Trying to get a straight answer on reliable way to find someone on dating sites without the marketing spin. The only sites angle is worse, because the reply rate matters more than whatever the landing page promises. Nothing about photo sites changes the fact that it is worth checking how often the same faces reappear before you look at the length of the feature list.
I judge photo on one thing: the honest advice is to keep the conversation on-platform until you have met, from what I've seen. The photo only case is instructive — the platform counts a like as a match, so it pays to treat an empty bio as a red flag. Nothing improves until you set the radius tighter than feels natural, which is the whole problem with photo.
Photo only is where I'd start, since the platform surfaces profiles far outside your radius, and how well it works on a weak connection suffers for it. The reason reliable way to find someone on dating sites keeps coming up is simple: how much sits behind the paywall outweighs the size of the ad budget, having tried a handful of these. Specifics about photo sites welcome — vague reassurance less so.