Which trans dating app should I use?
The honest answer depends on four things, and none of them is which app has the best reviews.
There is no best one. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either selling an app or has only tried one. What there is instead is a fit between what you want and how a given app is built, and you can work that out in about five minutes.
Start with who you want to meet
This decides more than anything else. If you want to meet other trans people specifically, most of the trans-labelled apps will disappoint you, because they admit anyone who is interested in dating trans people. That is their stated design, not a failure of moderation.
If you are a queer woman or a transfem or non-binary person looking mainly at women, an app built for queer women will serve you better than a trans-labelled one. If you are transmasc and looking for other trans men, you will have the hardest time, and the honest advice is that community spaces will probably do more for you than any app currently will.
Then check what the safety features cost
Open the app store listing and read the in-app purchase list before you install anything. You are looking for one thing: whether replying to a message you have already received, or blocking someone, sits behind a subscription. If it does, that app has decided your safety is a revenue line.
Most apps pass this test. The ones that do not are worth walking away from regardless of how good the rest of it looks.
Then check it runs on your phone
Obvious, and still the thing that catches people out. Several apps in this space are iOS-first, with Android promised, delayed, or served by a mobile website instead. Check the listing rather than the marketing page.
Then check whether anyone is there
Density beats features. An app with excellent design and eleven users within reach of you is worse than a plain one with two hundred. Set your radius wide on day one and see what comes back before you invest any time in a profile.
This is the honest reason so many people end up back on the mainstream apps despite everything wrong with them. Volume is a feature, and the niche apps mostly do not have it.
A reasonable default
Install two. One trans-focused app and one general queer app, both free tiers, both with a wide radius. Give it a fortnight before you conclude anything. If one of them is clearly where the people are, delete the other and put your effort into a good profile there.
Our comparison pages set out who each app admits, what it charges for and where it runs, taken from each app's own listing.