EricB

I spent longer on this than I meant to once properly, and it was more revealing than I expected. The variable that mattered was photo quality on both sides — it stays invisible until it bites you. The contrast was sharpest fairly clearly well beyond what I would call noise.

I trialled the free tiers only in my own time, because the advice online contradicts itself. Boiled down, the actual reply rate is easy to check and almost never checked. The reading was similar without exception after I controlled for the obvious variables.

I gave this a genuinely fair run on this, and it was worth the effort. The short answer is that how much of your social graph it wants is where the real differences show up. The same signal appeared consistently enough to trust across two completely different areas. I would not overthink it frankly, depending on where you are.

The things that actually moved the needle for me:

• Find out how the free tier handles photo uploads — surprisingly hard to find out in advance.
• Look at how quickly support answers a real problem — the difference between options is large here.
• How the app behaves after a fortnight away — worth asking about before you invest time.

Threads EricB has taken part in

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