It’s been a few years since Backpage and Craigslist ended their dating personals, but many people are still on the lookout for sites like Backpage and Craigslist Personals to meet their romantic needs.
The online world is full of opportunities to connect with hotties, and legit adult services can help make something happen. Dating sites facilitate casual encounters by offering free profile browsing, discreet chatting, and live video streams with a sexy cohort.
Our dating experts have curated a list of the top personals sites and dating apps that give casual sex seekers a fresh start in the dating scene.
- Relationships: Hookups, Casual Dating, Kinky Chats
- Match System: Search by age, location, gender, kinks, and appearance
- Our Experts Say: KinkyPeopleMeet is a sex-driven site where kinksters share their fantasies without shame. It’s a dynamic community for hooking up. And the photo and video galleries offer plenty of titillating inspiration as well. Our Review »
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
KinkyPeopleMeet is a popular X-rated dating site for adults seeking a sexual release or casual encounter. Its adult services allow users to move at a fast pace and view sexually explicit content of all types.
The setup is similar to the Craigslist personal section because free members can read bios, view photos, and send some flirty messages. There’s a community section where you can look for specific fetishes and comment on posts seeking real-time encounters in your area.
- Relationships: Hookups, Casual Dates, Affairs
- Match System: Search by age, location, appearance, and more
- Our Experts Say: With its massive user base and advanced privacy features, Ashley Madison is the #1 site for discreet hookups, dates, or relationships. Our Review »
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
As a dating site for affairs, Ashley Madison offers a positively scandalous dating site that is absolutely free to try.
Ashley Madison serves sexually active individuals looking to date discreetly. Members can choose to identify as attached or unattached, and the site offers photo-masking tools to help keep identities private.
Despite its controversial premise, Ashley Madison has proven to be popular among those who don’t subscribe to monogamy. The dating site currently has over 80 million registered users. Our full review covers other stats and successes of this married dating site.
NaughtyCharm
- Relationships: Hookups, Chats
- Match System: Search by encounter, location, and more
- Our Experts Say: NaughtyCharm is a premier hookup app where you can feel comfortable expressing your desires. Plus, it's free to join, browse, and flirt.
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
NaughtyCharm is a casual hookup site with more than 13 million active members, so it can be a useful Backpage alternative or Craigslist replacement. This adults-only dating platform gives casual daters the chance to engage in sexting conversations and attract hot dates without having to leave home.
It’s free to join the NaughtyCharm network and explore dating personals by using search filters by location, age, gender, and appearance. The FlirtCast tool allows free members to send an introductory message to all locals singles who are their type, or members can send virtual winks to get a person’s attention. Our NaughtyCharm review goes into more detail about the match system and pricing.
Female users enjoy free and unlimited messaging on NaughtyCharm, but male users are kept on a tighter leash. They can send five free messages via the dating site. After that, men must upgrade to a paid membership if they want to chat up someone new.
- Relationships: Hookups Only
- Match System: Search by location, interest, more
- Our Experts Say: Make no mistake: this site isn't about making friends, it's about finding hookups and casual encounters. No adult site has a larger or more active user base of those seeking discreet fun. Our Review »
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Since its launch in the 1990s, AdultFriendFinder has become one of the most popular personals sites of all time. It has over 105 million members in its sexy database.
The AFF community features classified ads for straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals, and it also has swingers forums for couples and groups seeking a sexual partner. Free members can browse the erotic blog and photo gallery at their leisure, but they cannot access live videos or private chat rooms until they subscribe to a gold membership plan.
AdultFriendFinder’s pricing options start at $14.95 per month, and subscribers can upgrade at any time to get more advanced chatting and privacy options.
Fling.com
- Relationships: Casual Dating, Hookups, Friends with Benefits
- Match System: Search filters
- Our Experts Say: Fling.com keeps things casual and connects horny adults with video and direct messaging. It doesn’t ask for real names, but it will verify photos as genuine to ensure catfish don’t last long here! Our Review »
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
Fling.com tells you in the name what to expect from its browsing experience. Whether you’re sending a private pic to a crush or launching into a video date with someone new, the casual dating network certainly keeps things exciting.
What we love about Fling.com is its rigorous photo guidelines and verification process. This is quite different from the relaxed standards of Craigslist and Backpage. While Fling.com doesn’t require real names or phone numbers, it still ensures photos are authentic and users stay truthful.
MenNation
- Relationships: Daters & Hookups
- Match System: Search by age, zip code, more
- Our Experts Say: MenNation is a well-established gay dating and hookup brand, having been founded in 1996. It's totally free to join, view profiles, receive matches, and flirt. Our Review »
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
MenNation is a hookup site for gay, bisexual, and queer men who don’t want to fill out a personal biography just to get a date. The website’s quick registration process and straightforward profiles get single men and gay couples into the online dating game with no muss or fuss.
