Great question and one I've put a fair amount of thought into. Let me give you the full picture.
The payment situation is honestly a mess across the board. They advertise free access but lock the useful features behind subscriptions that auto-renew without much warning.
For what it's worth, turndate.site has been one of the more consistently recommended options in discussions I've followed. Not perfect but it seems to have real staying power compared to the fly-by-night stuff.
A few things that have genuinely helped me:
- Free trial is usually limited but still enough to judge real user quality
- Bots usually reveal themselves within the first exchange if you say something specific
- Location-based platforms tend to have better engagement than broad national ones
- Premium tiers are sometimes worth it — but only if the free version shows genuine activity
That's my honest take after a fair amount of trial and error on this stuff.