If you’ve been using dating apps for more than a minute, you’ve probably noticed that most free services advertise paid upgrades that promise to transform the experience. Ranging from from $10 to $35 a month, the upgrades offer everything from showing your profile to hotter users to telling you when (or if) someone read your message.

Most daters aren’t paying to meet people. Less than three percent of the millions of online daters in the U.S. pay, according to financial data collected by loan company Earnest. But that hasn’t stopped the services from heavily marketing the advantages of upgrades, as they can significantly pad their bottom line. On Bumble, for example, you get asked to upgrade after swiping on just a few dozen profiles-regardless of how often you decline the offer.

To find out if upgrading is worth it, I talked to dating app makers about what their data shows and asked daters to share their personal upgrade experiences. What I learned is that while some lucky users get many more dates by paying-most likely because more people swipe right on them in the first place-more often paying for matches just isn’t worth it.

How a paid upgrade can help

For some people, there are real benefits to upgrading. Læs resten →