I paid attention to the details this time over a few months, because the advice online contradicts itself. On the numbers, whether photos are checked before publication quietly determines how long you stay.

I did the comparison properly with a bit of patience, which made the differences much easier to see. Cutting through it, how consistent match quality is week to week decides most of the outcome. It tracked more than once once the first fortnight was out of the way.

I gave this a genuinely fair run in my own time, which is why my answer is not the popular one. What kept coming up was the quality of the profile prompts, which decides most of the outcome.

The things that actually moved the needle for me:

  • Look at how long a conversation stays available after a match
  • How the app handles people who never reply
  • How much profile depth the format allows — worth asking about before you invest time.

I looked at what changed since last year with a couple of accounts, and it reframed what I thought mattered. It turns out how much depth the profiles allow separates the usable options from the rest. It was measurable reliably in every week I bothered to measure.