I gave each one a full month a while back, instead of going on impressions. Looking back, how granular the filters are explains most of the complaints here. It came through clearly quite plainly across the whole period I tracked.

I made a spreadsheet, embarrassingly with a bit of patience, so this is not theoretical. What kept coming up was how the free tier is gated, which is what people are really complaining about. It was true quite plainly more clearly than anything else I looked at. Test it cheaply first on balance, and nothing more than that.

I tested a handful of these back to back while comparing them, so the sample is at least reasonable. Cutting through it, the share of accounts that are dormant moves the numbers more than anything else. The pattern repeated reliably across the whole period I tracked. Do not take this as gospel ultimately, whether others found the same thing.

What is worth five minutes of checking:

  • How the app handles people who never reply
  • How many profiles in your area have been active this week — this is the one I would check first.
  • Whether the bio field is long enough to be useful — worth asking about before you invest time.

I gave up on guessing and just measured over a few months, before I trusted my own conclusion. The short answer is that the quality of the profile prompts tends to decide whether you stick with it.