The Best Apps to Meet People While Traveling, by What You Want

Search for the best apps to meet people while traveling and you get the same list in a different order: a dozen logos, a paragraph each, everyone a winner. That's not much help when it's 6pm in a new city and you want to know which one to open.

The better question isn't "which app is best?" It's "what do I want right now?" A drink tonight and a travel buddy for the next three weeks are different problems, and the apps are built for different ones. So here they are, sorted by job.

Full disclosure: we make one of them, so weigh our pick accordingly. Every claim about the other apps comes from their own listing, website or help center as of October 2026.

The short version

• Company tonight, in any city, free: Suppertime.
• Women-only or LGBTQ+ friendly plans: Suppertime.
• You're booking hostels anyway: Hostelworld for the hostel, Suppertime for the nights outside it.
• A dinner someone else organises: Timeleft, if you're happy to pay a subscription for fixed nights.
• Hobby groups on a long stay: Meetup.
• A buddy for your exact dates: TripBFF or Nomadtable.
• A free sofa: Couchsurfing, with a paid membership.

If you want company tonight

This is the most common need and the one most apps handle worst, because they were built around profiles and messaging. You match, you chat, you chat some more, and three days later nobody has left their room.

Suppertime skips all that. You open a map of small plans other travelers in your city have posted: dinner at 8, a sunset hike, a gallery, a drink. You join one, or post your own and see who turns up. Each plan has its own group chat, and that's the only chat there is: no DMs, no friend requests, no followers. Links are blocked in chats, which stops most scams before they start. Plans and chats disappear afterwards, and the map starts fresh every morning, so what you see is always what's actually happening today. Plans can be women-only, or marked LGBTQ+ friendly, so you know who's at the table before you go. It's free on iOS.

Nomadtable also puts activities on a map, free to join and create. It's built more like a social network, with friends, city chats and trip timelines, and the full list of travelers nearby sits behind its paid Plus tier. Good if you want to build a travel network; more than you need if you just want dinner.

If you're staying in hostels

Hostelworld lets you chat with people at your hostel and in the same city, and join hostel events. The catch: those features need a booking through the app or a paid Social Pass, and they revolve around hostels. The moment you're in a hotel, a guesthouse or an Airbnb, it goes quiet.

Suppertime doesn't care where you sleep. A plan is a plan whether you're in a twelve-bed dorm or a boutique hotel, which is why it's a good partner to Hostelworld and a replacement for it if you've outgrown the hostel bar.

If you want a dinner someone else organised

Timeleft puts strangers around a restaurant table on set nights. You take a personality quiz, pay for a subscription, and the app picks the group and tells you where to go. It works, if your trip lines up with its nights and you don't mind paying before you know who's coming.

On Suppertime, dinner with strangers is the most common plan of all, and it's free, any night, at a restaurant you can see before you join. Or post your own: "ramen at 9, anyone?" usually finds company. If you're eating solo tonight either way, our guide to eating dinner alone has the counter-seat trick.

If you're staying a month or more

Slow travel and remote work change the maths. You're after a routine, the same faces twice a week.

Meetup is good for that: recurring, hobby-shaped groups like running clubs, language exchanges and board games. Joining is free; hosting needs a paid organizer plan. It's weak for short stays, because the next event might be Thursday and you leave on Wednesday. Bumble BFF matches you one-to-one with people in your city who want friends. It's free, and it works best when the other person lives there too.

Both fill your week slowly. Suppertime fills tonight, which is why nomads tend to keep it open alongside them. Our two-week plan for making friends in a new city shows how to combine them.

If you want someone on your exact dates

Some people want a buddy for the whole trip: someone to split a 4x4 across the Salt Flats with, or share a driver down the coast. TripBFF is built around posted travel plans, nearby travelers and location groups, free with an optional Pro tier, and Nomadtable's trip timelines do a similar job.

A word of advice, though: never commit to two weeks with someone you've only messaged. Join the same dinner plan first. One evening tells you more than a month of chat.

If you want to stay with a local

Couchsurfing is still the biggest name in hospitality exchange, but it isn't free anymore: its help center says messaging, Hangouts and Events all need a paid membership. We wrote a full breakdown in is Couchsurfing still worth it?

What to look for in any of them

Whatever you install, four things separate a good meetup app from a stressful one:

• Groups first. Meeting three people at a public dinner is safer, and much less awkward, than meeting one stranger from a DM.
• Plans with a time and a place. "Anyone around?" goes nowhere. "Tacos at 8, this spot" gets people out of the door.
• A report button, and someone who reads it. Check whether the app says a team reviews reports.
• Nothing to keep up. If an app wants you to maintain a profile, collect followers and answer messages after you've left the city, it's a social network, not a way to meet people.

We built Suppertime to tick all four, and it's the only app on this list that has no DMs and also blocks links in chats.

Which one should you download?

If you only install one, make it the one that works tonight, in whatever city you're in, without a subscription or a booking. That's Suppertime. Open it when you land, see what other travelers are doing in the next few hours, and join one. Add Hostelworld if you live in hostels, or Meetup if you're staying for months. It's free on iOS.