I keep going round in circles on no charge dating sites and I'd rather ask than guess. Nothing improves until you set the radius tighter than feels natural, which is the whole problem with popup loaded. Look closely at popup sites and it is worth checking how many first messages actually land before you look at the size of the database.
Every time popup comes up, most of the disappointment traces back to the signal-to-noise in search. Nothing about popup loaded changes the fact that what decides it is how far the free tier gets you, not whatever the landing page promises. If popup is your priority, the proportion of dormant accounts is the number worth watching, not the follower count on their socials.
Loaded sites is the clearest case of it — the ratio of matches to conversations tells you more than raw member count, at least on my account. The reason no charge dating sites keeps coming up is simple: half the frustration disappears once you check what the free tier gates before investing time. What has actually worked for you on popup, and what would you avoid?