10 Best Websites to Make Friends in 2022

If you find it difficult to meet new friends in person, you may have more success online. There are many friendship apps and websites that connect their users with like-minded people. In this article, we’ll focus on the best websites that could help to grow your social life.

Quick picks for websites to make friends

1. Best For Interest & Hobby-Based Groups: Meetup
2. Best For Likeminded Individuals & Groups: Reddit
3. Best For One-Off Events: EventBrite
4. Best For Local Friends: Facebook Groups
5. Best For Travelers: CouchSurfing
6. Best For Making International Friends: InterPals
7. Best For People Who Are Into Fitness: Active
8. Best For Online Communities: Discord
9. Best For Gamers: Twitch
10. Best For Meeting People Safely: Patook

Best websites for making friends

These sites are well-established, generally well-regarded, and fairly straightforward to use. To maximize your chances of making new friends, try joining two or three sites rather than just one. Be patient; to develop real, lasting friendships, you’ll probably need to try several events and chat with lots of people.

1. Meetup

Meetup is a good way to find like-minded people who could turn into friends. Many events are one-offs, which don’t offer many opportunities for one-on-one interactions. However, if you go to recurring meetups where you meet the same people regularly, you may become closer over time. Some meetups are online, which is a bonus if you live in a rural area or don’t have reliable transport options.

2. Reddit

Reddit is one of the world’s largest online communities. Subreddits are subforums around specific topics. Check out r/Meetup and r/MakeNewFriendsHere to find people who want to make friends. Many Reddit members are looking for all kinds of meetups, both in groups and one-on-one. If you’re making a post, write a little bit about your personality and what kind of person you’re looking to meet.

Subreddits are also great for advertising your own events. To post a similar event on Meetup.com, you’d have to pay. If you want to attend a meetup that someone else has posted, you can check that person’s user profile to learn more about them.

However, if you want to advertise a niche event, you have better luck using Meetup.com, as they have a larger reach.

3. Eventbrite

Like Meetup, Eventbrite lists details for events, both in-person and online. The main difference between the two is that Eventbrite is more focused on one-off, ticketed events, but you can still use it to meet and network with people who share your interests.

4. Facebook

Even though we tend to see Facebook as a tool to interact with existing friends, it’s powerful for finding new friends since the user base is so massive. Search for groups related to your interests in your area. Be active in these groups and interact with people. If you connect with someone, ask if they want to meet up in real life.

5. CouchSurfing

CouchSurfing started off as a service that makes it easy for you to host people or to “couch surf” for free when traveling. This has since grown into a community that has different types of meetups. Many people have detailed profiles, so it’s easy to meet many interesting people from different backgrounds. Hosting gives you an opportunity to spend time with people you might not hang out with otherwise.

It’s not a friendship-making website at its core. Hosting and surfing aren’t great ways to meet people that you can see regularly because most of them will live far away from you. However, you might make some long-distance friends.

6. InterPals

InterPals was designed to connect people from different countries, so it’s useful for people who want online penpals. If you’re learning a new language, you may be able to find a native speaker who will help you improve. The InterPals website looks a little dated, but with almost 6 million users, you might find some new friends.

7. Active

Active makes it easy to find sports-related activities and meetups close to you. For example, you might find a cycling club meeting or athletic fundraising event in your city. You’ll probably find more results on Meetup, but this site is still worth a try if you want to make friends with people who share your love of exercise.

8. Discord

When you sign up to Discord, you can join servers based on your interests. Discord is popular with gamers, so it’s a good place to visit if you want to find someone to play with. There are also servers just for casual conversation and making friends. It’s easy to chat with people via text, voice, or video chat. If you can’t find a community that suits you, you can set up your own.

Discord has more than 100 million users, so there’s a decent chance that you’ll find some people on your wavelength.

9. Twitch

Twitch is a video streaming site. It’s best known for video game live streams, but some users focus on other interests, such as animation and music. You can get to know other viewers via live chat and then switch to private messages for one-on-one conversations. Over time, you might be able to bond by talking about your shared interests and favorite streamers.

10. Patook

Patook describes itself as a website and app that allows you to make “strictly platonic” local friends who share your interests. The site appears to have a strict moderation policy, and its software monitors all messages in the app for flirtatious or suggestive language. By adjusting your settings, you can control who sees your profile. For example, you can make your profile visible to only men or women.

You can stick to one-on-one conversations, but you also have the option of making public posts that are visible to any users in your area. Patook knows that it can be hard to keep a conversation going over text and uses AI to suggest prompts if a chat starts to dry up.