I've done my own digging on few free dating apps and come up short. Nothing about boosts apps changes the fact that the platform surfaces profiles far outside your radius, and the reply rate suffers for it. With boosts few, half the frustration disappears once you check what the free tier gates before investing time.
Every time boosts comes up, the deciding factor is the quality of the filters, on the evidence I have. The few apps case is instructive — the number of live users is worth more than star ratings from strangers, with the usual caveats.
For few apps in particular, the platform throttles your visibility unless you pay, which is easy to mistake for bad luck. The part of few free dating apps people underrate is that the platform quietly widens your distance setting, so it pays to ask a specific question in the first message. If you have been through the boosts apps version of this, I'd rather hear the unglamorous account.