How we verify, and what we still don't know

Most dating review sites publish a score and never say where it came from. This page says exactly what we check, how we check it, and which parts of our own comparison table are still empty.

The short version

We publish two kinds of statement, and we never mix them. A verified claim is something we checked ourselves, on a date we print next to it. Everything else is either labelled as the platform's own claim or marked not verified, which means we have not looked yet.

Not verified does not mean no. If our table says a platform's deletion process is not verified, that is a statement about us, not about them. We would rather show you an empty cell than guess and be confidently wrong.

What we check

Ownership

Who actually operates a platform, and which other platforms they operate. This matters more than it sounds: several brands that look like competitors turn out to share one operator, and often one account system, one billing processor and one messaging backend. A "comparison" between two products from the same company is not really a comparison.

We treat ownership as verified only when we can corroborate it from sources independent of the platform's own marketing. Where we suspect a link but cannot corroborate it, we say suspected and show why.

Status

Whether the platform is still operating, has been rebranded, has been acquired, or has quietly disappeared. We check DNS and HTTP response directly and record the date. This is the only column in our table that is fully populated today, because it is the only one that can be checked without an account.

Pricing

The real cost, including what renews and at what rate. This is harder than reading a pricing page, which is why our pricing column is currently empty. Dating platforms routinely show different prices by country, run promotional pricing that expires, and A/B test tiers. A single scraped number would be wrong for a large share of readers, so we would rather publish nothing until we can state the conditions a price applies under.

Account deletion

The route out: self-service, or a support request, or nothing at all. We record which one applies and what happens to profile data afterwards, not merely whether a route exists.

What "verified" means in practice

  • We checked it ourselves rather than repeating a claim.
  • The date of the check is printed next to it.
  • We can describe the method if you ask.
  • When it changes, the old value goes into the tracker rather than being silently overwritten.

How the order in our table works

Our comparison table is ordered by how much we have independently verified, not by how good we think a platform is. A platform we have checked thoroughly appears above one we have barely looked at, regardless of which we would personally recommend.

We chose this because it is the only ordering we can currently defend, and because it points our own incentives the right way: the way to move up our table is to be checkable, not to pay us.

We do not publish numeric scores. A 4.7 out of 5 implies a measurement. Until there is a published rubric behind a number, a score is a feeling with a decimal point. If we introduce scores later, the rubric will be on this page first.

How we make money

Some links to dating platforms earn us a commission if you sign up. Those links are marked, and they are the only way this site is funded. No platform pays for placement, for a higher position in our table, or for a more favourable description, and no platform sees our pages before they are published.

The awkward part, stated plainly: we earn more from platforms that are still operating than from ones that have closed. That is exactly why we keep closed platforms in the table, unranked and clearly marked, instead of quietly deleting them.

What we do not do

  • We do not claim to have tested a platform we have not used.
  • We do not publish user-review counts or member numbers we cannot source.
  • We do not present a platform's marketing claims as our findings.
  • We do not remove a negative finding because a platform asked.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say what changed. Platform operators are welcome to submit corrections on the same footing as anyone else, with evidence. Corrections to verified facts are recorded in the Platform Tracker, so the change itself stays visible rather than being edited away.