MenNation has adopted a strategy similar to Backpage with its flexible and user-generated format. This dating site encourages personal ads, photos, blogs, and videos from adult men seeking sex, setting the stage for private conversations among paid members with its X-rated content.
- Relationships: Hookups Only
- Match System: Search by location, interest, more
- Our Experts Say: A hookup site specializing in casual encounters, secret affairs, live chats, and member videos, FriendFinder-X skips the awkward "dating" stage of a relationship and fast-forwards straight to the sex. Our Review »
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
FriendFinder-X is an anonymous sex site where adults can engage in X-rated chats and seek hookups with like-minded strangers. The membership base is open to straight, gay, lesbian, and trans individuals as well as couples and swingers.
Creating a dating profile on FriendFinder-X is somewhat like setting up a Craigslist personal because both need an email address, age, and gender. However, FriendFinder-X asks members to upload a profile picture and pay a subscription fee before they can send private messages.
SaucyDates
- Relationships: Casual Dating, Hookups, Friends with Benefits
- Match System: Search filters, Suggested matches
- Our Experts Say: SaucyDates is a straightforward hookup site with a reputation for safe dating. The team manually checks profiles and photos. Naughty pics are allowed.
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
SaucyDates works quickly and efficiently to pair up sexy singles in real time. The journey starts by creating a brief profile stating who you are and what you want.
Your profile will be reviewed by moderators, and all photos need their approval too. But don’t worry, X-rated photos are perfectly fine on SaucyDates, so you can really let your wild side show.
SaucyDates is a sex-positive dating service dedicated to facilitating sexting, flirting, and hot dates with no strings attached. Chatting on the platform does come with a price tag (it’s free to join but not to chat); however, some users say the cost of entry works like a cover at a bar — it ensures the people there are quality singles.
Match
- Relationships: Friends, Dates, and Relationships
- Match System: Browse by zip, age, appearance, more
- Our Experts Say: Match has facilitated the most dates and relationships of any dating site, and its large audience and high success rate make it our top review. Our Review »
- Browse Free: View Photos Now
Match has been helping singles express themselves and meet new people since the early days of the internet. This massively successful dating website predates social media giants like Facebook by more than a decade.
Match.com and Craigslist actually launched in the same year — 1995 — and helped pave the way for the future of online networking. Craigslist is no longer in the online dating business, but Match Group is still going strong and has built one of the largest dating networks in the world.
It doesn’t take much digging to find evidence that Match can work in real life and inspire relationships that lead to true love and marriage.
10. Doublelist
Doublelist is a casual hookup site that prides itself on double-verifying every personal ad, which is how it got its name. To get started, you’ll just need to provide a valid email address and complete a text verification process to activate your dating profile in the ad digest.
Doublelist maintains strict guidelines to ensure its users act appropriately and do not get into trouble. The classified site deletes and bans all fake profiles, but the good news is that fake ads only amount to about 1% of new signups. Doublelist is a dating site, not an escort site, so you won’t find sex workers lurking here.
When Craigslist closed its personal ads section, it left millions of daters scrambling to find a new classified website to act as their wingman. Doublelist has stepped up to fill that void and be the Craigslist personals replacement for casual daters around the world.
Doublelist began in the U.S. and has rapidly expanded to cover nearly 250 cities in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The site now has over 3 million members and sees over 100,000 posts every day.
11. Oodle
Oodle is a public marketplace that is similar to Craigslist in many ways. People can use Oodle to sell their cars or find job openings — and they can also use it for dating purposes. The Oodle personals section is available to any legal adult seeking companionship, and the platform will automatically rank ads by proximity to make for easy browsing.
Since 2004, Oodle has grown from a California startup to a global company with millions of personal ads and city news. Its classifieds cover multiple categories — everything from apartment rentals to casual dating encounters — so it can be used as a Backpage alternative website.
Now part of the FriendFinder network, the Oodle website caters to straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and queer individuals seeking discreet connections.
12. Locanto
Locanto stands out as a top free classifieds website in the United States. You can explore the Personals, Dating, or Community sections to find chances to connect through private messages or public posts.
The personals section is packed with candid X-rated ads where people openly share their bedroom desires. The site offers two categories for online daters: a casual encounters section and a long-term relationships section. Additionally, the adult ads list includes special filters for sexual orientation, gender identity, and couples dating.
Locanto recently released a companion dating app for singles who want to stay in touch while on the go and receive notifications on their phones when they get a message. The app creates over 50,000 matches and sees more than 1.2 million messages exchanged per day.
