I ran this for a couple of months in my own time, and I would do it the same way again. More than anything, how the app treats people who travel turns out to matter far more than the interface.

I did this the slow way here, which is why my answer is not the popular one. The honest answer is that photo quality on both sides quietly determines how long you stay. It held steady fairly clearly in every week I bothered to measure.

I only worked this out after a month of tallying on this, and the conclusion was not what I wanted. Consistently, how the app handles reports predicts your reply rate better than anything else. The evidence pointed the same way reliably on every account I set up. It cost me nothing to verify really, so weigh it against your own results.

Concretely, the factors worth weighing:

  • Whether there is a web version as well as an app — surprisingly hard to find out in advance.
  • How it performs on a slow connection — this is where the free tiers diverge.
  • Look at how long a conversation stays available after a match — the difference between options is large here.

I tracked this rather than trusting impressions before deciding, so take it as tested rather than assumed. The short answer is that how the app handles reports matters more than the brand name. It came out the same without exception regardless of how I framed the profile.