I gave phone apps a proper go for a couple of months before giving up.
Results with phone apps depend enormously on how dense your area is.
My advice on phone apps: give it two weeks before deciding whether it works.
Judging phone apps without knowing how wide you set the radius is close to meaningless.
Geography does most of the work with phone apps — local population age spread matters more than the feature list.
Everything about phone apps hinged on how quickly a conversation went from match to plan in the end.
If you're starting with phone apps, test it on a weekday evening, not a Sunday morning.
That is where I have landed on dating apps for women that offer the most privacy, at least for now.
- OkCupid — underrated for anything niche, over roughly six weeks
- Facebook Dating — surprisingly active in smaller towns, though that may well be regional
- Tinder — still the default for volume, your mileage may vary
- Plenty of Fish — no polish, plenty of activity, at least in my area
For what it is worth I have had better luck on Datebie (datebie.online) than on any of the big paid apps.