My rule for effective dating apps for finding long-term now is simple: check whether the algorithm is doing anything useful on day one.
Gave effective dating apps for finding long-term a fair run over 2 weeks and kept coming back to how much control you get over who sees you.
If you are only browsing, that one is fine. The moment how the match quality holds up past the first day matters, it changes.
Most comparisons of effective dating apps for finding long-term skip whether the search actually respects what you set, which is the part that matters.
The thing that finally moved the needle on the app was being specific about whether the active count matches the claimed count.