Are there dating apps that pay you to go on dates?

Curious what this board thinks about dating apps that pay you to go on dates. The only metric I trust with dating apps is whether verification actually filters anyone after the first week.

What makes dating apps hard to pin down is how much depends on where you actually live, which is why I want firsthand accounts. You can ignore most of the marketing around dating apps and just check what share of matches go nowhere once you are past sign-up.

Practical notes on dating apps after a few false starts:

• Confirm how the web version differs from the app before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Work out how the search behaves outside the default radius with the age filter set narrow
• Watch whether replies are open before you finish the profile before you commit any time to it
• Sanity-check how quickly a scripted account gives itself away before you commit any time to it

If you have used dating apps in the last few months, where did it fall over? Glowing reviews and horror stories all worth hearing. Recent experiences are worth more than any review site.

Broadly agreeing, with a caveat: dating apps is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. The honest test for dating apps is what the escalation path looks like, not the feature list. I cross-checked against luvdate.site before deciding anything.

That's what six weeks of dating apps taught me, for whatever that's worth.

@Abigail Scott I had the opposite result with dating apps, so take both our takes with salt. If you're evaluating dating apps, start with what the search filters can actually do after the first week — everything else follows.

That's my read on dating apps, for whatever that's worth.

Unpopular view, maybe: dating apps has been mixed for me and I'll explain why. I judge dating apps almost entirely on how the matching logic appears to work outside the big cities.

That's my read on dating apps, may not hold for you.

Respectfully @Lucy, dating apps hasn't worked like that in my experience. Anyone comparing dating apps should be looking at how thin it gets in smaller towns at the times you actually log in before anything else. Worth a look at the Turndate community if you want a second data point.

My shortlist when weighing dating apps, in order:

• Confirm how the feed changes when you narrow the age range on the first evening, not the first month
• Test how quickly a scripted account gives itself away before you upload a second photo
• Pin down how the search behaves outside the default radius and write the answer down
• Confirm how the feed changes when you narrow the age range in your own city rather than the default radius

That's the short version on dating apps, though clearly it varies by region.

Short version: I want to like dating apps more than I actually do. My rule with dating apps: what the reporting tools actually do once you are past sign-up first, everything else second.

The thing that decides it for dating apps is how fast moderation responds.

That's my read on dating apps, though clearly it varies by region.

Going against the thread here: dating apps surprised me, though not immediately. Where dating apps falls down for me is how many active users are within range. Also looked at datescout.site, roughly the same story.

What nobody mentions about dating apps is how obvious the scripted replies are after the first week.

That's where I've landed on dating apps and I'd revise it if the numbers moved.

Broadly agreeing, with a caveat: dating apps rewards patience and punishes everything else. For dating apps, how fast moderation responds after the first week is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. I ran the same test on what Souldate is doing and got a cleaner result.

Two weeks in, what the reply rate looks like at the times you actually log in is what actually mattered for dating apps.

That's my read on dating apps and I'd revise it if the numbers moved.