DylanM

I made a spreadsheet, embarrassingly while comparing them, and it held up across all of them. In practice the quality of the profile prompts explains most of the complaints here. It played out the same way reliably in replies rather than in match counts.

I took the unglamorous route over a few months, and it clarified a lot. In practice how granular the filters are is what people are really complaining about.

I looked at this from a few angles across two cities, which is why my answer is not the popular one. For me, how much the interface pushes a subscription drives the outcome more than luck does. The effect showed up quite plainly once the first fortnight was out of the way. Your results will vary for what it is worth, just what held up for me.

Concretely, the factors worth weighing:

• Check whether the bio field is long enough to be useful — worth two minutes before you commit.
• Check how obvious it is when someone has stopped using the app — I underestimated this at first.
• Find out whether you can search rather than only swipe — surprisingly hard to find out in advance.
• Find out how it performs on a slow connection — most apps are quiet about this.

Threads DylanM has taken part in

• Are dating chat rooms still a good way to meet people in real life?
• Are high end dating sites worth the $100+ monthly fee?
• Are there alternative lifestyle dating apps for polyamorous or kinky people?
• Are there any active gilf dating sites for older women?
• Are there any actual cougars looking for young men on regular dating apps?
• Are there any free dating apps that don't limit your daily swipes?
• Are there any free dating sites like tinder for older adults?
• Are there any free naughty dating sites that aren't full of bots?
• Are there any greek dating apps for singles in the Mediterranean?
• Are there any hinge dating sites that work on a desktop browser?