established sites, but not bad at all for a platform this fresh. With any luck, those numbers will just continue to grow as more people hear about the place.

Nearly 400 models are currently listed on the roster. You can browse by online status, country, age rage, gender or price. I saw some real beauties who weren’t online when I visited, so I just clicked the heart icon to save them to my list of Favorites. When I come visit again, I can skip right to my list and see if any of them are back online.

Flirting and Bating by the Numbers

Flirtbate only lists a few bits of key information below each thumbnail out front. You get a name, an online icon, a flag of their country, their languages and their price per minute. Models can set their own prices, and they do vary quite a bit. You tend to see the laws of global economics at work on a cam site, a rule that holds true here. I see a lot of Latinas and Asians offering shows at 15 credits per minute, but you’ll easily pay twice that to chat with a blonde American babe.

I usually don’t mention pricing until later when I’m writing up a cam site, but it’s worth mentioning now because of how they’ve integrated it into the trial. New members get a free minute, no matter how many credits the model is actually charging. I tried clicking my way into a video chat before I’d even signed up and got a message saying, “Caliimarie has given you 25 credits!” The one small catch is that I’d have to register an account first.

One of the only immediate downsides to the whole setup at Flirtbate versus other webcam platforms is just the general lack of freebies. That one minute ain’t going to carry you very far, but you can probably watch people full-on fucking for free on a site like Bongacams right now. Then again, there’s no real intimacy between you and the talent when you’re just some cheapskate among the crowd of hundreds. If you’re looking for some kind of connection and a custom spectacle as you shake your dick at the screen, your odds are much better here.

To that end, credits are about ten cents apiece, no matter which package you buy. The ten-dollar bundle gives you an extra 20 credits or you can score a bonus fifty when spending a hundo, but the bulk discounts are pretty weak compared to almost any other webcam site. Call me old fashioned, but I think you should get more than a couple extra minutes when you break out a Benjamin.

Selecting My Internet Date for the Evening

On most cam sites, you join a free public room first, and then you’ve got the option to take it to a pricier private chat if you like what you see. Since Flirtbate.com skips the freebies and goes straight to one-on-one time, there’s just a little more inherent risk that you won’t get what you were hoping for. They seem to have anticipated this, because they’ve built in a couple methods of putting you at ease before you pull out your wallet.

For one thing, there’s a lot of free eye candy. I clicked on a big-boobed thumbnail out front to see Tati’s full profile, which include a mouthwatering little gallery of shots. She shows off her tits, ass, legs and feet, as well as a purple vibrator she’d love to perform for you with. I saw a lot of cleavage, ass and panties among the free photos, but no nipples or tight, little holes. Maybe they’ve restricted the more explicit stuff in their content guidelines for preview pics.

The profiles on Flirtbate also include user reviews. I don’t know about you, but I really prefer to hear somebody else’s opinion before I spend money on anything, whether it’s a new router or a pair of jugs shaking on my screen. Tati’s got 27 reviews so far, and she seems like she’s a little bit polarizing. A lot of dudes gave her five stars, but some gave just one.

I hope they roll a Rating filter into their search function, which would help narrow down the selection if that’s an important factor for you. The next model I clicked on, Laiss, had fewer ratings but an overall better score. She’s available as I type this up at 20 credits a minute, and based on her preview pics, I’m going to have to wrap up this review so I can really enjoy the conversation.

Flirtbate.com might not have the same kind of freebies you find on every other cookie-cutter webcam sex site, but they do offer a deeper, more direct form of internet intimacy. The whole platform is built with a personal experience in mind, which is exactly the experience you’re going to want when you see these girls. They’ve already got an impressive roster for such a new site, and I’m eager to watch it grow in the coming months and years. I’ve actually got something growing in my pants right now, so if you’ll excuse me…