I sat with this question for a while on this, and ended up somewhere unexpected. Cutting through it, how the app treats people who travel explains most of the complaints here. The effect showed up fairly clearly once I had a few weeks of data. That is the short version on balance, and I would not pretend otherwise.

I compared several at once over a few months, so this is not theoretical. What I found is that whether search exists alongside swiping decides most of the outcome. It stood out consistently enough to trust more clearly than anything else I looked at.

My experience by category:

Where I would focus your attention:

  • Find out how much the app relies on push notifications — it is easy to test and rarely advertised.
  • How quickly obvious fakes disappear
  • Worth confirming how long before the first upsell prompt appears — check it on a real account, not a demo.
  • Find out whether the free tier caps daily messages

I went in expecting something different on this, so take it as tested rather than assumed. Realistically the share of accounts that are dormant predicts your reply rate better than anything else. The finding held quite plainly even after I changed my photos.