How to complete your Otterly profile (and why it unlocks everything)

Otterly puts a small percentage on your profile card. It is easy to treat it as decoration. It is not. That number decides what you can see, how often you are shown, and — more than anything else you control — how many requests you receive. Here is what it measures and how to max it out in one sitting.

What completion measures

Your profile is scored across roughly forty-five items, grouped like this:

• Photos — up to seven, each checked for a visible face and no heavy text.
• Basics — age (locked at sign-up), height, location, marital status, kids.
• Background — education, career, faith, community (optional), languages, home town.
• Lifestyle — diet, drinking, smoking, exercise, pets.
• Aspirations — ideal marriage timeline, willingness to relocate, wanting kids.
• About you — your bio and your prompt answers (three to five recommended).
• Verification — a live selfie matched to your photos by a human.

Each filled item adds to the score. Blanks do not subtract; they simply leave you short.

Why Otterly gates things behind it

This is the part members sometimes find annoying at first, so here is the reasoning plainly.

Empty profiles waste everyone's requests. Otterly gives each member only a handful of requests a day. If half the profiles in your stack were two photos and no details, you would burn your daily requests guessing. Requiring completion protects your requests from being spent on ghosts.

It filters for intent. A person who will not spend fifteen minutes on a profile is unlikely to spend eighteen months on a courtship. Completion is the cheapest honest signal of seriousness the app has.

It makes the filters work. Marital status, kids, timeline, faith, location — these are the filters serious people rely on. A profile with those blank is invisible to every filter, which means it is invisible to exactly the people who would have chosen it.

So the app holds back certain features and visibility until you reach a minimum completion level (the bar is slightly higher for men, who historically fill in less), and shows the most complete profiles most often.

The fields that matter most for matches

If you only have five minutes, do these first. They are the ones people filter by and decide on.

1. Marital status. Never married, Separated, Awaiting divorce, Divorced, Widowed. Pick the true one. It is the single most-used filter on the app.
2. Kids. Want someday · Don't want · Have and want more · Have and don't want more · Not sure. Nothing prevents more heartbreak than getting this on the profile.
3. Ideal marriage timeline. Within a year · 1–2 years · 2–3 years · When it feels right. Mismatched clocks are the quiet killer of good matches.
4. Faith and community. State them if they matter to you; leave community blank if it does not. People filtering on faith are usually filtering for honesty about it.
5. Location and relocation. Where you live, and whether you would move. Long-distance is real on a global app; be clear.
6. Languages. Underrated. Shared language is shared humour.
7. Height, diet, drinking, smoking. Small facts that avoid big awkwardness later.

The fields that turn completion into requests

Filters get you seen. These get you chosen.

• Five to seven photos. One clear smiling face first; then variety. Follow the photo guide. Photos with several faces or heavy text are auto-declined, so choose accordingly.
• A three-paragraph bio. Ordinary week; what you want and when; one surprising detail. The bio guide has a method and examples.
• Three to five prompts. Stories, not adjectives. Every specific answer is a hook for someone's request note.
• Interests. Pick the ones you actually do, not the ones that sound good. “Reading” you do beats “skydiving” you did once.

A fifteen-minute plan

Minutes 0–3: Basics and aspirations. Marital status, kids, timeline, height, location, relocation. Tap through; do not overthink.

Minutes 3–6: Background and lifestyle. Education, career, faith, languages, diet, drinking, smoking, exercise, pets.

Minutes 6–10: Photos. You should already have them chosen (if not, do that first — it is the one step worth extra time). Upload five to seven. Put the smiling face first.

Minutes 10–14: Bio and prompts. Write the three paragraphs. Pick three prompts and answer each with a concrete story in one or two sentences. Read it all aloud once.

Minute 15: Verify. Tap Verify Photo, take the live selfie in good light with your face fully visible, and submit. See the verification guide.

Keeping it current

Completion is a one-time job; accuracy is ongoing.

• Changed jobs, cities or timeline? Update it the same week. A stale profile is a small lie by omission.
• New photos every 12 months at most. If a stranger could not pick you out of a café using photo one, replace photo one.
• Rotate a prompt occasionally. A fresh answer gives returning members a new reason to request.

A complete, honest, current profile is not about impressing anyone. It is about making sure that when the right person is shown your card, nothing gets in the way of them recognising you.

Frequently asked questions

Meet people who date to marry.Otterly is free on iPhone and Android.