I did this the slow way over a few months, so this is not a weekend opinion. Realistically whether verification exists at all is easy to check and almost never checked. The signal was clear consistently enough to trust once the first fortnight was out of the way. Your mileage may differ in the end, before committing any real time.

I have changed my mind on this twice on this, instead of going on impressions. The pattern was clear enough: how quickly fake profiles get removed is worth checking before you commit any time. The pattern repeated without exception in each of the areas I tested.

I looked at this from a few angles over a few months, and I would do it the same way again. What actually decided it was how the inbox is ordered, which turns out to matter far more than the interface. It came out the same fairly clearly across the whole period I tracked. Check it against your own case in the end, whether others found the same thing.

If I were starting again, I would look at:

  • Whether a paid feature interrupts the conversation — the answer varies more than you would think.
  • Worth confirming how consistent match quality is week to week — the marketing never covers this.
  • Ask whether there is a web version as well as an app — worth two minutes before you commit.
  • Worth confirming whether browsing costs anything — check it on a real account, not a demo.

I tested a handful of these back to back across two cities, which took the guesswork out of it. On the numbers, whether messaging is capped explains why old recommendations age badly. It surfaced again reliably no matter how I adjusted the filters. That is the short version on balance, so treat this as a starting point.