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It is worth paying for a dating app only after your profile works. Paying multiplies whatever your profile already does - if it converts badly, a subscription buys you more of the same rejection, faster and for money.
Once the profile is good, the feature worth paying for is seeing who already liked you. Unlimited likes and boosts are much weaker, and in a small town none of it helps because the constraint is the number of people, not your access to them.
Fixed the profile and still nothing? Sometimes it is the pool, not the photos - the same profile does different numbers on different apps. See which app suits you
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Use the free version for two or three weeks with a profile you have already improved. You are looking for a steady trickle of matches and at least some conversations that turn into a plan. If that is happening, paying can speed it up.
Be honest about which stage is failing. Few matches points to the photos. Matches that never reply points to openers, or a bio that gives nothing to talk about. Conversations that never become dates usually means waiting too long to suggest meeting.
Seeing your likes turns swiping into replying. It is the only paid feature that changes the shape of the problem rather than the volume, and it is genuinely useful for a month.
Unlimited likes mostly encourages indiscriminate swiping, which wastes your attention and does not make anyone more likely to like you back. Boosts put you in front of more people for a short window, which is only worth anything if your lead photo already converts. Read receipts and rewinds are conveniences, not levers.
Apps do not publish exactly how boosts or priority features are weighted against everyone else, so ignore the marketing and judge them by your own numbers. If a boost brings no new conversations, it was not worth repeating.
If you are going to pay, buy one month, not six, and treat it as an experiment. Change nothing else about the profile for those four weeks so the result is attributable.
The number to watch is not matches. It is dates arranged. A subscription that doubles your matches and produces no more dates has told you the problem was never distribution.
Write down your numbers for the free month before and the paid month during: matches, conversations, dates. That comparison is the whole point of paying, and without it you will not know whether to renew.
In a small town or a rural area, paying does not create people. Widening your distance filter is free and does the same job.
If you are getting matches and losing them in conversation, the spend is aimed at the wrong stage entirely. Nothing in any paid tier improves an opener.
It is also the wrong move if money is tight, or if paying would make you feel you need results fast. That pressure tends to show up in messages, and it rarely helps.
Fix the lead photo. It costs an afternoon and it moves the same number the subscription is trying to move, permanently, on every app at once rather than the one you are paying for.
Then give people something to say. Swap a line like 'I love to laugh' for something only you would write, such as 'Currently losing a long war against the squirrels in my garden.' A specific detail turns a match into a conversation, which no paid feature does for you.
Give those free changes a couple of weeks to show up in your numbers. If matches and conversations improve, you may find you do not need to pay at all - and if you still want to, the money now has something worth multiplying.