Every site reviewed on DatingSiteSpot is scored against the same five-axis rubric. We do not adjust the rubric per site, and we do not publish a review without going through every axis.
The five axes
Overall — A weighted blend of the four sub-scores below, expressed on a 0–10 scale. This is the number that drives our category rankings.
UX — Onboarding friction, defaults, accessibility, and how the product behaves on small screens. Sites that hide critical safety actions or force dark patterns at cancellation lose points here regardless of how good the matching is.
Value — What you get on the free tier, what each subscription tier actually unlocks, and whether the price reflects the audience size. Niche products are not penalized for being more expensive; products that paywall their core interaction without saying so are.
Audience quality — A measure of how on-mission the member base feels in practice. We look at message quality, profile depth, and the share of accounts that show signs of automation. This is the axis where mainstream and niche products often diverge sharply.
Safety — Verification rigor, handling of reports, transparency around moderation, and history of public incidents. We weight responsiveness highly; a product that ships a fix in days when something goes wrong scores better than one with no public incidents but no public process either.
What we test
For every reviewed product we sign up with at least one fresh account, complete the questionnaire or onboarding flow honestly, and use the product for a minimum of three weeks. Where applicable, we test both web and mobile, and we document the cancellation flow before cancelling.
We do not buy fake reviews. We do not republish vendor copy. We do not accept paid placement in our category rankings.
Conflicts of interest
DatingSiteSpot earns commissions when readers click through to a partner site and complete a qualifying action. Those commissions never determine our scores, our category rankings, or the order of products on a page.
When commission rates differ materially between two products in the same category, we list both rates publicly on the product's review page so a reader can make their own judgement. See our disclosure page for more.
When reviews are updated
We re-test each reviewed product at least once every twelve months, and earlier if a product ships a material change to its pricing, matching, or moderation. The "Last reviewed" date on each review is the date the most recent re-test was completed.