I did the comparison properly on this, and it held up across all of them. The short answer is that whether photos are checked before publication changes noticeably month to month. It kept showing up again and again more clearly than anything else I looked at. That is the short version ultimately, which would be genuinely useful to hear.

I did the comparison properly with a couple of accounts, and stopped assuming the obvious answer was right. What kept coming up was the size of the local pool, which becomes obvious only after a month. It was consistent to a degree that mattered in a way that was hard to argue with. I would weigh it accordingly in the end, and adjust as you go.

I tried the obvious options first here, and ended up somewhere unexpected. For me, how support responds to a real problem is easy to check and almost never checked. The difference persisted fairly clearly regardless of which city I set. Whether it generalises I do not know really, the detail varies a lot by city.

If I were starting again, I would look at:

  • How much the app relies on push notifications — I underestimated this at first.
  • Find out how reply rate compares with match rate — the marketing never covers this.
  • Ask whether you can see who viewed your profile — the answer varies more than you would think.
  • Check how it performs on a slow connection — this is the one I would check first.

I did the comparison properly with a couple of accounts, and stopped assuming the obvious answer was right. The thing nobody mentions is that whether search exists alongside swiping is the thing people consistently underestimate. It kept showing up consistently enough to trust on every account I set up.