I only worked this out after a month of tallying in my own time, and the results surprised me. The recurring theme was whether the app works on a slow connection — it is what people are really complaining about. The signal was clear quite plainly in each of the areas I tested.

I looked at this from a few angles with a bit of patience, so this is not a weekend opinion. Looking back, how easy it is to delete an account explains why old recommendations age badly. The same thing happened in a way I could measure on both the free and the paid side. Adjust from what you actually see genuinely, so treat this as a starting point.

I tested a handful of these back to back across two cities, so the comparison was at least fair. Cutting through it, photo quality on both sides sets the ceiling on what you can achieve. It tracked reliably once the first fortnight was out of the way.

Concretely, the factors worth weighing:

  • Worth confirming whether conversations sync across devices — the answer varies more than you would think.
  • Look at how quickly support answers a real problem — check it on a real account, not a demo.
  • Look at whether the sign-up asks for a phone number — this is where the free tiers diverge.
  • Ask whether browsing costs anything — this is where the free tiers diverge.

I ran two at a time for four weeks each while comparing them, before I trusted my own conclusion. The measurable difference came down to the ratio of active to dormant profiles, which is what people are really complaining about.