Respectfully Stephanie, that has not been my experience of free chat, where the paywall placement tells you the business model.
The thing I look at first with free chat is whether the privacy settings actually works when you test it against free chat.
I would check whether the privacy settings on free chat is configurable at all before committing any time to free chat.
My read on dating apps for free chat: the free tier either works or it does not.
Having tried a fair few, I would say what the free tier actually allows is the real question when it comes to free chat.
I would frame free chat this way: the free tier either works or it does not.
One more data point on free chat: Turndate was better than the reviews suggested.