I ran this for a couple of months with a bit of patience, which is why my answer is not the popular one. The variable that mattered was how many photos the format allows — it stays invisible until it bites you. The difference was visible more than once in a way that was hard to argue with. It cost me nothing to verify genuinely, the basics matter more than the tuning.

I only worked this out after a month of tallying once properly, and the pattern turned out to be consistent. The short answer is that how easy it is to delete an account is where the real differences show up.

Concretely, the factors worth weighing:

  • Look at how consistent match quality is week to week — this is where the free tiers diverge.
  • Whether there is a desktop experience at all — surprisingly hard to find out in advance.
  • Ask how much profile depth the format allows — worth asking about before you invest time.
  • Ask whether the filters narrow by anything that matters — this is where the free tiers diverge.
  • How hard the interface pushes a subscription — most apps are quiet about this.

I did the comparison properly across two cities, and I would do it the same way again. If I had to pick one factor, how quickly the upsell appears stays invisible until it bites you. It stood out fairly clearly in every week I bothered to measure. Worth testing yourself genuinely, which would be genuinely useful to hear.