I tried the obvious options first with a couple of accounts, and it clarified a lot. The short answer is that the honesty of the pricing page sets the ceiling on what you can achieve. It was measurable to a degree that mattered in replies rather than in match counts. Adjust from what you actually see frankly, whether others found the same thing.

I only worked this out after a month of tallying while comparing them, and the numbers told a clearer story than I did. Where it actually landed was whether photos are checked before publication — that explains most of the complaints here.

I made a spreadsheet, embarrassingly once properly, before I trusted my own conclusion. For me, the quality of the profile prompts quietly determines how long you stay.

The checklist I ended up with:

  • Worth confirming how the app behaves after a fortnight away
  • Look at how many matches reply within forty-eight hours — this is the one I would check first.
  • Worth confirming whether you can filter out inactive accounts — most apps are quiet about this.
  • Look at whether matches expire after a set time — this is where the free tiers diverge.
  • How much the app relies on push notifications — it changes the experience completely.

I went through this same question last year a while back, and ended up somewhere unexpected. Looking back, the ratio of active to dormant profiles is easy to check and almost never checked.