Norwich has been crowned the UK’s best place to be single in 2026 in a new ‘freedom index’ that asks a simple question: where does single life actually feel good, not just look good on paper?
The study, commissioned by adult services site AdultWork, analysed 346 local authorities across England, Wales and Scotland using five real-world metrics: how many people are single, how painful the rent is on a typical salary, how many cafés and daytime spots there are, how lively the nightlife is and how safe the area feels. Each place was given a weighted score out of 100 to reveal the best (and worst) parts of the country to navigate life solo in 2026.
Norwich: small city, big dating energy
Norwich takes first place thanks to its mix of a large single population and plenty of ways to meet people. Nearly two-thirds of the city’s adults (65.1%) are legally single, which amounts to 78,635 people and gives it one of the highest ratios of single adults in the country.
Its social infrastructure is busy too – 650 dining and daytime venues (53.8 per 10,000 adults) and 160 pubs and bars mean there are lots of options beyond yet another swipe-right.
Annual rent for a one-bedroom home averages £9,360, taking up 30.5% of the local median wage of £30,716 – not bargain-basement, but a long way from the capital’s worst offenders. Altogether, Norwich scores 63.78 out of 100, enough to claim the top spot.
The rest of the UK’s top 10
Behind Norwich, the ranking shows a spread of big cities, smaller urban centres and rural areas that all offer different flavours of single life.
Liverpool comes second with a score of 62.39, home to 254,020 single adults (around 63% of its population) and a strong combination of affordability and places to go out. A typical one-bed costs £8,064 a year, or 25.6% of the local median wage, and the city boasts 1,775 restaurants and cafés plus 521 pubs and bars, some of the highest venue-per-person ratios in the country.
Powys in mid Wales takes third place with 61.59, driven by rock-bottom rents and a surprisingly strong hospitality scene. It has the cheapest one-bedroom rent of any area in Wales at £5,556 a year – just 17.9% of the local median wage – and 280 pubs and bars, which works out at 24.9 per 10,000 people, the second-highest ratio in the whole index. Powys’ only real drawback is a smaller dating pool: 43.1% of adults are legally single.
Dundee ranks fourth, and is Scotland’s best spot for single life, with 57.7% of adults single, solid affordability and good social options.
Lincoln rounds out the top five with 62.9% of adults legally single and an average one-bed rent of £7,944 a year.
Further down the table, the rest of the top 10 is made up of Gwynedd (sixth), Camden (seventh), Islington (eighth), Glasgow City (ninth) and Blaenau Gwent (10th). Together, they underline that strong single-life conditions are not limited to the big metropolitan centres – and that rural and coastal areas can be just as appealing when rent, safety and actual places to spend your free time are factored in.
The UK’s top places to be single in 2026 (final score out of 100)
- Norwich, East of England – 63.8
- Liverpool, North West – 62.4
- Powys, Wales – 61.6
- Dundee City, Scotland – 61.1
- Lincoln, East Midlands – 61
- Gwynedd, Wales – 60.3
- Camden, London – 59.4
- Islington, London – 58.9
- Glasgow City, Scotland – 58.6
- Blaenau Gwent, Wales – 58.2
London and the South East: great dating pool, painful price tag
If you still picture London as the ultimate home of single life in Britain, then the bottom end of the index will make for sobering reading.
The worst-performing area in the entire study is Harrow, followed by Redbridge and Hart, with eight of the 10 lowest-ranked authorities located in London or the South East. High housing costs and relatively modest dating pools are the recurring issues. In Harrow, for example, a one-bedroom flat costs £16,500 a year and swallows 43.9% of the local median wage before council tax, bills or a single drink has been bought.
It’s not all bad news for the capital though. Inner boroughs like Camden and Islington still make the national top 10 thanks to dense nightlife and hospitality, as well as large single populations. But taken as a whole, the data suggests that the cost of London living is increasingly at odds with the kind of freedom many single adults are looking for…particularly those without a very high income or access to cheaper housing.
How the ‘freedom index’ was built
To move beyond subjective opinions on where the good places are to be single, AdultWork’s research team combined five metrics into a single score out of 100. The dating pool, which is the share of adults aged 18 or over who are legally single (never married and never in a civil partnership, including people who are cohabiting), carries the heaviest weight at 30%.
Affordability is next at 20%, based on the proportion of the local median annual wage needed to rent a one-bedroom property for a year, with lower ratios scoring higher.
Dining and daytime venues account for 15% of the score and cover cafés, restaurants, takeaways and hotels per 10,000 adults. Nightlife has a 20% weighting and counts pubs, bars and nightclubs per 10,000 adults.
The remaining 15% focuses on safety, measured through recorded crimes per 1,000 people, with safer areas rewarded. Each of the UK’s 346 local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland was scored out of 10 on each metric and then standardised using min–max normalisation to create final ‘freedom index’ scores.
Northern Irish areas and any authority missing data were left out.
Rethinking where single life thrives
For anyone in (or out of) a relationship, the index offers a different lens on the UK’s geography. It suggests that smaller cities like Norwich, Liverpool, Lincoln and Dundee, as well as rural Welsh areas such as Powys and Gwynedd, can hold their own against the capital when it comes to quality of life for single adults.
London still has a huge dating pool, but looking at the data, it seems many people are effectively paying half their wages just to keep a roof over their head before they can even think about going out.
For single people weighing up their options in 2026 – whether fresh out of education, post-breakup, or simply ready for a change – the takeaway is clear. If you care about having both a social life and money left at the end of the month, it might be worth looking a little further up the map.
