So this is a super common problem. I live in a highly populated area comparable to 'name a big city in the world'. I have a engineering degree so I like to know how things like Tinder algorithms work. I recently made a fake woman account (fairly attractive but only one picture no bio) (No I am not answering in chat to catfish). I am most likely posting a big article on this sub with results some day when I have the time to do so (I have also used Tinder in low populated areas and results are completely different).
It is insane how many matches a girl can get if she would swipe like a men does. Like 100+ a day. Most friends I know that use tinder just swipe right on every one. Most girls I know however are super thorough and selective. From internet sources I have heard Tinder has about a 50/50 men/woman ratio (each match needs a man and woman). I can also confirm this with may sister that does not get more matches as I do. Woman only swipe very little profiles compared to men (not reaching those 100 likes). The result is that the amount of likes they have is only getting bigger and bigger.
For example if a girl profile is liked 400+ times a week and she only likes 20 a week it means her stack of likes will grow. It also means that this girl is only seeing 5% of the profiles that already liked her. Boost 'hacks' this idea by putting your profile in that 5%. In populated areas there are most likely enough men that use boost so free profiles are barely visible for woman.
There is an up side to this story. It is not only because woman are more picky. Mens profiles have lot more variety. (muscled guys, beards, no hair to long hair). If I swipe girls I like every western looking girl with long hair that is not to fat and not looking like a christmas tree of make-up (summed up a lot of girls). So make your profile stand out (not to professional but different than the sunglass selfie look me drink with friends). On top of that most guys from my ^ experiment suck at texting. Mathematically I think it is better to be more flirty/direct from the beginning (while being fun/original). It makes you stand out, you will ask more girls out (numbers game), you will get rejected slightly more, but saves you a lot of time in general.