Tanner is right, and I would add one thing. the paywall question matters more for populated free than any feature list.
Two people can have opposite results with populated free purely because of coverage in your area.
In practice, populated free lives or dies on the interface side. Once I stopped worrying about the free-vs-paid gap, populated free got a lot simpler.
Nobody warns you that populated free depends so heavily on the interface side. If the everyday experience is not sorted, populated free will not go anywhere.
In practice, populated free lives or dies on the catchment. Anyway, that is my read on most populated free gay dating sites right now.
I still keep an account on have a look at Datedesire purely for populated free.