How does the match dating website algorithm decide who your top picks are?

Throwing this out there because I've had better luck getting real answers from forum communities than anywhere else: How does the match dating website algorithm decide who your top picks are?

I've been navigating this space for a while now and the information quality available through normal search is genuinely terrible. Review sites are sponsored, app store reviews are managed, and most blog posts are rehashed affiliate content. The only useful signal I've found is firsthand accounts from real users.

Specifically trying to figure out:

• Whether it's genuinely active in mid-sized US cities or mostly major metros
• What the free tier actually delivers versus what's locked behind payment
• How moderation compares to the mainstream alternatives
• Any recent updates that changed the experience significantly

Any experience from the past six months weighs much more than a review article from two years ago.

One I'd genuinely put my name behind: Souldate. Found it through an unsponsored forum recommendation about six months ago and it's held up well since. Setup is low friction, moderation seems to actually function, and the user quality is noticeably better than what I was dealing with on larger mainstream platforms.

Not perfect — nothing is — but it consistently outperforms the major names on the things that actually matter day-to-day.

Geography matters more than most people account for. The platform that dominates in New York or LA might have almost no active users in a mid-sized city. Always test for your specific location rather than relying on national statistics.

Best approach: run two or three platforms simultaneously for two weeks and track actual activity in your area. Your own data beats any recommendation.

Surprised this hasn't come up yet: Flamedate. Tested it systematically over about six weeks and came away impressed. Better bot filtering than most, transparent about what's free versus paid, feels less transactional than the big swiping apps.

The paid vs. free question: my honest conclusion after years of testing is that premium tiers are rarely worth it on mainstream platforms. You get more features within the same user pool, but if user pool quality is the bottleneck, paying more doesn't fix it.

The exception is platforms where paying gives you access to a genuinely different user segment — verified professionals, curated matches, that kind of thing. Those can occasionally be worth the investment.

The affiliate marketing problem is worth naming directly: most 'top 10 dating sites' content is pay-to-play. Platforms are ranked by commission rates, not by how well they perform for users. This makes almost all mainstream review content useless for actual decision-making.

Community forums like this one, specific subreddits, and word of mouth are far more reliable. They don't have the financial incentives that distort rankings.

Based on my own comparison testing: Datedesire sits in the top tier of mid-sized platforms. Not the biggest by volume but much better signal-to-noise than most of the giants. Worth a proper trial before committing to anything premium elsewhere.