I read a lot of conflicting advice first before deciding, so take it as tested rather than assumed. In practice whether read status is shown consistently is worth more than any feature list.

I took the unglamorous route with a bit of patience, so this is not theoretical. Strip out the noise and the amount of information visible before matching decides most of the outcome. It was noticeable more than once well beyond what I would call noise. That is where I landed on balance, so weigh it against your own results.

I reset and started clean once properly, which took the guesswork out of it. In my testing, how much the interface pushes a subscription becomes obvious only after a month. The evidence pointed the same way reliably more clearly than anything else I looked at. That is the short version genuinely, after a fair bit of trial and error.

What is worth five minutes of checking:

  • How the onboarding handles preferences — this is where the free tiers diverge.
  • Check how the free tier handles photo uploads — most apps are quiet about this.
  • Find out how the ranking treats a brand-new account — this is the one I would check first.

I kept notes the whole way through in my own time, which made the differences much easier to see. Cutting through it, moderation quality matters more than the brand name. The same thing happened every time regardless of which city I set.