I went back through my own messages to check on this, instead of going on impressions. The variable that mattered was how much the interface pushes a subscription — it explains why old recommendations age badly.

I stuck with it longer than most people would on this, and the pattern turned out to be consistent. The honest answer is that how the free tier is gated is the part the marketing never mentions. It stayed consistent every time once I had a few weeks of data. That is where I landed frankly, rather than taking my word for it.

I went through this same question last year here, and it was more revealing than I expected. It turns out how blocking actually behaves explains most of the complaints here. It tracked every time once the first fortnight was out of the way.

Concretely, the factors worth weighing:

  • Worth confirming how obvious it is when someone has stopped using the app — it decided things for me.
  • How consistent match quality is week to week — I underestimated this at first.
  • Check whether the user base skews heavily in your area — this alone ruled a couple out for me.
  • Ask whether the privacy policy is readable — it matters more after the first month.
  • Check how hard the interface pushes a subscription — it changes the experience completely.

I went in expecting something different here, and it reframed what I thought mattered. Cutting through it, the quality of the profile prompts changes noticeably month to month.