13. Bedpage
Bedpage probably looks and sounds familiar to former Backpage users. The personal services follow the old blueprint of the Backpage website. Even its logo is strikingly similar. However, it’s important to note that the team behind Bedpage has no affiliation with Backpage whatsoever.
“We proudly stand as one of the top classified advertising websites,” says the Bedpage team. “What began as a simple Backpage substitute has transformed into a leading force in the ever-evolving field of classified listings.”
Bedpage provides a diverse array of personal listings beyond just dating. Whether you’re a single woman seeking a one-night stand or a retired couple looking to rent out your beach house, Bedpage is your go-to. Listings are sorted by region, making it easy to reach nearly every major city globally, although its largest audience is in the U.S. and Canada.
Bedpage is widely known as the best Backpage alternative for encountering a free classified ad for sex without worrying about fake ads or sex work classifieds.
14. Pernals
Pernals (formerly known as Cragly) is an up-and-coming dating platform that facilitates casual hookups and friendships.
The dating app has given old-fashioned classified ads an upgrade by taking them to a mobile-friendly format and using swiping technology to speed up the matching process. It is the best alternative for meeting casual daters anonymously and on the go in the same way you would be on a traditional classified ad site.
The Pernals website launched following the Backpage scandal, and its team has promised to put user safety first and not make the same mistakes that similar personals sites have made in the past. Pernals does not cater to sex workers or fake profiles, but to authentic singles who are seeking live ads and a bit of casual fun.
“We strive to fight against online sex trafficking,” the Pernals team said. “We manually review each post from our users to ensure the quality and safety. If you find any online sex trafficking activity, please report it to us immediately.”
15. OkCupid
In 2004, OkCupid made a splash in the online dating industry thanks to its data-driven approach to matchmaking. The dating site’s team created a formula for love based on a questionnaire that tapped into a user’s habits, opinions, fetishes, goals, and values.
Today, OkCupid’s 100% optional questionnaire includes over 5,000 questions ranging from “Do you like the taste of beer?” to “Do you believe in God?”
OkCupid was founded by self-proclaimed math nerds who have come up with creative solutions to help singles identify true compatibility and pursue promising relationships.
Singles who choose to dive into this fun personality quiz can dramatically increase the accuracy of their OkCupid match ratings by being honest about who they are and what they want. OkCupid now supports one of the most effective matchmaking tools on the market. It’s responsible for making over 91 million connections per year.
16. Tinder
Tinder launched in 2012 as the first swipe-based dating app. And it was an instant hit. Singles enjoyed the freedom to follow their desires, match with local daters, and keep unsolicited messages out of their inbox.
Today, Tinder has been downloaded over 630 million times and has facilitated more than 97 billion matches among daters across 190 countries. In terms of sheer numbers, Tinder is unmatched as a Backpage alternative, especially if you’re looking for instant dates right at your fingertips!
Tinder gets a lot of flak for being a casual hookup app, but it has also sparked many friendships and relationships between young adults who are open to anything. It’s just a matter of how you swipe.
“I met my boyfriend on Tinder,” shared Elli in a Reddit post. “Four years on, we’re living together, and he’s the best partner I’ve ever had. I’m incredibly excited and can’t wait to see what the future holds for us.”
17. Plenty of Fish
Since 2003, Plenty of Fish has stood out as a free dating website for people seeking meaningful connections. The POF community generates over 57 million matches weekly and offers a range of tools for self-expression and flirtation.
Our experts believe Plenty of Fish is a fantastic alternative to Backpage because it offers free communication features and boasts a vast user base of over 10 million active users.
Plenty of Fish has implemented high-tech verification tools to build trust between singles. Plus, in accordance with its photo guidelines, the POF website deletes all photos containing minors, nudity, or gruesome imagery.
POF focuses on wholesome dating, which is a breath of fresh air for daters who are tired of meeting fake profiles and bots on an escort site.
18. Grindr
Grindr created its all-male personals section in 2009, and it has been tantalizing local guys ever since. The dating app organizes a person’s potential date prospects by distance, so it’s easy to swipe through the hottest guys in town.
Currently, Grindr boasts more than 27 million male users and attracts over 3 million daily visitors from 200 countries.
Grindr is the top dating app for men seeking men for all sorts of reasons. Most people know Grindr as a gay hookup app, but that’s not the only box it can check. Grindr can be a gay relationship app, a swingers app, a friendship app, or a bi-curious app, depending on the user’s preferences.
A single guy interested in meeting local men can join Grindr (for free!) to find more than enough options at his fingertips.
