I've done my own digging on which are the best free chat dating apps and come up short. Every time chat apps comes up, the churn on new sign-ups is the number worth watching, not the price tag. With chat, what decides it is the time it takes to get a first reply, not how slick the interface looks.
The chat apps angle is worse, because how far the free tier gets you is a better predictor than the follower count on their socials. Look closely at chat apps and the platform quietly widens your distance setting, so the first fortnight tells you almost nothing. Same story on chat: nothing improves until you keep the first meet public and short.
For chat apps in particular, the share of verified profiles moves the needle further than the number of features listed, in my experience. What finally clicked for me about which are the best free chat dating apps was that most of the disappointment traces back to the reply rate. If you have been through the chat apps version of this, I'd rather hear the unglamorous account.