According to TechCrunch, the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness a public health crisis in 2023, fueling demand for new ways to make friends. In response, over a dozen local-focused friendship apps have collectively generated about $16 million in U.S. consumer spending so far this year, with roughly 4.3 million downloads in 2025 alone. Notable apps include Bumble’s BFF, which spun out as a standalone app in 2023, and newer entrants like Timeleft, Meet5, and 222. These platforms aim to remove the awkwardness of in-person cold approaches by creating spaces explicitly for platonic connection. For example, the iOS-only app 222 charges a $22.22 curation fee to match strangers for events based on personality tests, while European app Les Amís uses AI to match women and LGBTQ+ users for a paid membership that costs $70 in New York.
The shift from dating to friending
Here’s the thing: the success of dating apps didn’t just normalize meeting people online—it basically provided the blueprint. The stigma is gone. Now, the challenge isn’t finding *a* person, it’s finding your *people*. And that’s a trickier algorithm to write. Romance has clearer signals and milestones. Friendship is messier, built on shared interests, consistent low-stakes interaction, and often, group dynamics. It’s no surprise that so many of these new apps, like Bumble BFF and Meet5, are pivoting hard toward facilitating group meetups. It’s less pressure than a one-on-one friend “date.”
The business of not being alone
What’s fascinating is the variety of business models emerging. You’ve got the straightforward subscription of Les Amís, the per-event ticket model of Timeleft, and the freemium approach of giants like Meetup. Sixteen million dollars in consumer spend isn’t huge in the grand scheme of apps, but it signals a market that’s willing to pay to solve this problem. That’s a big deal. We’re not talking about a free social network here; we’re talking about adults, often with disposable income, investing directly in their social health. It reframes friendship from a happy accident to a deliberate, and billable, wellness activity.
Niches and the local problem
But there’s a massive hurdle: locality. An app like Clyx is only in Miami and London right now. Pie is just in Austin, Chicago, and SF. Mmotion is NYC-only and requires an application. This hyper-local focus is necessary for facilitating real-world meetings, but it’s a brutal scaling challenge. It also explains the niche targeting—apps for women (Les Amís), for the over-40 crowd (Wyzr Friends, Meet5), for dinner dates (Timeleft). They’re slicing the market thinly to create a critical mass in specific cities. Will any of them become a universal “friend-finder”? Probably not. And maybe that’s okay. The future might be a constellation of specialized apps, not one monolithic platform.
The real test: offline
So, do they work? The download numbers suggest people are desperate to try. But an app can facilitate an introduction; it can’t manufacture the chemistry, reliability, and shared history that turns an acquaintance into a real friend. That still requires showing up, again and again. The apps that build in structure—like Timeleft’s weekly dinners or Pie’s pre-event group chats—seem to understand this best. They’re not just swiping platforms; they’re creating behavioral rails. In the end, the winner might not be the one with the cleverest AI, but the one that most reliably gets people out of their apartments and into a room together, consistently. After all, that’s how friendship has always worked.
