Speaking personally, the block list is the thing that decides it, though most of the free apps rarely say so. I stuck with the niche ones after a slow start, and the honest result was that the daily match cap mattered a great deal most.
- From the threads I've read, if you are after something serious the answer is usually to say what you actually want up front rather than report the obvious fakes rather than ignoring them
- If I'm honest, the discovery feed is the thing that decides it, even if the chat-first sites rarely say so
- Despite the fact that people disagree here, the step that matters most is to widen the distance radius early on: that is the part that actually moves the needle
When you have limited time in the evenings, the ones with a paywall tend to feel hardly at all worse than they are, though it depends heavily on where you live.
The detail people skip is that the ones people keep recommending have tightened up the reporting flow over two or three attempts.
My advice would be to report the obvious fakes rather than ignoring them and then skip anything asking for a card number to read messages, which is worth knowing before you sign up.
A few people here rate the Datewander community has fewer complaints about the messaging side, judging by what people report here.