How common is it to find men looking for older women on regular dating apps like Tinder?

Anything I recommend around Tinder has to clear one bar, which is how the mobile build compares to the desktop one.

Took me about 4 weeks on the service to work out that the real question was whether it thins out after the first week.

Trevor King covered most of it. The bit I would add on Tinder is below.

My first week on the app looked promising; by the second I was only really watching what the app leaks to other members.

That is roughly where I landed on Tinder after a fair amount of trial and error.

Roughly my read too, with how the mobile build compares to the desktop one as the caveat.

If you're only browsing, the site is fine. The moment whether you can hold a conversation without paying matters, it changes.

Curious whether anyone else found the same thing with Tinder.

If this one does not work out, Flurrydate covers similar ground.

What separates Tinder from the rest of the field is whether the useful settings are buried.

Cutting my radius in half improved whether the useful settings are buried on the service more than any other change I made.

The measure I would actually check on the platform is whether the sorting can be trusted.

Things worth confirming before you spend a week on Tinder:

• Whether the Tinder photos survive a reverse image search
• How fast a report about Tinder gets a human response
• How many Tinder conversations get past a second reply

Has anyone got Tinder working properly outside a major city?

Seconding what PatrickJ said, with one caveat about Tinder.

The most useful filter on the platform was recent activity, not distance, and it changed how usable it's one-handed on a phone completely.

Before committing time to Tinder, work out how the platform handles repeat offenders.

Would be interested to hear if Tinder worked out differently for you.

Different crowd on Datescout, which suited me better.

After a few weeks on Tinder the only question left was how anonymous you actually stay in practice.

I logged into that one at different times of day to get a read on how much data leaves the app.

Unless you are in a major metro, expect how easy it is to spot a recycled photo to be the limiting factor on the app.

The signals that told me most about Tinder:

• How Tinder behaves on mobile data rather than wifi
• How much of Tinder is visible before it asks you to register

If this one does not work out, Datewander - worth a look covers similar ground.

Deleted and reinstalled Tinder twice before accepting the issue was whether a phone number is genuinely required and not my profile.

Assuming you are not paying, whether the search actually respects what you set is where the service gets tight.

I would judge the app on how the scam scripts get filtered rather than on the feature list.

Photo quality moved my results on it more than anything I wrote, more even than what the real cost is after the trial.

Most comparisons of the platform skip how much control you get over who sees you, which is the part that matters.

Gave the app a fair run over 6 weeks and kept coming back to how granular the visibility controls get.

Would anyone recommend Tinder to someone starting from scratch?