Last updated October 2026
Single man on FabSwingers wondering why your inbox is so quiet? It isn’t you, or at least it isn’t only you. In our own sampling study of FabSwingers on 19 October 2026, we checked 16 UK cities three times in one day and found about 21 men online for every woman. That FabSwingers men to women ratio makes the site close to impossible for single men, and below I show you the numbers city by city, the best and worst times to log on, and what you can actually do about it.
About 21 men online for every 1 woman across 16 UK cities: 13,168 men against 633 women, plus 3,249 couples.
Women were under 5% of the single members online (4.6%).
Worst city for men: Norwich, at 28.7 men per woman. Least bad: Manchester, at 17.6.
Early morning is the worst time to be a man on the site (25 to 1). Early evening is the least bad (19 to 1).
One thing to keep in mind all the way through: this is a sample taken on one day, not a full census of the site. I explain exactly how we did it further down, and I have flagged anything that is only my guess.
How we counted
On Monday 19 October 2026 we searched FabSwingers in 16 UK cities outside London, looking within 10 miles of each city centre for men, women and couples. We ran each search three times: at about 6:45am, 12pm and 6pm UK time. We only compared members who had been online in the same recent window (up to an hour), so the men and women figures are like-for-like rather than “everyone who ever made a profile”. In total we saw 24,444 unique profiles. We did not open, identify or record any individual member. We just counted.
The headline: 21 to 1
Across all 16 cities and all three time slots, our searches turned up 13,168 men, 633 women and 3,249 couples online. That works out at 20.8 men per woman, which I am rounding to 21.
Put another way, of the 13,801 single members online, only 633 were women. That is 4.6%. And if you count everyone, couples included, men made up 77% of the people online and single women just 3.7%.
Here is the cheeky version. If every one of those women picked one man to chat to, fewer than 1 man in 20 would hear back (about 4.8%). Everyone else would be refreshing their inbox and wondering if the site was broken.
It is also worth noticing that couples outnumbered single women by about 5 to 1. On FabSwingers, the second-biggest group online isn’t single women. It’s couples, and that matters, as you will see below.
Men per woman, city by city
Every city we checked came in at more than 17 men per woman. There is no easy city. There are only hard ones and slightly less hard ones.
- Norwich: 28.7 men per woman
- Sheffield: 25.0
- Leicester: 23.4
- Nottingham: 23.4
- Leeds: 22.2
- Bristol: 21.2
- Glasgow: 21.0
- Brighton: 20.8
- Edinburgh: 20.1
- Southampton: 19.8
- Cardiff: 19.6
- Newcastle: 19.6
- Liverpool: 19.2
- Belfast: 19.1
- Birmingham: 18.1
- Manchester: 17.6
Norwich is the toughest by a distance, with 11.1 more men per woman than Manchester. The big northern and Midlands cities, Manchester and Birmingham, are the least bad, which makes sense if you think bigger places pull in more women overall, though that is my guess and the data does not prove it.
The raw numbers are even more sobering than the ratios. Typically we found only 5 to 20 women online in a whole city at any one time. In Leicester, Brighton and Norwich, our searches turned up only about 205 to 255 women in total, and that is going back as far as a year, not just those online now. That is a very small pond with a lot of men fishing in it.
Timing: when is it least hopeless?
The ratio moved during the day, and it moved in one direction:
- Early morning (about 6:45am): 25 men per woman
- Midday (about 12pm): 20 men per woman
- Early evening (about 6pm): 19 men per woman
So the early-morning crowd is the worst place to be a man. At 6:45am there were 6 more men per woman than at 6pm, which is roughly a third more competition. If you are going to log on at all, early evening was the least bad slot we measured. We didn’t sample late at night, so I can’t tell you what happens after the pubs shut.
What it means for single men
None of this means a single man can never meet anyone on FabSwingers. It means the maths is heavily against you, so stop playing the game everyone else is playing. Some honest tips:
Go where the numbers are: couples. Couples outnumbered single women by about 5 to 1 in our sample, and some couples are actively looking for a single man. Our guide on how to find a bull for cuckolding explains what those couples tend to expect. It also helps to understand how couples play, so read Swinging: Same Room v Separate Room.
Pick your moment. Early evening was the least crowded slot in our study and early morning the worst. Messaging at 6:45am means queuing behind more men than at any other time we checked.
Make your profile the exception. With around 21 men per woman, most women online can afford to ignore anyone with a blank profile, a one-line bio or a lazy opener. A complete profile, a decent photo, a clear idea of what you want and a message that shows you actually read hers will put you ahead of a big chunk of the queue.
Expect silence, and don’t take it personally. When one woman has 20 men in her inbox, most messages go unanswered. That is the ratio, not a verdict on you. If the “no thanks” replies sting, our piece on handling rejection on hook-up websites is worth five minutes.
Consider other options. FabSwingers is one site. If your local numbers look like Norwich’s, spreading your time across other ways of meeting people is simply sensible.
Why women have the pick
Flip it round and the site looks very different. A woman who logs on in any of these cities is one of a handful of women online, outnumbered by men around 20 to 1. She can be as choosy as she likes and still have more offers than she could ever answer. It is a buyer’s market, and the buyers are women and, to a lesser degree, couples. If you are hosting a woman as a couple, our guide on how to meet and treat a unicorn shows why single women are so sought after.
Caveats
- This is a sample, not a site-wide census. FabSwingers searches cap at 300 results, so we measured what the searches showed rather than every member on the site.
- Searches were run as “wants to meet a couple (MF)”, which may affect which profiles the site shows.
- “Man” accounts may include a few profiles that are not solo men.
- It is a snapshot from one day, Monday 19 October 2026, at three times of day, in 16 cities outside London. A different day, a weekend or late at night could look different.
- Only members online in the same recent window (up to an hour) were compared. No individual members were identified or recorded.
The bottom line
Our own sampling study of FabSwingers on 19 October 2026 found about 21 men online for every woman, with women under 5% of single members online, and not a single city below 17 to 1. Mornings are the worst, early evenings the least bad, and couples are the biggest opportunity most single men ignore. It isn’t literally impossible for single men, but it is close, so play smart: time it well, make your profile count, look at couples and don’t pin all your hopes on one site.
If you like this kind of number-crunching, I have also counted where the most escorts are in the UK and where the most webcam performers are on AdultWork, county by county and city by city.
Thanks for reading. Fae x