19. Happn
The Happn dating app was designed to support local daters, and its smart matchmaking system can offer much more value than a white-label classifieds website. Happn uses real-time location data from an Android device or iPhone to find common ground between its members.
Happn identifies where its users cross paths — whether it’s at the same coffee shop, dog park, or pub — and shares that information on their dating profiles. However, it doesn’t reveal anyone’s current location.
In 2018, when Backpage and Craigslist Personals shut down for good, Happn experienced a surge. That year, the dating app surpassed 50 million members, earning a spot among the top 10 most popular dating networks globally.
Happn has strong safety features in place to avoid the pitfalls of scammers, catfishers, and other bad actors that plagued sites like Backpage and Craigslist Personals.
FAQs: What Happened to Backpage and Craigslist Personals?
Backpage and Craigslist are both permanently out of the online dating game, but for very different reasons. Backpage shut down due to a criminal investigation, while Craigslist closed voluntarily in accordance with changes in the law.
It all started in April 2017 when Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri introduced HR 1865, or the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA). The bill gave law enforcement the ability to hold website owners accountable for facilitating prostitution and sex trafficking.
The bill passed with bipartisan support in Congress and was signed into law in the spring of 2018.
In response, Craigslist closed down its dating personals section. The website made a statement to explain the reasoning behind this decision:
“Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we have regretfully taken Craigslist personals offline.” — Craigslist team
Unfortunately, Backpage’s shutdown was much more egregious. The U.S. Department of Justice seized control of the website in April 2018. Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer later pleaded guilty to facilitating prostitution and money laundering.
Prosecutors accused Backpage of making over $500 million from prostitution ads since 2004.
Backpage crossed the line from naughty dating service to criminal online sex trafficking, and its ignominious example is a warning to all personals sites operating in this space.
How Do Dating Classified Sites Work?
Over the years, Backpage replacement sites have cropped up to meet a demand in the dating market. I mean, you can’t pick up dates on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist anymore, so it makes sense that personal services have arisen with a competitive edge. These sites offer anonymous chat rooms and adult personals to tempt people of all sexual proclivities.
Classified sites are different from dating sites in a few key ways:
- No matchmaking algorithms or compatibility ratings
- Few profile details beyond age and location
- Little to no photo verification
- Lax moderation
Typically, a classified site asks for minimal personal details from users. It might request an email or birthdate but usually doesn’t require Facebook logins or profile pictures. Often, you don’t even need to create an ad to browse, allowing you to maintain privacy.
Are Dating Sites Safe?
Today’s classified website is held to a higher standard than the old Backpage website, particularly when it comes to online dating safety. For decades, classified ads masked sex workers and prostitution rings, but the U.S. Justice Department has cracked down on the shady corners of the web to make it a safer place for the average single person.
A modern sex site has to set stricter membership rules and actively police personal ads if it doesn’t want to follow in Backpage’s criminal footprints and become nothing more than an escort directory.
However, policing fake profiles and stopping scammers is a big and difficult task that dating platforms have not yet perfected. It falls to the individual to trust their gut and keep a wary eye out for false pretenses.
Online dating is safe — as long as singles are careful about the personal information they share and who they decide to trust. Look out for fake profiles and be skeptical when a romantic encounter seems to be going a little too well or moving too quickly (aka love bombing).
I strongly urge online daters to vet new love interests online and not just take a dating profile at face value.
What Are the Search Features on Personals Sites?
The original Backpage website did not have many search filters. It stuck to the basics of age, gender, and location to spark online romances, and that formula has worked well for many a Backpage replacement site. Personals sites typically don’t get too detailed when it comes to search filters and match algorithms.
Some casual dating services may have some advanced search filters based on appearance or background, but the majority offer more of an open dating field where everyone is in the mix.
What Is the Best LGBTQ+ Hookup App?
Dating apps and sites that offer users a personal-ad-style hookup experience are still quite popular — and Grindr does it better than just about any other platform in the LGBTQ+ space. The app is designed for gay dating and offers free swiping and chatting for men on the go.
Since launching in 2009, Grindr has become one of the most popular apps for helping gay men find hookups nearby — just like personal ads once did.
A Classified Site Can Offer New Avenues to Romance
Backpage and Craigslist Personals might be a thing of the past, but the casual dating scene is still going strong. Since 2018, several alternative websites have stepped up to fill the gap left by these adult services.
The best sites like Backpage and Craigslist Personals can offer online daters a new beginning (and lots of adult ads) in a more regulated and trustworthy environment.
The sites on this list promote classified ads that introduce singles and swingers to local date prospects. It’s a fast, efficient, and safe way to send out flirtatious vibes and arrange casual hookups with strangers. Best of luck!
